Iran is about to get a crash course in American drone sub technology — and a shot at building its own copy of a $2.5 million US Navy underwater drone its forces captured and paraded on state TV.
The Revolutionary Guard claimed Tuesday it had seized the Anduril Dive-LD near the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz. But US Central Command said the sub had malfunctioned and was “essentially dead in the water for more than a day” before the Iranians grabbed it.
“We will lose exquisite (and not so exquisite) tech when employing it against adversaries,” said retired Army Major Gen. Gordon B. “Skip” Davis of the Center for European Policy Analysis.
Sophisticated adversaries like Iran “have the capability to reverse engineer material designs and some of the electronics,” he said, though its encrypted software is probably out of reach.
“The defective drone was an older model that neither collected sensitive data nor carried any classified sonar or radar equipment,” said CENTCOM spokesman Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps used considerably more dramatic language to claim it got the drone in a “complex intelligence and operational mastermind operation at dawn today”.
The 19-foot, 3-ton autonomous sub can dive nearly 20,000 feet and is built for reconnaissance, mine-clearing and hunting enemy subs. Experts say there is little doubt Iran will learn all it can from it and may even try to build its own.
Even if they can’t replicate the drone, Iran could try to “leverage the captured tech with Russia for support to develop a more sophisticated domestic” capability, said Davis.
Federico Borsari, a CEPA fellow focused on transatlantic defense, said Iranians could study the drone’s power supply, navigation, communications, sonar and optical sensors used for hunting mines.
“That could help Iran improve its own underwater drones or develop ways of detecting and disrupting US vehicles in the future,” he said.
The biggest risk, said naval warfare specialist Steven Wills of the Center for Maritime Strategy, is that Iran could use the sub “to penetrate US data networks that support such drone operations.”
“That’s of more value than the drone itself, unless it carried some payload of use to the Iranians,” he said.
Iran has tried to feed its own arsenal by seizing the latest Western technology. That’s what it did when it tried to capture a US reconnaissance drone in 2011. It tried to tow away a high-tech Saildrone, or surface drone, in 2022 — only to back away after the US military intervened.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed this week it just destroyed a “Saildrone-type” craft, which relies on wind and solar power, “thwarting its aggressive mission” – although a US official told The Post “all of our Saildrones are accounted for and fully operational.”
The US and Iran have been trading strikes while President Trump demands Iran reopen the strait and end its nuclear program.
With most of its own navy destroyed and Tehran facing new sanctions meant to strangle its economy, Iran isn’t in a good position to take full advantage of its find, said Fred Fleitz, who spent 19 years at the CIA and serves as vice chair for national security at the America First Policy Institute.
“It’s a cost of doing business, especially this type of drone that’s designed to operate in dangerous areas,” he said. “When you go to war you’re going to lose equipment. As we use more and more drones, these things are going to happen.”
