Why the US Navy Is Fighting Iran With a Fleet That Carries No One - YouTube

Why the US Navy Is Fighting Iran With a Fleet That Carries No One - YouTube

The Fleet With No One Aboard: What Hormuz Is Teaching the Navy About Uncrewed Warfare

Sep 26, 2026 · @Stephen L Pendergast

BLUF

• Uncrewed systems crossed from experiment to combat in the 2026 Iran war. Confirmed firsts include combat use of the $35,000 LUCAS one-way attack drone on 28 February, the first U.S. rescue by an unmanned surface vessel (USV) in June, and the first U.S. sea-drone strike, three Saronic Corsairs against Bandar Abbas naval base, on 12 July.
• Below the surface, unmanned vehicles did the finding. U.S. officials say Navy underwater drones located more than 100 suspected mines in the Strait of Hormuz Traffic Separation Scheme; divers, SEALs, and contractors did much of the neutralizing.
• The losses are real and instructive. The U.S. military has lost at least 45 MQ-9 Reapers (roughly a quarter of the fleet), a $238 million MQ-4C Triton on 9 April, and an Anduril Dive-LD captured by Iran on 8 September. Iran tried and failed to seize a Saildrone on 14 September.
• The deeper lesson is adaptation, not cheapness. Sensors, shooters, and rescuers are becoming interchangeable nodes: a wind-powered Saildrone Surveyor fired two JAGMs at RIMPAC 2026 on carrier-group targeting data, and a Corsair built to strike also pulled aviators from the water.
• Much is unproven. "Attritable" USVs still cost about $1.1 million each, evidence for USV strike at scale is thin, mine countermeasures remain fragile, and the law of the sea has not settled whether a crewless hull is a warship.
• Recommendation: Measure the fleet by its adaptation rate, not its hull count. Fund the loop that converts combat lessons into fielded changes in weeks: open architectures, rapid sustainment, delegated autonomy doctrine, and allied integration through CENTCOM's new Task Force Falcon Strike.

The Fight at the Gate

Seven months into the war with Iran, the most consequential change in U.S. sea power may be the fleet that carries no one. A U.S. official told Military Times that American forces now use unmanned systems "on, above, and below" the sea, and that they have been effective chiefly in reducing risk to personnel. None of these machines would register on a traditional order of battle, which counts hulls, guns, and crews.

The war began on 28 February 2026, when U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and Israel opened coordinated strikes on Iran: Operation Epic Fury for the United States, Roaring Lion for Israel. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz within days using warnings, mine-laying, ship seizures, and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) swarm-boat activity. A ceasefire began 8 April, a U.S. blockade followed on 13 April, and the truce collapsed in early July after renewed Iranian attacks on shipping.

Iran fought the way a weaker navy should. U.S. forces destroyed or disabled more than 120 Iranian naval vessels within the first month, so Tehran leaned on the tools of denial: fast attack craft, coastal anti-ship missiles, naval mines, one-way attack drones, and small explosive boats. The strategy rested on one assumption. Whatever the United States sent into the strait would have people aboard who could be killed, captured, or made to hesitate.

Striking where no crew should go. On 12 July, three Saronic Corsair USVs struck a submarine and ship-maintenance facility at Bandar Abbas naval base, which CENTCOM called the first time American forces had employed sea drones in combat. The Corsair is a 24-foot craft with a range beyond 1,000 nautical miles, a 1,000-pound payload, and a 35-knot sprint. Task Force 59 had fielded Corsairs in theater only since late March.

The lesson of the MQ-9. The Reaper was the war's workhorse hunter-killer, but three U.S. officials told The Washington Post in August that at least 45 had been lost, about a quarter of the fleet, at $30 million to $50 million apiece. Most belonged to the Air Force, and a defense official said some were lost to data-link failures rather than Iranian fire. When holding an eye over the strait costs a quarter of the aircraft, seeing has come apart from hitting and needs a solution of its own.

A Century-Old Idea, Finally at Scale

The crewless naval weapon is as old as the aircraft carrier. On 6 March 1918, a Navy-funded Curtiss-Sperry Flying Bomb left its launch track on Long Island, flew straight under gyroscopic control, and cut its own throttle at the preset 1,000 yards. Admiral Delmar Fahrney later called it the first successful flight of an automatic missile in the United States, and possibly the world.

