The Navy says that its ships have foiled an Iranian try and make off with one in every of its new unmanned crusing ships within the Arabian Gulf.
In an announcement launched Tuesday, the Navy stated that it noticed a assist ship from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy towing a Saildrone Explorer — a drone ship that may stay at sea for lengthy stretches — at round 11 p.m. Monday night time native time. In response, the Navy dispatched a patrol coastal ship, the usThunderbolt, and a MH-60S Seahawk helicopter from a squadron based mostly in Bahrain.
“The actions taken by U.S. naval forces in response resulted within the [Iranian] vessel disconnecting the towing line to the [Saildrone] and departing the world roughly 4 hours later,” the Navy stated earlier than including that they “resumed operations with out additional incident.”
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Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of the Navy’s fifth Fleet, stated the Iranian’s “actions had been flagrant, unwarranted and inconsistent with the habits of an expert maritime power.”
The Saildrone itself is a small 23-foot-long vessel that strikes alongside underneath a mixture of wind and solar energy. Based on its producer, it will possibly keep at sea for greater than a yr and be geared up with a variety of atmospheric and ocean sensors.
The Navy introduced that it was beginning to function the vessels within the Arabian Gulf in late January although it provided little element as to the craft’s mission aside from to say it “homes a package deal of sensors powered by photo voltaic power for constructing a shared image of the encompassing seas.”
In its most up-to-date assertion, the Navy famous the Saildrone was “geared up with sensors, radars and cameras for navigation and knowledge assortment.”
“This know-how is obtainable commercially and doesn’t retailer delicate or categorized data,” the Navy added.
The Navy at the moment operates solely a handful of unmanned ships in varied sizes, however its leaders have commonly mentioned plans to develop the variety of drones within the fleet to round 150 ships by 2045.
The incident highlights an issue that unmanned ships, a lot of that are largely unprotected, could face within the area as their use by the U.S. Navy grows. That drawback may additionally turn out to be extra important because the Navy retires the final of its patrol ships — the category of ship that rapidly responded to the hijacking. In 2021, Navy leaders stated they might not be changing the patrol ships and would as a substitute look to littoral fight ships to take over their mission within the space.
Since that point, nonetheless, the Navy has additionally stated it desires to decommission 9 littoral fight ships in an effort to make room within the price range for different modernization efforts.
“U.S. naval forces stay vigilant and can proceed to fly, sail and function wherever worldwide legislation permits whereas selling rules-based worldwide order all through the area,” Cooper stated.
— Konstantin Toropin could be reached at konstantin.toropin@army.com. Observe him on Twitter @ktoropin.
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