The U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) announced on 13 July that three Saronic Corsair unmanned surface vessels (USV) struck a submarine and ship maintenance facility at the Bandar Abbas Naval Base a day earlier.
CENTCOM said it was the first American combat use of sea drones.
The command released unclassified video showing a small craft closing on a raised dock holding what appears to be a submarine, then detonating.
CENTCOM said the strikes degraded Iran’s ability to continue attacking commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
The USVs formed one part of a wider wave. CENTCOM said its forces hit dozens of targets across southern Iran on 12 July, among them air defence systems, coastal radar sites, missile and drone assets, and small boats.
Fighter aircraft, naval vessels, and one-way attack aerial drones took part alongside the sea drones. Qeshm Island was also reported among the areas struck.
Bandar Abbas sits on Iran’s southern coast along the Strait and serves as headquarters for a large part of the Iranian navy. The base has been hit before during Operation Epic Fury, the campaign that opened on 28 February.
The Corsair is built by Saronic, a Texas-based firm. It is a 24-foot autonomous surface vessel able to carry a 1,000 lb payload over 1,000 nautical miles at speeds above 35 knots.
The U.S. Navy placed the design on a $392 million production contract in December 2025, awarded through the Defense Innovation Unit. The Corsair originated in the Pentagon’s Replicator program.
Task Force 59, the unmanned systems unit of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) and the U.S. 5th Fleet, operates the Corsair in the region and began fielding it in late March.
The Navy had earlier retired its last Gulf minesweepers on a plan to shift mine countermeasures to unmanned systems.
Until now the task force had used the boats for surveillance, maritime security, and, in June, the recovery of two U.S. Army aviators whose AH-64 Apache went down in the Gulf of Oman.
CENTCOM separated that rescue from Sunday’s strike, which it framed as the first combat employment of the type.
The one-way attack aerial drones flown in the same wave are LUCAS, a low-cost American system reverse-engineered from Iran’s Shahed-136. CENTCOM first used it in February.
What CENTCOM has not explained is the timing. The Corsairs had been in theatre for roughly three and a half months, through a stretch when Iranian coastal and naval targets were plentiful, before being committed to a strike.
Trump said separately that the United States would reinstate its naval blockade of Iranian ports and keep the Strait of Hormuz open with or without Tehran.
The strike also arrives as other navies move toward the same capability, with the Turkish Navy ordering 100 expendable kamikaze USVs and Pakistan developing three combat-capable USV designs of its own.
