The fifth vessel ordered at the end of March will be delivered in 2032, the French Armed Forces Ministry said in a statement late Thursday. France ordered the fourth vessel in the class in December, and both units will be built at Naval Group’s site in Lorient in western France, according to the company.

“The Ministry of the Armed Forces renews its confidence in us to complete the series of defense and intervention frigates,” Naval Group Chief Executive Officer Pierre Éric Pommellet said in a statement. “We are thus fully mobilized to provide the French Navy with the means to achieve naval superiority, in the service of France’s sovereignty.”

Delivery of the last FDI will complete France’s program for a fleet of 15 first-rate frigates, a number that French Navy commander Adm. Nicolas Vaujour has said was dictated by budgetary constraints. Vaujour has maintained his force needs 18 frigates for a “coherent format,” and some lawmakers have been calling to increase the latest FDI order to eight vessels.

The program for the five FDI frigates was budgeted at €4.28 billion ($4.9 billion), according to France’s 2019 accounts. The fifth vessel will be handed over three years later than the original 2029 schedule, in part due to industrial difficulties for the first unit, the Covid-19 pandemic, delays with weapon integration, and reallocation of production slots to accommodate an order by Greece.

The first frigate in the class, the Amiral Ronarc’h, was delivered in October, and is currently on a long-term deployment. The frigate joined the carrier strike group around the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle in the north Atlantic in February to test its radars, electronic warfare suite and combat system in a tactical environment.

Naval Group said the FDI can handle rough seas, with the crew of Amiral Ronarc’h “able to observe its aptitude” during trials in Sea State 6 in the Atlantic Ocean. That sea state corresponds to “very rough” conditions with waves of 4 to 6 meters, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

With a length of 122 meters and displacement of around 4,500 tons, the FDI is smaller than new-generation frigates being built or planned in the U.K., Spain, Italy and Germany. The FDIs are designed for high-intensity combat, armed with Exocet anti-ship missiles, Aster air-defense missiles, MU90 torpedoes and a 76 mm cannon, and equipped with a Thales Sea Fire radar with four fixed panels.

Naval Group’s FDI is in competition for a Swedish order for four frigates, with a decision expected in coming months. France has touted its ability to supply a fully equipped and armed frigate in 2030, the target set by the Swedish government for first deliveries, with Naval Group saying in October the yard is able to produce two FDI frigates a year.

Norway in August last year picked the United Kingdom’s Type 26 frigate, primarily manufactured by BAE Systems, over the smaller French design.

Greece in November exercised an option for a fourth FDI frigate, on top of three vessels previously ordered, and in March sent the frigate Kimon, its first vessel in the class, to Cyprus.

While the first two French vessels in the class will be equipped with 16 vertical launch cells due to previously made budget decisions, numbers three to five are to be equipped with 32 cells, similar to the configuration for Greece. The first two frigates will be upgraded to double the number of launch cells at a later stage, according to the government.

France describes the frigate as fully digital, equipped with “significant computer power” to process the information gathered by the vessel’s onboard sensors, as well as a redundant data center.

The U.S. Navy spent at least six months resurrecting a high-energy laser weapon that previously graced the bow of a warship for a new military exercise last year, the service recently revealed.

The Navy’s Directed Energy Systems Integration Laboratory, or DESIL, a Naval Base Ventura County, California, facility that evaluates laser weapons in a maritime environment, “ramped up efforts to restore critical functions” to the service’s “one-of-a-kind” 150 kW Solid State Laser Technology Maturation (SSL-TM) demonstrator starting in early March 2025, according to recently published ‘year in review’ bulletin from Naval Sea Systems Command.

Initiated in 2012 and officially known as the Laser Weapon System Demonstrator Mk 2 Mod 0, the SSL-TM demonstrator was originally installed aboard the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock USS Portland in 2019.

