A video shared by Iran Wednesday purported to show an American Saildrone unmanned surface vessel near the Strait of Hormuz in flames after being attacked by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been making the rounds on social media.
U.S. officials disputed that claim.
“All of our Saildrones are accounted for and fully operational,” an official told Military Times.
The video comes on the heels of another incident in which an Anduril Dive-LD autonomous underwater vehicle — designed for long-range surveillance and other undersea missions — was captured on Sept. 8.
U.S. Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins of U.S. Central Command told Reuters that the “defective drone was an older model that neither collected sensitive data nor carried any classified sonar or radar equipment.”
“Of course Iran will take every opportunity as a propaganda win,” Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told the outlet. “It can help the (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) make better versions of their own designs.”
The Navy recently awarded Saildrone Voyager a $16.3 million task order to extend operations of the Voyager fleet in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, according to an August release.
Since 2023, Saildrone’s USVs have worked in coordination with the U.S. Navy, supporting the Joint Interagency Task Force South, or JIATF-S, and U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command/U.S. Navy Fourth Fleet, per the release.
The 33-foot-long Voyager is designed for persistent surface and subsurface surveillance and can also conduct nearshore mapping missions and seafloor characterization.
Able to remain “on mission and on station” for months at a time, the USVs are “both a deterrent and an alarm” along the U.S.’s expansive southern maritime border, according to the company.
Claire Barrett is an editor and military history correspondent for Military Times. She is also a World War II researcher with an unparalleled affinity for Sir Winston Churchill and Michigan football.
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