September 23, 2022
by Warren L. Nelson
The US Navy has accused Iran of trying to steal three of its unmanned sailboats that monitor activity at sea, but the Iranian Navy says it was only trying to remove hazards to navigation floating in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.
The US Central Command announced earlier this year (see Iran Times of March 25, page three) that it was going to deploy about a hundred Saildrones from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf to monitor sea conditions and activity on the seas. It said it planned to have all hundred Saildrones in the water by next summer.
The Saildrone is a commercially manufactured sailboat that is powered by winds and can operate for as long as a year, floating around the seas with no crew members and transmitting data that its multitude of sensors, radars and cameras pick up. The data are monitored in Bahrain.
Saildrones have been in operation since 2014, mainly used by weather bureaus and by researchers studying fish movements. About a year ago, the US Navy decided to adopt Saildrones. The Central Command has said it finds the Saildrones very useful in detecting ships operating with their trackers turned off and locating tankers that secretly move their oil cargoes to other tankers at sea. These are both tactics the Islamic Republic uses to try to evade US sanctions.
The US Central Command said the Iranian Pasdar support ship Shahid Baziar intercepted one of its Saildrones in the international waters of the Persian Gulf the night of August 29 and attached a towline to it. Centcom said it detected this seizure, but didn’t say how it did so. Presumably the cameras on board the Saildrone showed Iranian sailors at work attaching the towline.
The US Navy then dispatched a nearby combat vessel, the USS Thunderbolt coastal patrol ship, and an armed helicopter from its base in Bahrain to intercept the Shahid Baziar. The Central Command said that four hours after the seizure the Iranian ship disconnected the towline because of “the actions taken by US naval forces,” though the Centcom statement pointedly did not say what those actions were. US Navy officers later said the USS Thunderbolt had contacted the Shahid Baziar on bridge-to-bridge radio.
Commander Timothy Hawkins, a spokesman for the US Fifth Fleet, said, “We made clear that the vessel they were towing was US government property and that we were closing [in] to retrieve it…. We had every intention to take action if necessary.”
Hawkins said four Pasdar fast-attack boats were spotted in the area but did not approach the USS Thunderbolt.
Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of the Navy part of Central Command, said in a statement that the Pasdaran’s “actions were flagrant, unwarranted and inconsistent with the behavior of a professional maritime force.”
Within hours, Nour News, the website of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said the Pasdar maritime arm had taken “timely action” to seize the US vessel, whose “navigational system had failed,” and began towing it with the aim of supporting safe and secure shipping in the Persian Gulf. It didn’t say how it could know the navigational system had “failed.”
It said the tow was undertaken to avert the kind of incidents that had occurred several times in past weeks—though it didn’t say what those past incidents were and Iran had not previously ever complained about Saildrones.
Nour News reported that the Saildrone was released on the order of the Shahid Baziar’s commander, but only after the US ship at the scene was reminded that it must observe shipping security and risk-free navigation—something the US Navy has complained the Pasdar maritime arm often fails to do.
The Nour report dismissed the “Hollywoodesque narrative” offered by the US Navy with the intention of “covering up some of its failures” against Iranian naval forces in the Persian Gulf.
PressTV, reporting on the Nour report, commented: “The US Navy tried to portray the development as an unprovoked attempt by the IRGC [Pasdaran] to capture the military vessel.”
The fact that an arm of the Supreme National Security Council announced the seizure rather than the Pasdaran indicated that the decision to seize the Saildrone was taken in Tehran and was not a local decision by the Pasdar maritime arm in the Persian Gulf.
But the confrontation in the Persian Gulf did not seem to deter the regime. Two days after the Saildrone was released in the Persian Gulf, an Iranian Navy vessel—not a Pasdar ship—seized two Saildrones in the Red Sea, pulling them out of the water and onto the deck of the frigate Jamaran.
Again, the US Navy immediately knew of the seizure and sent two guided missile destroyers—the USS Nitze and the USS Delbert D. Black—to the area along with helicopters. The crew of the Jamaran didn’t try this time to claim they were clearing debris from the sea. In fact, they tried to hide what they had done by covering the Saildrones with tarpaulins and denying they held any US property when the US Navy contacted the Jamaran and demanded the Saildrones be put back in the water..
The standoff lasted more than 12 hours overnight before the Jamaran agreed to put both Saildrones back into the water. The US warships retrieved the Saildrones and inspected them. The US Navy later said the cameras were missing from both Saildrones—though it specifically said it didn’t know if the Jamaran’s crew had removed them or if the cameras fell off when the Iranian seamen tossed the Saildrones back into the Red Sea.
The US Navy said the two Saildrones had been operating in the southern area of the Red Sea—where the Iranian Navy routinely operates—for 200 days without any problems. It also said the Saildrones were in international waters and at least four nautical miles (7-1/2 kilometers) from the nearest shipping lane when they were seized.
In reporting on the Red Sea activity, an Iranian Navy statement never said anything about US Navy ships confronting the Jamaran. It simply said the Jamaran picked up two “abandoned” Saildrones because they were a hazard to other ships and then released them in a “safe area.”
The US Navy said there was no gunfire involved in either the confrontation in the Red Sea or the one in the Persian Gulf.
Hours after the Jamaran released the Saildrones, the Iranian Navy announced that the Jamaran had thwarted an attack by pirates on an Iranian merchant ship in the Red Sea after a fierce exchange of fire. It was one of a long series of claims by the Iranian Navy to have foiled pirate attacks on Iranian merchant ships. But Somali piracy ended years ago and none of those who monitor pirate activities believe the Iranian claims. Iran has also never explained why pirates only attack Iranian merchant ships when they are near the one Iranian warship continuously assigned to the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea.
A few days later on September 5, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, the chief of the Joint Staff of the Iranian armed forces and the highest military officer in Iran, said, “Enemies are trying to compensate for the reduction of their forces in the Middle East by creating new units. They endanger maritime security by dispatching small, unmanned surveillance drones. But the Iranian armed forces’ response to vessels wandering in open waters will be decisive.”
He also said Iran would file a complaint about the Saildrones with the UN’s International Maritime Organization (IMO). The Iran Times contacted the IMO, which said it had not received anything from Iran as of September ??.
Bagheri also said, “Our vessels will not tolerate such units in their way and will deal with them as happened recently.”
Since his threat, the US Navy has not reported any further interference with its Saildrones.
The US Fifth Fleet said the technology aboard the Saildrones “is available commercially and does not store sensitive or classified information,” and thus the Islamic Republic would not capture any secrets by seizing a Saildrone.
The US Navy is planning to use Saildrones all over the world to monitor activity at sea. The Saildrones will replace many small ships used now to patrol the sea lanes because the Saildrones will provide more eyes for more hours in more places for less cost than is possible with manned ships.
Saildrone Inc. is a private company founded in 2013 in Alameda, California. Until the US Navy got interested a few years ago, the firm did most of its work with weather bureaus and oceanographic research agencies.
There are three Saildrone models. The small 23-foot (7-meter) Explorer is the type operated by Central Command. It is powered by the wind and has solar panels to provide power for its equipment. The firm also makes the 33-foot (10-meter) Voyager and the 72-foot (22-meter) Surveyor, both of which have engines to augment their windpower propulsion.