Each later war moved the idea a notch. The Navy flew the QH-50 DASH drone helicopter from Cold War destroyers to deliver antisubmarine torpedoes, jet-powered Ryan reconnaissance drones penetrated North Vietnamese air defenses, and Pioneer drones spotted 16-inch gunfire for Iowa-class battleships in 1991. What changed in 2026 was economics and autonomy: drones became cheap and capable enough to buy by the hundred rather than the handful.

The institutional groundwork was already laid. Fifth Fleet stood up Task Force 59 in 2021 to integrate unmanned systems and artificial intelligence, and in January 2024 added Unmanned Task Group 59.1 to operate them alongside specialized crews. When Hormuz caught fire, the unmanned fleet was not born there. It was put on trial there.

The Strike Layer: Cheap Mass and New Roads

The strike arm faced two pressures at once: an arithmetic of cheap threats met by million-dollar interceptors, and targets where a crew was too costly or too exposed to send. It answered by spreading in two directions, cheaper on one side and into new forms on the other.

Claiming the cheap side of the ledger. The Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) is SpektreWorks' reverse-engineered copy of Iran's Shahed-136: roughly 10 feet long with an 8-foot wingspan, a small piston engine, several hundred miles of range, and a CENTCOM-stated price near $35,000. Task Force Scorpion Strike, a one-way attack squadron led by Special Operations Command Central and stood up in December 2025, flew LUCAS in combat for the first time on 28 February against IRGC command posts, air defenses, launch sites, and airfields. Those combat launches were from land; the maritime proof came earlier, on 16 December 2025, when Task Force 59 launched a LUCAS from the flight deck of USS Santa Barbara (LCS-32) in the Arabian Gulf.

Striking where no crew should go. On 12 July, three Saronic Corsair USVs struck a submarine and ship-maintenance facility at Bandar Abbas naval base, which CENTCOM called the first time American forces had employed sea drones in combat. The Corsair is a 24-foot craft with a range beyond 1,000 nautical miles, a 1,000-pound payload, and a 35-knot sprint. Task Force 59 had fielded Corsairs in theater only since late March.

The lesson of the MQ-9. The Reaper was the war's workhorse hunter-killer, but three U.S. officials told The Washington Post in August that at least 45 had been lost, about a quarter of the fleet, at $30 million to $50 million apiece. Most belonged to the Air Force, and a defense official said some were lost to data-link failures rather than Iranian fire. When holding an eye over the strait costs a quarter of the aircraft, seeing has come apart from hitting and needs a solution of its own.

 

The Sensing Layer: Climb Out of Reach, or Become Too Cheap to Matter

Information cuts both ways: the picture that shows where mines lie and boats gather is the same picture that cues the fleet's weapons. The Reaper's losses forced the fleet's eyes to evolve in two opposite directions at once.

Up: the MQ-4C Triton. The Navy's roughly 20 Tritons fly a 130-foot wingspan, wider than a Boeing 737's, for more than 24 hours at altitudes above 50,000 feet. Altitude is the whole argument. For a surface target under standard 4/3-earth refraction, radar horizon in nautical miles is approximately:

d_{\text{nmi}} \approx 1.23\sqrt{h_{\text{ft}}}

A 100-foot masthead radar sees about 12 nmi to a sea-level target; a Triton at 52,000 feet sees about 280 nmi. One aircraft therefore covers more ocean per orbit than a line of destroyers. The cost of that reach is concentration: on 9 April, a Triton operating from NAS Sigonella squawked a general emergency after a Hormuz patrol and went down, a Class A mishap on a platform the Navy prices near $238 million. The cause has not been disclosed.

Down: the Saildrone. At the other end of the scale sits the Saildrone Explorer, a roughly 25-foot wind- and solar-powered USV that holds station for months without fuel and has monitored Gulf traffic for CENTCOM for years. Iran has twice treated these as prizes, seizing Explorers in 2022 before returning them under U.S. pressure. On 14 September 2026, two IRGC small boats tried again near Larak Island; CENTCOM said they failed after it "forcefully responded," and Axios reported a U.S. drone destroyed both boats with two missiles. The episode proves the design premise: a sensor that costs little to keep at sea yields little to capture.

