It was not a missile or a manned vessel that made history at Bandar Abbas Naval Base on the night of 12 July — it was three unmanned boats, each loaded with explosives, gliding silently toward their targets at low speed. US Central Command confirmed that American forces had, for the first time, used sea drones in combat, striking an Iranian Ghadir-class midget submarine suspended from a gantry crane and a nearby ship maintenance facility. The footage, released by the US military itself, showed the quiet approach and then the sharp light of three successive explosions. The vessels responsible were Saronic Corsair autonomous surface drones, built by Saronic Technologies, a defence company based in Austin, Texas.

Each craft measures 24 feet in length, can carry up to 1,000 pounds of payload, and is capable of travelling more than 1,000 nautical miles at speeds exceeding 34 knots. According to the company, the Corsair can navigate, loiter, and manage its own power systems without continuous human control — a design philosophy that shifts warfare from the cockpit to the algorithm. The strategic irony is difficult to ignore. Iranian and Houthi forces began deploying explosive sea drones against commercial and military shipping nearly a decade ago, demonstrating the weapon's potential to navies that were slow to respond in kind.

Washington has now adopted — and arguably refined — the very tool its adversaries pioneered. This conflict, which began when the United States and Israel struck Iran on 28 February 2026, has already produced a second notable Corsair milestone: on 8 June, one of the same drone boats rescued two US Army Apache helicopter pilots adrift off the coast of Oman after their aircraft was downed by an Iranian Shahed drone.