Posted on 06/10/2026 6:15:50 AM PDT by V_TWIN
A US drone boat conducted a first-of-its-kind rescue mission to save the crew of an American Apache helicopter that crashed near the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, the military said.
The 24-foot Saronic Corsair autonomous surface vessel, powered by artificial intelligence, located the crew who had been stuck for two hours in the waters off the coast of Oman, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The unmanned autonomous vessel, capable of carrying 1,000 pounds and reaching speeds of about 40 mph, quickly transported the pilots to a safe location in the waters, where they were hoisted up by a rescue chopper, officials said.
The operation marks the first time a high-tech US Navy drone deployed to the Middle East was used to conduct a rescue mission.
The Corsair is manufactured by Texas-based Saronic Technologies and is a part of the Navy’s Task Force 59, which oversees uncrewed vessels and other drones powered by AI.
Former Navy Secretary John Phelan had praised Saronic’s work last December after they produced the fully functional Corsair just 12 months after presenting a promising prototype, with the completed version capable of sailing for more than 1,000 miles.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Sorry, msn.com. Better luck next time.
I don’t know what you two are talking about but you might to flush out your head gear.
You don't even know what that means, or you'd have stayed quiet. Wednesday and just another TDS moron speaking from his poop chute.
Very cool, and grateful the pilots are ok. Now blast the muzzie bastards to hell.
Again, air supremacy isn’t what you claim. You don’t know jack. Unlike you, I have flight experience. No need for the thorazine or the Geritol, and an AH-64 isn’t a ‘patrol plane’ ya double moron.
You don't even know what that means, or you'd have stayed quiet.
Let me help you out:
Air superiority is a tactical advantage where one force controls the skies enough to conduct operations without prohibitive interference, allowing the enemy to still mount occasional, localized resistance. Air supremacy is the highest level of dominance, where the enemy air force is rendered entirely incapable of effective interference anywhere in the theater.
For the record, we lost air supremacy below 2000 ft in the war against ISIS. We realized then (before the Ukraine war) we couldn't prevent use of small drones.
Go back to sleep dude.....your embarrassing yourself.
Then no helos would have returned. The term is used to refer to control of the air. You can have it and still have to deal with SAM threats.
Good luck with your cranio-rectal inversion.
So . . . this cool drone boat can get to the downed pilots, but they’d need to be able to clamber aboard under their own power? If they were incapacitated wouldn’t someone have to be present to gather them up?
Sure we do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_supremacy
We can go inside of Iran where we want, when we want, and they can’t really stop us.
That does not mean they can’t shoot at something like a helicopter flying low and slow.
—Mike Tyson is a bas ass, right? He can beat the crap out of you or I. Pretty much anytime and anywhere he wants. But if you were to see him at a party and out of the blue blind side him with a punch he wasn’t expecting, does that mean he no longer enjoys superiority?
We have been and are seeing the advent of the “Drone Wars”. 500 of these boats, well armed, could annihilate any Iranian fast boat fleet they can currently field, and/or produce in the near future. I wonder if Trump has been preparing for that all along?
I am sure they do, but why would you risk pilots if you don’t have to in mop up operations? Also, the costs are going to be much less I suspect.
Boats aren’t fast enough if the crash is too far away. We need unmanned aerial rescue. Doable?
When you venture down the rabbit hole of unmanned seagoing vehicles its gets really interesting. They have some that can go about 5,000NM and carry 100+ metric tons of payload. Those are not small craft.
The autonomous world is fascinating. My wife just got be a “drone” lawnmower. It’s fun to watch it mow the lawn and then return to the charging state without any involvement from a living being. I could be dead for weeks…but the yard will look good.
I am always surprised at the weapons the US has up their sleeves and we know nothing about. They only use the really good stuff when they have to.
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