The Road Below: Mines and the Seabed

The strait does not open until the road beneath it is clear, and that road has always been the Navy's weakest domain. A mine costing a few thousand dollars can cripple a billion-dollar warship; the tanker Bridgeton struck an Iranian mine on the first Earnest Will convoy in 1987. Writing in Proceedings in April, analysts warned that the Knifefish UUV, built to hunt Iranian influence mines on or buried in the seabed, was still experiencing significant growing pains.

Hunting by machine. CENTCOM announced in April that underwater drones would join a new clearance effort. The Independence-class littoral combat ship's Mine Countermeasures Mission Package pairs an MH-60S with unmanned surface vehicles towing AN/AQS-20 sonar or influence sweeps, plus Knifefish for buried and high-clutter mines. On 25 August, U.S. officials said Navy underwater drones had systematically scanned the Traffic Separation Scheme over several months and located more than 100 suspected mines.

Humans still closed the loop. Contractors, Navy divers, and SEALs operating from inflatable boats neutralized many of those contacts. The distinction matters: unmanned systems moved the fleet's sailors out of the search, not yet out of the kill. Clearance also is not permanence. On 30 August U.S. forces struck launchers on Larak Island that were preparing to fire mines into the strait, and a late-August maritime security advisory kept the strait's threat level at "severe."

The Dive-LD and the price of presence. Anduril's Dive-LD is a roughly 19-foot, three-ton large UUV rated to 6,000 meters with about 10 days of endurance, at a reported unit cost near $2.5 million. On 8 September, the IRGC Navy recovered one largely intact near the entrance to the strait. CENTCOM said the "older model" had malfunctioned and sat dead in the water for more than a day, and carried no sensitive data or classified sonar. Anduril called it an attritable system whose loss was an expected possibility; the harder question is how much an adversary learns from each loss.

Roles That Will Not Stay Put

The clearest sign of change is not on any spec sheet; it is in how these machines take over each other's jobs. An old fleet is a collection of hulls welded to single missions. The emerging fleet is a pool of nodes whose roles shift as the moment demands.

The watcher becomes the shooter. During RIMPAC 2026 off Hawaii, under the Navy's Fleet Experimentation program, a 65-foot Saildrone Surveyor fitted with a Lockheed Martin JAGM Dual Launcher fired two missiles at a surrogate high-speed surface craft. Targeting data came from the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) carrier strike group through the Navy's Adjunct Remote Engagement System (ARES), and the same vessel demonstrated passive electronic-warfare detection with an MH-60S. Lockheed published no accuracy or range results, and nothing released says the USV selected a target or authorized fire on its own: the machine carried the weapon, not the authority.

The striker becomes the lifeguard. In early June, when an Army AH-64 Apache went down near the coast of Oman, a Task Force 59 Corsair helped recover both crew members. A month later, the same class of hull struck Bandar Abbas.

Doctrine is catching up. The CNO's February 2026 Fighting Instructions assign medium USVs to "scouting, screening, and striking," task UUVs with water-space denial, survey, and mine warfare, and call for attritable, easily replenished USVs in the force design. Adm. Daryl Caudle introduced "Delegated Autonomy Levels" to define what any unit, manned or unmanned, may do without waiting for higher headquarters. In August, CENTCOM announced Task Force Falcon Strike, a SOCCENT-led, multinational attack-drone force spanning air, surface, and subsurface, to scale Scorpion Strike's model with regional partners.

What Hormuz Has Not Yet Proven

The temptation is to declare a revolution; the evidence supports a transition. CNA's Joshua Tallis cautions that the war's public examples are "an iterative learning moment, not a fully formed vision of the future fight." Four problems remain open.

