The submersible vehicle was captured in a “complex intelligence” operation, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has said
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has announced the seizure of what it called “one of the most modern, unmanned, and smart submarines” in the possession of the US military. The Pentagon downplayed the incident, claiming it was an old drone that did not feature any sensitive equipment.
On Tuesday, the IRGC published a video of what it claimed was the advanced US undersea drone, which could perform a wide range of tasks, from seabed mapping to intelligence and surveillance operations, pipeline inspection, and anti-submarine warfare support.
The footage shows a grey, metallic, torpedo-like cylindrical vessel approximately 5.8 meters long and 1.2 meters wide, weighing around 2.7 tons. The undersea vessel could spend up to 10 days underwater and reach a maximum depth of 6,000 meters, according to the IRGC statement.
The Iranian military identified it as a Dive-LD drone developed by US defense contractor Anduril Industries that entered service in April 2025.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) sought to downplay the incident, claiming Iran had obtained a malfunctioning older-model drone that did not carry any sensitive equipment.
The undersea vessel was surveilling regional waters and “neither collected sensitive data nor carried any classified sonar or radar equipment,” US Navy Captain Tim Hawkins, a CENTCOM spokesman, said in a statement.
The incident comes amid yet another escalation between Washington and Tehran. Late on Tuesday, Iran launched ballistic missiles toward American military bases in the Middle East in what it called retaliation for an earlier US attack on Iranian oil tankers near Kharg Island. The IRGC also issued what it called an “urgent warning” late Tuesday, telling tanker crews around the docks and anchorages of Bahrain and Kuwait to leave their vessels immediately ahead of threatened attacks.
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