Iran mocks US over captured underwater drone: ‘Still blinking like an idiot’

The US Navy has been running uncrewed submersibles through the Strait of Hormuz to sweep for Iranian mines and keep commercial traffic moving. One of them stopped working and drifted, and the Revolutionary Guard pulled it out of the water largely intact. Iranian state media is now showcasing the vehicle as a prize. “Our guys picked it up like a plastic bottle in a fishing net. Fully intact. Still blinking like an idiot,” Iran’s embassy in Ghana boasted on X.

The craft is an Anduril Dive-LD, a torpedo-shaped autonomous underwater vehicle roughly 19 feet long and weighing close to three tons. CENTCOM spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins confirmed the capture, according to Newsweek, while saying the drone had malfunctioned during a survey of regional waters.

Hawkins described it as a defective older model that collected no sensitive data and carried no classified sonar or radar equipment. The vehicle had reportedly been dead in the water for more than 24 hours before Iranian forces reached it. Each unit costs around $2.5 million.

Iran has reverse-engineered captured US hardware before

In 2011 Iran recovered an almost intact RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft, and President Barack Obama publicly asked for it back. However, Tehran kept the drone and later unveiled domestic models that clearly borrowed from the design. Israel shot one of those derivatives down in 2018.

Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute said Iranian engineers could definitely reverse-engineer the mechanical systems, as Tehran has a track record with captured American aircraft. That could include the hull, battery layout and Anduril’s direct-drive electric propulsion system.

The software is a much harder target, as the drone’s autonomy systems carry built-in defenses against tampering. Navigation, obstacle avoidance, and mission planning all depend on code that Iran may not be able to read even with the memory drives in hand.

The Dive-LD can run for up to 10 days without returning to base and dive to 6,000 meters, and its modular payload bay lets one hull switch between mine warfare, seabed mapping, and intelligence collection. Its modular design also means Iranian engineers can study how the Navy adapts one platform for several missions.

Farzin Nadimi of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said Iran is likely to use the capture for propaganda while also studying the vehicle’s design. Anduril did not respond to requests for comment. The Navy has characterized the captured vehicle as an older unit that malfunctioned.

American forces lean heavily on private technology firms across the region, a dependence also visible in the Pentagon’s dispute with SpaceX over Starlink access. That is one reason the Navy is investing in uncrewed systems for missions that would otherwise put sailors in contested waters.

The Navy is expected to keep expanding that fleet. This appears to be the first known operational deployment of a Dive-LD, which entered service with Unmanned Undersea Vehicle Squadron 1 last year.