“The surface drone that assisted in last night’s rescue off the coast of Oman was a U.S. Navy Corsair unmanned surface vessel operated by U.S. 5th Fleet’s Task Force 59,” CENTCOM spokesman CAPT. Tim Hawkins told the Washington Examiner. “The task force began fielding these drones in theater in late March.”

“The drone picked them up and transported them to another location on the water where they were then hoisted up to a helicopter for further transport,” he added.

The Corsair unmanned surface vessel, which is made by Saronic, is a 24-foot vessel capable of carrying up to 1,000 pounds over 1,000 nautical miles and it can go more than 35 knots per hour.

The rescue efforts were led by U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and the 82nd Airborne Division, and they were supported by Air Force and Navy units, including the 5th Fleet’s Task Force 59, which was the Navy’s first unmanned and artificial intelligence task force when it was established in 2021.

“The pilots are fine,” President Donald Trump said about the crash on Monday night, after attending Game 3 of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden in New York City. “Nobody injured.”

Iran previously shot down an F-15 fighter aircraft in April and the U.S. military was able to safely rescue both of them from Iranian territory.

The incident comes as the U.S. and Iran are maintaining a fragile ceasefire that has threatened to unravel several times, including on Monday.

Over the weekend and into Monday, Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy force based in Lebanon, fired projectiles into northern Israel and Israel retaliated. Iran then fired missiles at Israel, and Israel subsequently retaliated against Iran for the attack, even though President Donald Trump publicly urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to do so.

Both Iranian and Israeli leaders have subsequently walked back from the brink of restarting offensive military operations, which Trump does not want to see occur.

The president is pursuing a broad agreement to end the war and the multitude of troubles involved. Trump wants to see Iran stop threatening and attacking vessels off its coasts, including in the Strait of Hormuz. The waterway is vital for the global distribution of oil and gas from Gulf countries, but Iran’s threats have reduced traffic through the body of water to a near standstill, a ripple that has affected the economy. The United States launched a subsequent blockade of Iranian ports so that they would not be immune from the economic pain they were imposing across the globe.

The administration’s strategy is to pursue a deal involving reopening the strait for both sides and then start focusing on more complex issues such as Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran has utilized its stockpiles of ballistic missiles and cheaply made one-way attack drones to target those vessels as well as Gulf countries that support the U.S. military. The U.S. military is trying to improve its offensive and defensive drone capabilities because it has previously relied on much more expensive weapons for largely the same purpose.

“WHO IS MORE DESPERATE FOR A DEAL: TRUMP OR IRAN?

The U.S. military utilized its own low-cost one-way attack drones during the war with Iran for the first time and these drones are their own version of Iran’s kamikaze drones.

“What we have been doing lately is using our own low-cost, one-way attack drones, attacking Iran, making them use higher and more expensive weapons,” U.S. Central Command Commander Adm. Brad Cooper said last month. “So I can confidently tell you we have flipped the cost curve in many ways.”

The military had relied on very expensive air defense systems and interceptors to defend against drones, but the cost of those stockpiles makes it unsustainable to use them against drones that cost a small fraction of the price.