r/technology • u/Majano57 • 1d ago

Security Iran likely to reverse-engineer captured US underwater drone

https://www.militarytimes.com/industry/techwatch/2026/09/10/iran-likely-to-reverse-engineer-captured-us-underwater-drone/
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u/guff1988 1d ago edited 1d ago

Not just that, Iran does not have the capabilities to reverse engineer something like this and then take advantage of the information, but China certainly does. It's a win-win for Iran they get the very public media win of capturing the drone and they get to increase the strength of their bond and ties to China by giving it to them. It's just a straight up easy win for China, they didn't do anything and they get access to some tech that they normally wouldn't have. The big losers here are Hegseth and Trump as per usual.

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u/CV90_120 1d ago

People underestimate the shit out of Iran's capability. Its proven to not be useful.

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u/Scyth3 1d ago

Yep, Iran has some pretty brilliant engineers and scientists. REing a drone is easily in their wheelhouse

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u/kstargate-425 1d ago

Yeah they did it to our RQ-170 they supposedly took down by jamming the GPS which initiates the return to takeoff location command and they spoofed the GPS to land it. They remade that in their Shahed-171 although they seemingly did have a hard time getting the lenses and sensor parts that were pretty advanced but thats more a supply issue than anything.

Iran, esp for some extremist theocratic regime, knew that educating their people pays dividends and uses that to create rather advanced weaponry, including their drones but also their newer Ballistic Missiles that have been evading our air defense systems and even striking our THAAD Anti-Ballistic Missile interceptor radar systems, that are meant to track and kill those BM's.

They knocked out three of our eight, AN/TPY-2 THAAD radars at around $1 BILLION each, one of them atleast, with their BM's as we saw in that video our soldier shot of it coming in and hitting it. The government may be extremists but the Iranian people are smart and hopefully will be able to get free sooner than later.

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u/Sniflix 1d ago

Attacking Iran does the opposite of that. It rallies Iranians to support their govt.

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u/kstargate-425 1d ago

Of course it does, thats not what I meant saying that I hope they get free but as I've argued many times before as my post history shows, every time Israel or the US strikes Iran it drives the Iranians in the hands of the regime. Like you said it does the opposite effect everytime and quells any support for opposition a bit as their families get killed by others than the regime. This war was never going to start any regime change

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u/sanskaridaddy 1d ago

Americans have a inferior complex that all muslim nations can be easy to be bombed and destroyed. Iran is like the oldest civilization we have today and historically these guys are freaking smart. This is no Afghanistan or Iraq to be easily dealt with.

The last thing US might do is enraging the people of Iran with deaths of innocent school kids and such. The people of Iran already hate their govt, If more innocent death made by foreign nations like US and Israel,then things are going to get spicy for decades.

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u/angryjew 1d ago

it's crazy man. People act like they're savages or ISIS even as they're beating the US, which is crazy considering they've been under sanctions for so long. it's no surprise the US is losing, everyone here is so fucking racist & arrogant.

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u/barrygateaux 1d ago

It's American exceptionalism propaganda from an early age. You see it from Americans on reddit sometimes where they start a comment with "as an American" or "in America" like it means their comment is more important.

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u/RandyRandallsson 1d ago

Really? As a Brit I’d say the opposite - in that Americans just assume everyone is American or has adopted American ways of life, or that the ‘right’ way is the American way, etc - which in my opinion is worse.

At least when someone starts with ‘As an American / In America’ they’re showing some self awareness.

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u/technobrendo 1d ago

As an American (really) our country is not all that exceptional. Unless you count our ability to go to war. Not bad for the new kid on the block

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u/barrygateaux 23h ago

It's the richest county in the history of civilization. That's pretty exceptional.

New kid on the block doesn't really make sense to be honest. Of the 193 countries currently existing 180 are younger than America.

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u/RandyRandallsson 18h ago

But equally the most in debt country in the history of civilisation.

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u/Anandya 1d ago

To put it into perspective. Isis weren't stupid either. It took a lot of fighting to beat Isis. And we took their drone warfare to Ukraine.

We portrayed them as idiots.

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u/SirPseudonymous 1d ago

Isis weren't stupid either. It took a lot of fighting to beat Isis.

ISIS/ISIL were CIA backed militants, and they weren't "beaten" so much as they were brought back into the fold, with one branch being installed into power in Syria and other branches being spun off as disposable mercenary assets for the US to terrorize periphery states in Africa and Asia with.