The system, described as the successor to the 30 kW AN/SEQ-3 Laser Weapon System — also known as the XN-1 LaWS — that was mounted on the Austin-class amphibious transport dock USS Ponce in 2014, was designed to “provide a new capability to the Fleet to address known capability gaps against asymmetric threats,” such as now-ubiquitous aerial drones and small boats laden with explosives, as well as “inform future acquisition strategies, system designs integration architectures and fielding plans for laser weapon systems,” according to Navy budget documents.

The SSL-TM demonstrator appears to have performed as advertised. The system successfully destroyed a drone target during at-sea testing in the Gulf of Aden in May 2020 — an engagement that yielded one of the most vivid representations of a real-world laser weapon in action to date — and neutralized a small surface target during additional testing in December 2021.

But while prime contractor Northrop Grumman had specifically designed the SSL-TM demonstrator for installation “with minimal modification or additional costs” aboard the Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers, the service initiated the system’s deinstallation from the Portland in fiscal year 2023 after spending nearly $50 million on the effort, the budget documents say. The Defense Department’s final report on the initiative has not yet been made public.

Following the deinstallation, the SSL-TM demonstrator was presumably mothballed until the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering requested the laser weapon “play a role” in the Pentagon’s new Crimson Dragon military exercise the following September, the NAVSEA bulletin says.

Described as a weeklong, multi-unit DESIL test event, Crimson Dragon convened 20 defense contractors “in a simulated combat environment” to test the effectiveness of their drones, counter-drone systems and sensors “in scenarios that simulated military base defense, long-range fires and integrated [ballistic missile defense],” according to the bulletin.

The SSL-TM demonstrator successfully shot down four drone targets during the exercise, the bulletin says.

While it’s unclear which scenarios the SSL-TM demonstrator participated in during Crimson Dragon, an annual assessment of U.S. military weapon systems from the Pentagon’s Director, Operational Test & Evaluation released on March 16 states that part of the exercise “focused on the sea point of departure defense venues against all-domain maritime air-and-sea threats,” which suggests the system may have provided air defense for a simulated port or staging area where troops and equipment embark onto ships.

But beyond these brief mentions in recent U.S. military publications, no additional information is available regarding the current status of the SSL-TM demonstrator, its performance during Crimson Dragon and the Navy’s future plans for the system. NAVSEA, OUSD(R&E) and the Office of Naval Research did not respond to requests for more details from Laser Wars.

Without more context, it’s difficult to infer where the return of the SSL-TM demonstrator fits into the U.S. military’s expanding directed energy ambitions.

The Pentagon has not indicated whether OUSD(R&E)’s request was driven by the urgency of real-world threats — the demonstrator was first tested in the very waters where Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen had spent more than a year targeting U.S. warships and commercial shipping — or simply an opportunistic use of a capable system sitting in storage.

But the system’s restoration for Crimson Dragon potentially points to a broader challenge: despite years of testing and high-profile demonstrations, relatively few high-energy laser weapons are actually available for the kind of realistic, large-scale exercises needed to refine tactics and validate how these weapons are used in combat.

Indeed, it’s not like the Pentagon has bunch of spare laser weapons floating around to play with.

The U.S. Army’s four 50 kW Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD) systems have been completely demilitarized, while the service’s Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL) systems are preoccupied downing drones on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Marine Corps returned its five Compact Laser Weapon System (CLaWS) to Boeing. The Navy’s AN/SEQ-4 Optical Dazzling Interdictor, Navy (ODIN) laser weapons are all installed aboard active warships at sea; meanwhile, the service’s 60 kW High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system has had a challenging year on its own.

As a result, it appears that previously retired prototypes that might otherwise remain museum pieces are being called back into service to keep the U.S. military’s counter-drone experimentation moving forward.

The Pentagon may be racing to field laser weapons at scale, but for now it’s still relying on yesterday’s prototypes to figure out how they’ll actually fight tomorrow’s wars.

