WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- Over the past few years, Iran has “significantly” increased its use of unmanned aerial vehicles, the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet commander has said.
Vice Adm. Brad Cooper said that naval encounters with the Iranian military remain relatively flat, but, “what is different, though, is a dramatic uptick in the UAV activity in the region, both in terms of their capability, their profiles and the density of activity.”
“It is significantly different,” he said during an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Friday.
One recent example, Cooper claimed, was the attack on the occupying regime of Israel’s Mercer Street in July, where an allegedly Iranian-made kamikaze drone struck the ship by flying into it, resulting in the deaths of two people.
In November, a U.S. report said the US and the occupying regime of Israel have stepped up operations against Iran’s drone industry.
“This is not a new front, but now the actions will be more frequent and more aggressive,” a Zionist military source was quoted as saying then.
On the U.S. side, Cooper said the 5th Fleet has also ramped up its own use of maritime drones, unmanned surface vessels and unmanned underwater vehicles over the past several months, standing up Task Force 59 in September to help speed up its integration of unmanned tech.
So far, the task force has focused on integrating its existing aerial drones with new off-the-shelf USVs owned and operated by industry, he said.
In September, the task force established a hub in Bahrain that has been operating MARTAC’s Mantas T12 USV. In November, it announced the creation of a second hub in Jordan focused on operating the Saildrone USV.