Unmanned Boat Rams a Merchant Vessel off Iran

 

On Saturday, the Royal Navy's UK Maritime Trade Operations office reported a Persian Gulf / Arabian Gulf security incident with all of the characteristics of a bomb-boat attack - but without the bomb. 

On the 10th, the master of a merchant vessel alerted UKMTO about an unusual encounter south of Kish Island, Iran, at a position about 80 NM to the northwest of Jebel Ali. A small craft had collided with the vessel, and had previously attempted to collide with several other nearby ships as well.

The crew of the small boat were spotted transferring safely over to another small craft - leaving the boat unmanned before its final maneuver into the hull of the merchant ship. 

No seafarers were injured, but the merchant ship remained at the scene for some time before proceeding on its commercial voyage, UKMTO said. While the ship was in the area, the crew received VHF calls from "local authorities" requesting that they stop and allow a boarding party aboard.

No detonation was reported by UKMTO. However, the incident bears hallmarks of Houthi bomb boat technology. Typically, Houthi unmanned bomb boats are piloted by a human skipper until the final approach, when the pilot engages a remote control system and abandons ship. A crew on a nearby support vessel guides the bomb boat the rest of the way to the target by remote control. 

Iran appears to have supplied at least some of the guidance systems for Houthi drone boats, based on captured examples of the craft. Iran has also long experimented with unmanned craft of its own, and Iranian security forces are known to use misleading radio announcements to merchant shipping; during previous periods of heightened tensions, they have periodically engaged in boardings and hijackings.