1. Attritable is not the same as cheap. Open-source estimates put a Corsair near $1.1 million and a Dive-LD near $2.5 million. Tallis notes such systems are cheaper than crewed platforms but "not, per se, cheap," and the Navy has no agreed rule for when a system has delivered enough value to justify its loss.
2. Strike at sea is still thinly evidenced. One three-boat raid and one two-round exercise shot do not establish USV strike as a repeatable capability under jamming, weather, and damaged links. Surveillance remains the unmanned fleet's proven strength.
3. Every loss is also a transfer. Reapers lost to link failures, a Triton lost to an undisclosed cause, and an intact Dive-LD in IRGC hands show that spoofing, jamming, and capture are part of the price. Anti-tamper design, data minimization, and recoverability deserve the same weight as endurance.
4. The law has not decided what these hulls are. UNCLOS Article 29 defines a warship as commanded by a commissioned officer and "manned by a crew" under armed forces discipline. Analysts at CIMSEC and the Naval War College argue that remote human command can satisfy the test, but the status of a crewless vessel, especially one with humans out of the loop, remains unsettled. That affects boarding rights, sovereign immunity, and whether seizing one is an act of war.

Recommendations. The Navy should measure unmanned progress by cycle time, not inventory: how many days from a combat lesson to a fielded fix. That argues for open, modular architectures like the containerized launchers now riding Saildrones; forward sustainment and replenishment pools, since a search-and-rescue role demands drones pre-positioned across a theater; a mine countermeasures force with enough Knifefish-class depth to survive attrition; and early work with allies on the legal status of armed USVs, starting inside Falcon Strike.

The decade ahead will not belong to the navy that owns the most hulls. It will belong to the one that can change fastest when the water changes around it. Hormuz did not create that force. It showed the Navy has begun to build one.

Sidebar: The Black Sea Parallel

Hormuz is teaching the U.S. Navy what Ukraine and Russia have been teaching each other since 2022: the side that adapts fastest, not the side with more hulls, controls the water. The two wars differ in who holds the uncrewed edge, but converge on the same four lessons.

Dimension	Black Sea: Ukraine vs. Russia	Strait of Hormuz: U.S. vs. Iran
Who uses drones, and why	Ukraine, with almost no navy left, uses USVs for sea denial against a larger fleet	The dominant navy adds uncrewed systems to spare crewed ships from cheap threats
Surface strike record	Magura V5 and Sea Baby sank or damaged roughly a dozen warships and pushed the Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk; in 2026 Ukraine struck frigates inside Novorossiysk harbor	One confirmed raid: three Corsairs against Bandar Abbas, 12 July 2026
Cheap air mass	Russia launched 6,000+ missiles and drones in January 2026 alone; Ukrainian interceptor drones at about $3,000 each claim up to 90% of Shaheds	LUCAS, a $35,000 Shahed copy, gives the U.S. cheap strike; U.S. and Gulf states have sought Ukrainian interceptors
Roles converging	Magura V7s carry air-to-air missiles against aircraft; Sea Babies launch FPV drones; the Magura MV11 is a drone-carrying mothership	Saildrone Surveyor fires JAGMs on carrier-group data; a strike Corsair doubles as a rescue craft
Communications as the weak point	Russia's 2026 USV campaign reportedly stalled after it lost Starlink access; Ukraine builds in autonomy for jammed conditions	Some Reaper losses came from data-link failures; a Dive-LD sat dead in the water before capture
The adversary adapts	Russia added booms, nets, helicopter patrols, and its own USVs; Ukraine destroyed three Russian USVs on 23 June 2026	IRGC tried to seize a Saildrone and captured a Dive-LD
Industrial model	Competing private firms; 40,000 interceptors delivered in one month; Magura V7 licensed for U.S. production	CENTCOM's Scorpion and Falcon Strike task forces; a multiyear Pentagon drone buy run as competitive "gauntlets"

Where the lessons converge. Both wars show that sea denial no longer requires fleet parity, only attritable mass and a working kill chain. Both show that the cost exchange decides sustainability: a $3,000 interceptor against a $50,000 Shahed in Ukraine, a $35,000 LUCAS against targets that once demanded a Tomahawk over Iran. And both show that the link, not the airframe or hull, is the component most often lost.