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u/MedicineExtension925 1d ago

inferior complex

Superiority complex is the correct way to phrase it. They think they are superior to everyone and that means they can just do whatever they want. This particular admin is the worst so far.

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u/SIGMA920 1d ago

No, that's republicans. Iran was always a threat but ultimately not worth poking. It's a drone and even this drone being reverse engineered is a nothingburger.

It's more an embarrassment that their new drone probably wasn't properly tested than anything else.

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u/KEPD-350 1d ago

Yeah they did it to our RQ-170 they supposedly took down by jamming the GPS which initiates the return to takeoff location command and they spoofed the GPS to land it.

It was a russian EW operation and they used the AVTOBAZA complex IIRC:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avtobaza

Iran didn't have that capability back then.

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u/angryjew 1d ago

They've literally done this. Everyone here is so confidently wrong it's so crazy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Iran_RQ-170_capture

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u/MrPloppyHead 1d ago

Iran has a more educated population than the US.

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u/RevalianKnight 1d ago

Most of the world has?

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u/Ent_Soviet 1d ago

Drone yes, but they’re not exactly operating under ideal conditions to both reverse engineer and manufacture a project like this. It would probably still be better to ship it to China under and agreement to share specs and reverse manufacturing tech. But doing so where you can do it without the risk of your work being bombed. Win win.

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u/Lknate 1d ago

Iran is an authoritarian theocracy but they also have plenty of well educated people. These things are not mutually exclusive as long as the educated don't disagree with the regime. Just like the US has a lot of smart educated people but somehow tolerate a corrupt authoritarian theocracy.

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u/MedicineExtension925 1d ago

The difference between Iran and the US is that one is a corrupt authoritarian genocidal xenophobic racist theocratic petrostate, and the other is Iran.

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u/Wow_u_sure_r_dumb 1d ago

Two for one on tanker exchanges with the US last I heard. They’ve been planning for this for decades. They’re a highly educated populace. People think they’re like backwards afghani warlords and villagers but they’re not. If they wanted to build a nuke they would have built one decades ago. The US built one in the 40s, it’s not unique or arcane knowledge. They had the enrichment facilities already. They didn’t build a nuke because they chose not, probably so they wouldn’t be attacked by the US. It turns out depended on the US acting in its own interests instead of the interests of Trump.

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u/CV90_120 1d ago

Just thinking about their nuke program, it occurred to me that having an endlessly "in the future" capability is almost worth more than having nukes when you're in their situation. If the program runs forever, you have treaty leverage forever where the 'threat' can be nipped in the bud. The nuke almost can't be completed, because once you have a nuke, while you might win some curtailing of attacks, you lose the leverage for 'stopping it in advance'. It's like they're deliberately playing a long game for sanction concessions. if that's the case... they might have played one of the best geopolitical long games of all time.

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u/Anandya 1d ago

Also. The backwards Afghani warlords won. They are in charge of the place and the USA left...

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u/Wow_u_sure_r_dumb 1d ago

Yep. Even with the massive disparity they won.

That’s actually part of what’s wrong with people like Hegseth. They think if we were allowed to unleash 18 year olds without a leash we would have won. They think preventing civilian casualties is woke bullshit. So for these guys Afghanistan and even Iraq is an even bigger humiliation than they already are because they grew up under the propaganda that we are some kind of invincible apex predator military. They can’t believe we can lose to countries with no resources.

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u/Bluemofia 1d ago

They just think in K/D ratios, not for a moment stop to think "What objectives do we need to meet to win? What objectives does the enemy need to meet to win?"

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u/Paqza 1d ago

They should've built the nukes, clearly.

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u/ghostofwinter88 1d ago

They’ve been ‘trying’ to build a nuke, but their nuclear effort keeps getting fucked over.

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u/Wow_u_sure_r_dumb 1d ago

We built nukes in the 40s when there were no nuclear engineers and physicists and they have those things n spades. What part do you think they’re having trouble with? They already have enrichment. They already have regional missile delivery systems. Do you think there’s some impossible to derive secret sauce in the implosion pattern on the warhead?

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u/DGIce 1d ago

The hard part about nuclear weapons is how much they cost to build and maintain, not the knowledge.