This development marks a key shift in the country’s defense strategy. Japan committed to acquiring 400 Tomahawks last year to equip its eight Aegis destroyers as part of a larger standoff capability, which includes fielding upgraded Type 12 missiles in the southwest and deploying hyper velocity gliding projectile systems across the country.

The existing missile defense network may not be fully capable of responding to threats, Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi told reporters in a briefing on Friday.

“To prevent missiles flying through the missile defense network and to prevent further armed attacks, it is necessary to … have the ability to counterattack. Stand-off missiles can also be used for this counterattack ability,” Koizumi said.

Japan sprinkles fresh missiles across its islands to fend off would-be attackers

The destroyer’s launcher modification marks a landmark milestone in the country’s efforts to rapidly deploy stand-off capabilities and bolster deterrence measures, he added.

Stand-off weaponry describes a class of ams with ranges so long that operators can fire them from a safe distance, without fearing countermeasures capable of reaching them.

The defense ministry introduced stand-off capabilities in 2017, and it formed the core of the security strategy shift in 2020, which later expanded to additional policy documents, including a detailed buildup plan in the country’s southwest in 2022.

The Tomahawk cruise missiles can be launched from ships or submarines with a range of over 1,600km. The Japanese variant can be rerouted during flight, and advanced versions are capable of hitting moving targets.

The refitted JS Chokai can load and fire both the Block IV and V variants of the cruise missiles.

JS Chokai arrived at Naval Base San Diego, California, in October 2025 for renovations and crew training with the U.S. Third Fleet. Live-fire training is scheduled for August, before JS Chokai returns to its home port in Sasebo Naval Base in the southwestern Kyushu Island in September.

Japan is moving toward a “denial and limited strike” model by fast-tracking the implementation of its 2022 strategy, maritime security expert Benjamin Blandin told Defense News. Blandin is a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taiwan.

“Japan is operationalizing a long overdue counterstrike capability, shifting from strict homeland defense to semi-regional deterrence by being able to strike ground and naval targets at up to 1000 km,” Blandin said.

Japan’s existing defense force, including its stand-off missile capability, is the “minimum necessary for self-defense,” Koizumi said, adding that these would only be used “in the event of an armed attack from another country … and it does not pose a threat to other countries.”

Analysts have raised worries that the U.S. Tomahawk stockpile may be strained after reports indicated that over 800 missiles were used in four weeks during Operation Epic Fury against Iran, and this might impact missile orders for allies, including Japan.

Blandin said Japan’s Tomahawk orders are unlikely to be affected immediately, but prolonged military campaigns in the Middle East could cause minor to moderate setbacks.

American manufacturer RTX, in a Feb. 4 press release, said it had signed five agreements with the U.S. Department of Defense to boost production and expedite deliveries of Land Attack and Maritime Strike variants of the Tomahawk cruise missiles, with annual production expected to increase to more than 1,000.

“No major impact expected in regards to Iran, as deliveries will not take place all at once but probably over the course of a few years,” Blandin said. “In any case, the U.S. will likely prioritize Japan as a key Indo-Pacific ally.”

The Ford, America’s newest and the world’s largest carrier, was operating in the Red Sea in support of Operation Epic Fury when a non-combat fire broke out in its main laundry room on March 12, injuring three sailors.

Nearly 200 sailors were also treated for smoke-related issues, a U.S. official said at the time. The fire took hours to bring under control and had an impact on roughly 100 sleeping berths.

The warship has been deployed for nine ​months and also took part in operations against Venezuela in the Caribbean ⁠prior to arriving in the Middle East.

It has been plagued by plumbing problems during its deployment, affecting the nearly 650 toilets.

The Ford had temporarily stopped at Souda Bay on the Greek island ​of Crete. The government of Croatia, which is a NATO-ally of the U.S., approved its arrival earlier this week.

“During its visit, the USS Gerald R. Ford will host local officials and key leaders to reaffirm the strong and enduring alliance between the United States and Croatia,” the U.S. embassy to Croatia said in a statement.