Where they diverge. Ukraine adopted uncrewed systems because it had nothing else; its drones are its navy. The U.S. Navy is grafting them onto a fleet whose crewed carriers and destroyers still carry most of the combat power. That makes the U.S. risk subtler: institutions built around exquisite hulls may absorb the new tools slowly, while a force with no legacy to protect iterates in weeks.

The warning. Russia's Black Sea Fleet did not lose because it was small. It lost because it adapted more slowly than its opponent. Iran, which supplies the Shahed design at the center of both wars, is watching the same lessons.

 

Sources

Official releases and primary documents

1. U.S. Central Command. "CENTCOM Launches First-Ever Multinational Attack Drone Task Force." Public release, 13 August 2026. Mirrored at GlobalSecurity.org. https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2026/08/mil-260813-centcom01.htm
2. U.S. Department of Defense. "Operation Epic Fury Fact Sheet." 6 April 2026. https://media.defense.gov/2026/Apr/06/2003907108/-1/-1/1/OPERATION-EPIC-FURY-FACT-SHEET-APRIL-6-2026.PDF
3. Caudle, Adm. Daryl, USN. U.S. Navy Fighting Instructions. Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, February 2026. https://www.navy.mil/Leadership/Chief-of-Naval-Operations/display-cnotes/Article/4400384/us-navy-fighting-instructions/
4. Lockheed Martin. "Lockheed Martin and Saildrone Demonstrate Launch from USV Platform." Press release, Bethesda, MD, 20 August 2026. https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2026-08-20-Lockheed-Martin-and-Saildrone-Demonstrate-Launch-from-USV-Platform

News reporting

5. Oliverio, Natalie. "CENTCOM Has Become a Battle Lab for Unmanned Systems." Army Times / Military Times, 22 September 2026. https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/09/22/centcom-has-become-a-battle-lab-for-unmanned-systems/
6. Barrett, Claire. "Sea Drones Strike Iranian Port in Combat First for US." Military Times, 13 July 2026. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/07/13/sea-drones-strike-iranian-port-in-combat-first-for-us-navy/
7. "U.S. Military Has Lost Roughly 25% of Its Reaper Drones as Iran War Depletes Arsenal." The Washington Post, 13 August 2026. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/08/13/us-military-has-lost-roughly-25-its-reaper-drones-iran-war-depletes-arsenal/
8. "US Confirms First Combat Use of LUCAS One-Way Attack Drone in Iran Strikes." Military Times, 28 February 2026. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/02/28/us-confirms-first-combat-use-of-lucas-one-way-attack-drone-in-iran-strikes/
9. "Launch of LUCAS One-Way Attack Drone from Navy Ship at Sea Called 'Significant Milestone.'" Stars and Stripes, 18 December 2025. https://www.stripes.com/branches/navy/2025-12-18/lucas-live-launch-20134156.html
10. "Navy Acknowledges Triton Crash as Drone Losses in Iran Mission Mount." Stars and Stripes, 17 April 2026. https://www.stripes.com/theaters/middle_east/2026-04-17/drone-persian-gulf-navy-triton-sigonella-21404402.html
11. "Navy MQ-4C Triton Surveillance Drone Crash in the Middle East Finally Confirmed." The War Zone, 14 April 2026. https://www.twz.com/air/navy-mq-4c-triton-surveillance-drone-crash-in-the-middle-east-finally-confirmed
12. "U.S. Strikes Iranian Boats Trying to Seize Navy Drone in Strait of Hormuz." Axios, 15 September 2026. https://www.axios.com/2026/09/15/us-iran-boats-navy-drone-strait-hormuz
13. "US 'Forcefully' Deters 2 Iranian Boats from Taking Navy Drone in Middle East." Stars and Stripes, 15 September 2026. https://www.stripes.com/theaters/middle_east/2026-09-15/iran-boats-destroyed-middle-east-drone-22861851.html
14. "U.S. Military's Anduril Dive-LD Drone Was 'Dead in the Water' Before Iran Nabbed It." DefenseScoop, 8 September 2026. https://defensescoop.com/2026/09/08/us-militarys-anduril-dive-ld-drone-captured-by-iran/
15. "Underwater Drone Captured by Iran Matches American Anduril Model." Naval News, September 2026. https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2026/09/underwater-drone-captured-by-iran-matches-american-anduril-model/
16. "US Admits Underwater Drone Loss as Iran Claims Seizure in Strait of Hormuz." Naval Technology, September 2026. https://www.naval-technology.com/news/us-underwater-drone-iran/
17. "Navy to Use Underwater Drones to Help Clear Iranian Mines from Strait of Hormuz." DefenseScoop, 11 April 2026. https://defensescoop.com/2026/04/11/strait-of-hormuz-mine-clearance-navy-centcom-underwater-drones/
18. "Trump Announces All Mines Have Been Removed from the Strait of Hormuz." Axios, 25 August 2026. https://www.axios.com/2026/08/25/hormuz-mines-remove-oil-iran-trump
19. "How US Used Navy Divers, Underwater Drones to Clear Strait of Hormuz Mines." Gulf News, September 2026. https://gulfnews.com/world/mena/how-us-used-navy-divers-underwater-drones-to-clear-strait-of-hormuz-mines-1.500666159
20. "CENTCOM Details How US Cleared Iranian Mines in Strait of Hormuz." Fox News, August 2026. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/inside-dangerous-us-mission-cleared-irans-mines-hormuz-shipping-lanes
21. "Centcom Creates First 'Multinational' Attack Drone Task Force." DefenseScoop, 13 August 2026. https://defensescoop.com/2026/08/13/centcom-creates-multinational-attack-drone-task-force/
22. "US Navy Launches Missiles from Its First Drone Sailboat." Tom's Hardware, August 2026. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/drones/us-navy-launches-missiles-from-its-first-drone-sailboat-saildrone-surveyor-launches-dual-jagm-missiles-carrier-strike-group-tests-armed-usv-and-electronic-warfare
23. Frantzman, Seth J. "Heavy MQ-9 Losses in Iran War Signal Push for Mass-Producible Replacement Drones." The Jerusalem Post, September 2026. https://www.jpost.com/defense-and-tech/article-908788