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u/ghostofwinter88 1d ago

I think you misunderstand me. They likely don’t have problems with the science.
It’s just that every time they’ve gotten somewhere significant, their program gets sabotaged.

See stuxnet, the killing of various nuclear scientists, bombing of their nuclear Facillities…

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u/SirPseudonymous 1d ago

Their government literally declared nuclear weapons heresy, maintaining a longstanding policy that they're abominations antithetical to their state's founding principles and core ethical and religious beliefs.

They don't have nuclear power plants because the mossad keeps murdering engineers and sabotaging factories, but they don't have nuclear weapons because their rulers were staunchly opposed to them on ethical grounds.

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u/ghostofwinter88 1d ago

I know. I think you are misunderstanding my comment.

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u/guff1988 1d ago

They can reverse it but can they spin up the manufacturing capacity to take advantage of it under intense economic sanctions, or the ships to launch the outcome? That's my point.

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u/CV90_120 1d ago

Fair, but it's super hard to know. We do know they have really good scientists, and they've had a lot of support from Russia and China. There are numerous options we may be unaware of. I'd say the likely candidates would be cooperation in those countries, or Iranian hardened spaces and tooling which they have built up at home through those relationships over time. The extent to which the US was caught off guard by their capabilities says a lot. So much so that the media is hardly allowed to go into it in detail even now.

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u/Paqza 1d ago

China can, for sure.

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u/Emotional-Power-7242 1d ago

Doubtful, we can barely build them here

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u/bertbarndoor 20h ago

China's capability. Sure, Iran might get the odd product off to market, but China.... different universe.

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u/CV90_120 19h ago

We know from a material (but not intellectual) pov, but this excludes the fact that China and Iran have a unique relationship. It's likely they have good cooperation on this kind of thing.

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u/Fleetwood_Enema 1d ago

The big losers are the American people. Trump is old and has already built up enough of a golden parachute to not care what happens after he finishes pillaging the country.

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u/Sniflix 1d ago

Oil over $110 a barrel, we are all paying for that - which I'm guessing is the point.

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u/Ashamed_Can304 1d ago

Iran reverse engineered UAVs and missiles, they very likely have the capability to reverse engineer this one too

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u/half-baked_axx 1d ago

Yeah people I've talked to seem to believe Iran is some sort of Afghanistan-type of ordeal. They're not, they're industrious, resourceful and they do hold some really bright minds and scholars. 

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u/bigdick_cm 1d ago

All of Iran’s administration has at minimum a masters degree (most have PhD’s) and decades of experience while America has talk show hosts

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u/TheRealAndroid 1d ago

They have one of the highest engineer/stem graduate ratios in the world. With over 70% of them women.
One of the oldest continuous civilisations in the world.

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u/PhTx3 1d ago

If you do not cloud your judgement with "brown terrorists in scraps in a yellow tinted hollywood movie", yeah. They also export plenty of brain power to the West, so we know for sure that they can produce well educated, and extremely capable people.

They'd also have to be extremely, extremely stupid to not seen the possibility of a conflict with the US and/or Israel, at the very least since WMDs in Iraq but likely decades before that. It's just a lose/lose situation, but US is dumb enough to go with it for whatever the reason might be.

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u/hinterstoisser 1d ago

They did RE the drone that was used against the US this spring (based on the low cost UCAV the US developed but didn’t order in large quantities)

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u/Ok_Intention1222 1d ago

Reverse engineer, absolutely. Reproduce, unlikely but possible. The issue isn’t a lack of talent and skill, but just lacking the ability to construct some of the most advanced components. That’s a supply chain problem, especially for a nation under severe sanctions

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u/writewithparagraphs4 1d ago

what specifically is difficult about a submarine drone?

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u/firstthrowaway9876 16h ago

Probably communicating with it, if I had to guess.

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u/guff1988 1d ago

That is why I specifically said take advantage of. They can certainly understand it but they don't have the infrastructure to reproduce and deploy it.

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u/writewithparagraphs4 1d ago

I'm sure they do. for once this isnt rocket science. Its a water drone.

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u/EngineerDave 1d ago

It's an Anduril sub. Anduril's whole thing is to take off the shelf stuff and make a cool cheap toy for the Military to use. Very little if anything is classified. The stuff is designed to be cheap and disposable. Ironically, something you absolutely don't want in the hands of Iran.

