US Uses Attack Sea Drones in Combat for First Time, Hitting Iran Submarine

Three Corsair unmanned surface craft hit a Ghadir-class submarine at Iran's Bandar Abbas Naval Base on Sunday, July 13. It was the first time the US military had used one-way attack sea drones in combat.

All three were autonomous. US Central Command confirmed the strike and released video the following day, showing the craft closing on an Iranian pier where the submarine sat suspended from a gantry, out of the water.

Corsairs are built by Saronic. Each is 24 feet long, reaches 35 knots, carries a 1,000-pound payload, and has a range of over 1,000 nautical miles. The target was the submarine maintenance facility inside the naval base, where CENTCOM footage showed the Ghadir-class submarine out of the water on a gantry at the time of the strike.

Ukraine and the Houthis had each made extensive use of similar sea drone craft before this. Sunday marked the first time the US military joined them.

The Bandar Abbas operation was part of a wider campaign that has grown since Trump declared the April ceasefire over on July 7, after Iran failed to meet the conditions attached to the truce. American forces have struck dozens of Iranian military sites since then.

For the wider shipping context, our guides explain how conflicts change shipping routes, tracking vessel activity by region, and why ships may be absent from a tracking map.