Analysis, history, and law

24. "The Crisis in Mine Countermeasures." U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 152, no. 4 (April 2026). https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2026/april/crisis-mine-countermeasures
25. "UDT 2026: Unmanned MCM Systems Could Help Clear Mines in the Strait of Hormuz in Weeks, Given Permissive Environment." Janes, April 2026. https://www.janes.com/defence-intelligence-insights/defence-news/sea/udt-2026-unmanned-mcm-systems-could-help-clear-mines-in-the-strait-of-hormuz-in-weeks-given-permissive-environment
26. "Operation Epic Fury and the Collapse of Iran's Layered Naval Defense." Gulf International Forum, 29 March 2026. https://gulfif.org/operation-epic-fury-and-the-collapse-of-irans-layered-naval-defense/
27. "US-Iran War 2026: Operation Epic Fury and the Hormuz Crisis." Quwa, 26 May 2026. https://quwa.org/iran/military-news-iran/us-iran-war-2026-operation-epic-fury-the-strait-of-hormuz-crisis-and-the-limits-of-american-air-power/
28. "The Navy's Secret Weapon, Circa 1918." U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, June 1967. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1967/june/navys-secret-weapon-circa-1918
29. Defense Technical Information Center. Technical report ADA111764 (history of U.S. guided missiles, including the 6 March 1918 Flying Bomb flight). https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA111764.pdf
30. "Unmanned Maritime Systems and Warships: Interpretations Under the Law of the Sea." Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC), 31 July 2024. https://cimsec.org/unmanned-maritime-systems-and-warships-interpretations-under-the-law-of-the-sea/
31. Materna, Malgorzata. "Adjusting the Aperture: The International Law Case for Qualifying Unmanned Vessels as Warships." International Law Studies 100 (U.S. Naval War College). https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3051&context=ils

Note on sourcing: Items 5, 6, and 1 were read in full; others were verified against publisher search excerpts. Unit costs for Corsair and Dive-LD are open-source estimates, not official figures. The DASH, Ryan reconnaissance drone, and Pioneer references are standard naval history and are not separately cited.