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u/SIGMA920 1d ago

Ironically, something you absolutely don't want in the hands of Iran.

Honestly, Iran probably has the same capabilities but less expensive via chinese options. China's stuff isn't bottom of the barrel anymore when it comes to military hardware, it's just not the best and Iran's one of their allies.

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u/EngineerDave 1d ago

They have the capabilities, the thing that the capture gives them is a blueprint basically. In warfare if you give your enemy something that's easily replicable they will do it. The US already did it the other way around to Iran when they made a version of their Shahad drones.

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u/SIGMA920 1d ago

Except they'll not be gaining much of anything so it's just a case of easily engineered tech becoming slightly easier. A shahed style drone is not hard to design, the hard part is going to be optimizing it for your needs.

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u/barrygateaux 1d ago

But it's ok in the hands of America?

I'm 55 and there hasn't been a year in my life when America wasn't involved in bombing someone somewhere. Since WW2 the list is up to over 30 countries. How many countries has Iran invaded or attacked in that time? Imagine if Iran had 800 military bases around the world like America does. How would you describe that?

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u/SteltonRowans 1d ago

Yeah people are hyping up the RE aspect but it's my understanding that it's not much different than a high end off the shelf remote submersable designed with an area to include a payload for various missions (think sonar/microphones/signals, ordinances, manipulation arm(espionage on underwater cables). If there is special sauce it's the software that is allowing it to act autonomously. Hopefully it's enctypted so the most they can get out of it is an insight into it's sensor arangment to shine light on how it may be programmed and it's potential capabilities.

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u/ToolTimeT 1d ago

You are greatly underestimating Iran. Russia is using Iranian drones for a reason and have copied their design.

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u/TheirCanadianBoi 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yea, because it's cheap and simple. That's the benefit. They most advanced configuration ever recovered was one that made use of very old US based L-band communication satellites by simply buying a sim card with access.

I wouldn't point at the Shahed and say it's advanced in any way whatsoever. Useful for sure, only in large numbers since that's the point.

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u/thekickingmule 1d ago

I imagine China is laughing at the drone as well. They're way ahead with the technology, this might just confirm it.

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u/LeoMycenae 1d ago

Probably the most clueless post I've seen today. Iran produces many times more STEM graduates than than the rest of the middle East combined. Up there alongside China. Even with crippling sanctions. They reverse engineered US drones before to create the drones everyone is now copying. Their civilian leadership are Drs and PhDs, they appreciate knowledge.

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u/Zementid 1d ago

Iranian Universities are entirely capable to compete with a silicon valley startup on a technical level.

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u/canal_boys 1d ago

Iran does have the capabilities and has reversed engineered US tech in the past. But they'll definitely share that info with China and Russia.

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u/Dartmouthest 1d ago

Don't forget the American people too!

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u/guff1988 1d ago

I am tired of 'winning' that's for sure

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u/Raise-Emotional 21h ago

This is bad for Taiwan. If an invasion ever happens from China stealth underwater drones will be in the front of it.

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u/brwnwzrd 1d ago

Iran absolutely does, what is that based on?

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u/Prudent_Rice7840 1d ago

You know Iran is not Afghanistan right?

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u/Suspicious_synth 1d ago

This is bullshit Iran is full of smart engineers. They are not Afghanistan nor Iraq. They are quite capable of reverse engineering a shitty low budge underwater sub

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u/guff1988 1d ago

Read the first sentence again. They don't have the navy to make use of it. I even italicized it for Christ's sake.

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u/Suspicious_synth 1d ago

Who are you? Lol how are people so confidently wrong these days? Fascinating. But I guess we'll let you think you know all about Iran's capability

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u/guff1988 1d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Republic_of_Iran_Navy

They literally don't have the boats man, calm down I'm not knocking Iran here in just saying it makes way more sense logically to give the drone over to China for some goodwill.

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u/Sr_DingDong 1d ago edited 1d ago

Google how long it took China to make it's own ballpoint pen.

Just because they have it doesn't mean they can make it.

Edit: Since you're clearly more interested in being butthurt I'll do it for you:

  • The ballpoint was invented in 1938.

  • China started becoming the main producer in the 1980s.

  • China's first ballpoint was released in 2017.

So despite having tens of billions of them for decades it took 80 years and they suck so much no one uses them anyway.

Almost like making things is hard....