Saronic drone boat pulls downed Apache crew from the Gulf of Oman

A Task Force 59 Corsair recovered two Army aviators after Iran downed their Apache near the Strait of Hormuz, the first rescue of personnel at sea by an uncrewed vessel.

A US Navy drone boat rescued the two-man crew of an Army AH-64 Apache downed near the Strait of Hormuz on Monday evening, an apparent first for the American military, Defense One wrote. The 24-foot Corsair, built by Austin's Saronic Technologies and run by 5th Fleet's Task Force 59, reached the aviators after they had spent roughly two hours in the water off Oman, US Central Command spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins said.

"The drone picked them up and transported them to another location on the water where they were hoisted up to a helicopter for further transport," Hawkins said. Both crew members are in stable condition, per a CENTCOM statement that put Naval Forces Central Command and the 82nd Airborne Division in the lead of the rescue. President Trump blamed Iranian forces for the shootdown and ordered retaliatory strikes inside Iran, the BBC noted; CENTCOM says the cause remains under investigation.

Corsair carries 1,000 pounds over 1,000 nautical miles at speeds above 35 knots, according to Saronic's specifications, and the company has built more than 300 of the boats, per The Jerusalem Post. Task Force 59, the Bahrain-based unit that folds unmanned systems and AI into Middle East maritime operations, began fielding Corsairs in theater in late March, Hawkins told The War Zone. The Navy signed a $392 million production deal for the type in December, a turnaround gCaptain called one of the fastest prototype-to-production transitions in recent Navy acquisition.

For Saronic, the recovery converts venture money into operational record. The firm closed a $1.75 billion Series D at a $9.25 billion valuation this year and launched its first 180-foot Marauder in May for the Navy's medium-USV trials, gCaptain noted. The War Zone assessed that drone boats pre-positioned along flight routes could remake combat search and rescue, a mission that now sends helicopters and their crews into the same air defenses that downed the original aircraft.

"We've practiced this scenario in exercises, but not quite necessarily like this," Hawkins told the Wall Street Journal. Ten weeks after the first Corsairs arrived in theater, one has pulled two aviators out of a shooting war, and the Navy plans to deploy potentially thousands more, Reuters has reported.