Eyes on Iran as US Navy plans new Middle East sea drone force with allies

The US Navy’s Mideast-based 5th Fleet announced the launch of a new joint fleet of unmanned drones with allied nations to patrol vast swathes of the region’s volatile waters as tensions simmer with Iran.

Vice-Admiral Brad Cooper, who leads the 5th Fleet, told Associated Press that 100 unmanned drones, both sailing and submersible, would dramatically multiply the surveillance capacities of the US Navy, allowing it to keep a close eye on waters critical to the flow of the global oil and shipping. Trade at sea has been targeted in recent years as Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers collapsed.

“By using unmanned systems, we can just simply see more. They’re high-reliability and remove the human factor,” Cooper said on the sidelines of a defence exhibition in Abu Dhabi, adding the systems are “the only way to cover on whatever gaps that we have today”.

Cooper said he hopes the drone force using artificial intelligence would be operational by the summer of 2023 to put more “eyes and ears on the water”.

The Bahrain-based 5th Fleet includes the crucial Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20 per cent of all oil passes. It also stretches as far as the Red Sea reaches near the Suez Canal, the waterway in Egypt linking the Mideast to the Mediterranean, and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait off Yemen.

The high seas have witnessed a series of assaults and escalations in recent years, following former president Donald Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the nuclear deal and reimpose devastating sanctions.