The carrier, staffed by more than 5,000 sailors, has more than 75 military aircraft aboard, including fighter aircraft like the F-18 Super Hornet, and boasts a sophisticated radar system for ⁠air ​traffic control and navigation.

The service commenced the Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel Family of Systems program on Thursday, opening up solicitations for a specific class of boat touted as an integral part of the service’s Golden Fleet initiative.

“Our goal is to create a regular and recurring marketplace, not just for the MUSV, but for other classes of vessels as well, over time, designed to match the growing demand for unmanned systems across a range of missions,” said Rebecca Gassler, portfolio acquisition executive for the U.S. Navy’s robotic and autonomous systems.

Gassler, who spoke with reporters during a virtual Thursday media roundtable, said the marketplace was seeking production-ready, mission-capable vessels that were aligned with Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle’s containerized capability campaign plan.

The CNO announced the plan during McAleese Defense Programs conference last week, detailing a vision in which modular payloads — or transportable containers housing defense capabilities such as drones and weapons — can be deployed to any region in the world.

Navy unmanned vessel operators are now earning specialized badges

The MUSV program was focused on demonstrated performance at sea, and not on the rigmarole of development, Gassler outlined.

The solicitation, which closes April 17, will analyze a company’s business plan, manufacturing plan, test plan and technical design.

From there, chosen companies and their medium unmanned surface vessels will complete an on-water test, which will be conducted by the end of the fiscal year.

After the Navy undergoes initial testing of these vessels, the service will offer a fixed price payment to companies that successfully complete the on-water test and move into production or a leasing agreement, Gassler said.

Speed and efficiency were front of mind.

There wouldn’t be a year of prototyping and development, according to Gassler. The Navy would look at a company’s business plan, manufacturing capabilities, do a test, and then it would be “off to the races” for production.

The first of the production vessel was expected be delivered in fiscal 2027.

As for the closure of MASC, Gassler said that the program was tailored toward a specific mission for a specific ask and quantity from the fleet, whereas the Navy had a much wider variety of requirements and mission types for the MUSVs in the Golden Fleet.

Announced in December 2025, the Golden Fleet will see the construction of new Trump-class battleships, which will reportedly be triple the size of an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.

Navy Secretary John Phelan applauded the new marketplace on social media Thursday.

“This new approach will leverage private investment and accelerate the delivery of real capabilities to the Fleet,” Phelan said in an X post. “We will reward the companies who are able to deliver capability at the speed of relevance.”

The Navy announced the Modular Attack Surface Craft, or MASC, program on July 28, 2025.

The program solicited the development of unmanned surface vehicles that were “non-exquisite” and could be constructed and maintained easily.

The program asked for USVs that were capable of carrying large containerized payloads that could accommodate a similar weight to the Navy’s anti-ballistic missile system, the Mark 70 Mod 1 Payload Delivery System.

“The One Big Beautiful Bill Act contained nearly $5 [billion] for US Navy unmanned programs, including $2.1B for medium unmanned surface vessels,” a Navy official told Military Times in an emailed statement. “Unmanned vessels will be integral to the Navy’s Golden Fleet and Hedge Strategy.”

The envisioned center would service the Asian nation’s own TKMS boats of the 218SG class, as well as submarines built by the German shipbuilder for allied nations navigating in the area, TKMS said in a statement.

The signing of a memorandum of understanding to that end coincided with a visit to Singapore by German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who praised the tiny nation as Berlin’s decades-long ally in the Asia-Pacific region.

Pistorius’ remarks about the companies’ submarine plans lent an air of grand strategy to the pact, as he described the idea of a submarine “hub” that could serve global nations with an interest protecting maritime trade routes — and who happen to have bought submarines from TKMS.

Singapore has ordered six submarines of the 218SG type from the German shipyard, known as the Invincible class, three of which are already delivered.

The city state also buys land weapons from Germany, having amassed what Pistorius called a “big” fleet of Leopard 2 tanks. Various reports peg the number of tanks at 170 tanks or more.

