The Department of War confirmed to Reuters that it deployed Ukrainian-style drone boats to the Middle East as part of Operation Epic Fury against Iran. This move signals that the DoW is quickly learning a major lesson from the four-year Russia-Ukraine war: inexpensive autonomous systems, from drone boats to kamikaze drones, are necessary and are becoming core assets (very cheap) on the modern battlefield.
Tim Hawkins, a DoW spokesperson for Central Command, told the outlet that the drone boats deployed in the operation were built by Baltimore-based BlackSea and are known as the Global Autonomous Reconnaissance Craft, or GARC. He said the drone boats are being used for reconnaissance missions.
"U.S. forces continue to employ unmanned systems in the Middle East region, including surface drone assets like the GARC. This platform, in particular, has successfully logged over 450 underway hours and more than 2,200 nautical miles during maritime patrols in support of Operation Epic Fury," Hawkins said.
BlackSea's high-speed drone boat is described as a modular, autonomous, and remotely operated USV (unmanned surface vehicle) built for missions such as ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance), communications relay, mine countermeasures, survey, interdiction, and potentially strike roles.
The DoW's push for inexpensive, scalable autonomous air, ground, and maritime systems has only been reinforced by Operation Epic Fury and appears to take a page from Ukraine's playbook in its war of attrition against Russia, where FPVs and killer ground bots have dominated 'no man's land.'
In addition to drone boats, U.S. forces have deployed kamikaze drones based on the Iranian Shahed-136 attack drone - yet another acknowledgment by the DoW that autonomous systems are the future of warfare.
None of this should surprise readers, as we have outlined how four years of rapid development in war technology across Ukraine, Russia, and China have provided a glimpse of 2030s warfare.
Latest snapshot of the two wars across Eurasia: we overlaid natural gas pipelines on the map.
Next up are humanoid robots as physical AI on the battlefield.
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