The Iranian navy has claimed to have captured one of the US military’s “most modern, smart” unmanned submarines at the entrance of the Strait of Hormuz. In a statement published by Sepah News, the official news outlet of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the navy said it captured the unmanned underwater vehicle — identified as a Dive-LD — in a complex intelligence operation.
The submersible vehicle is equipped with the world’s most modern subsurface vehicle technology, it said, and released a video of the captured vehicle. “It was surveying regional waters in support of ongoing operations. The US Central Command (CENTCOM) also claimed that its troops have destroyed five Iranian crude oil tankers following attacks on a US warship by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
In a separate statement, the IRGC also claimed that its air defence systems had shot down an MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Strait of Hormuz, Sepah News reported. Dive-LD can operate for up to 10 days without returning to base and is designed to dive to depths of as much as 6,000 meters (19,700 feet), according to Anduril’s website. Dive-LD units cost about $2.5 million each, U.S. military news site DefenseScoop reported in 2024.
Following the IRGC’s announcement, the US military also released a statement saying one of its underwater drones “malfunctioned” over a day earlier during a survey of regional waters, without mentioning whether the device was the one seized by Iran. The defective drone was an older model that neither collected sensitive data nor carried any classified sonar or radar equipment,” a Pentagon spokesperson said. The US strikes were in response to two Iranian efforts to hit the warship with ballistic missiles over the past two days, the CENTCOM said in a social media post. Meanwhile, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said that the country will continue its resistance with strength until the “aggressors” are brought to complete regret.