Pistorius said he was delighted to hear Singapore is also considering buying Boeing P-8 maritime-surveillance aircraft, which would create another element of armament commonality with Germany. Berlin received its first P-8 out of an envisioned fleet of eight earlier this year, he added, noting that aircraft already saw service in the Indo-Pacific area.

Editor’s note: An attribution in this article was corrected to reflect TKMS as the sole author of a statement about servicing TKMS submarines, not a joint declaration by both companies.

The guided missile frigate BRP Miguel Malvar was conducting a routine sovereignty patrol near Sabina Shoal, located 75 nautical miles from Palawan province, on March 7 when a People’s Liberation Army-Navy vessel with bow number 622 directed its sensor toward the Philippine ship.

“In accordance with standard procedures, the Philippine Navy immediately issued a radio challenge, prompting the PLA-Navy vessel to deactivate its radar and reduce tensions,” the sea service said in a statement.

Philippine military chief of staff Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr., speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a Japan-Philippines conference organized by the Manila-based Stratbase ADR Institute think tank on Tuesday, said: “Our sailors responded appropriately by challenging the actions of the Chinese vessel.”

“China’s conduct is comparable to aiming a firearm at a person, and we addressed them directly for this behavior. After we challenged them, they stopped,” Brawner said.

This recent confrontation is the latest episode in a long-running conflict in one of the world’s busiest sea lanes, which China claims in its entirety. Chinese ships loitering in the West Philippines Sea have used water cannons, pointed lasers, and engaged in dangerous maneuvers to block resupply missions and impede fisherfolk access to fishing grounds in the area.

Philippines still eying F-16s, but costs are causing political headaches By Leilani Chavez

The radar lock incident is not the first time China has directed its systems against Philippine ships. In 2020, a PLA Navy ship with bow number 514 targeted BRP Conrado Yap, an anti-submarine corvette, with its gun control director in the Spratly Islands.

BRP Conrado Yap was not equipped with electronic capabilities to accurately verify the Chinese vessel’s actions, but officials told Defense News the 2020 incident underscored that the government’s pro-China policy at the time will not shield vessels from coercive in the South China Sea.

“We have to understand Chinese warfighting thought, which is to force us to fire the first shot, to force us to escalate the situation,” Navy inspector general Rear. Adm. Roy Vincent Trinidad told reporters during a military press briefing in Camp Aguinaldo on Tuesday.

He stated that the navy will continue to act with restraint and respond only within the bounds of international law.

Tokyo and Beijing had earlier traded barbs over a similar incident in December last year, when Japanese minister Shinjiro Koizumi said Chinese fighter jets directed their fire-control radar against Japanese F-15 jets in two separate incidents near Okinawa.

In one example, the Dong Fang Hong 3, a research vessel operated by Ocean University of China, spent 2024 and 2025 sailing back and forth in the seas near Taiwan and the U.S. stronghold of Guam, and around strategic stretches of the Indian Ocean, ship-tracking data reviewed by Reuters shows.

In October 2024, it checked on a set of powerful Chinese ocean sensors capable of identifying undersea objects near Japan, according to Ocean University, and visited the same area again last May. And in March 2025, it criss-crossed the waters between Sri Lanka and Indonesia, covering approaches to the Malacca Strait, a critical chokepoint for maritime commerce.

According to the university, the ship was carrying out mud surveys and climate research. But a scientific paper co-written by Ocean University academics shows it has also conducted extensive deep-sea mapping.

Naval-warfare experts and U.S. Navy officials say the type of deep-sea data being collected by the Dong Fang Hong 3 – via mapping and placement of sensors in the ocean – is giving China a picture of the subsea conditions it would need to deploy its submarines more effectively and hunt down those of its adversaries.

The Dong Fang Hong 3 isn’t operating alone. It is part of a broader ocean mapping and monitoring operation involving dozens of research vessels and hundreds of sensors.

In tracing this effort, Reuters examined Chinese government and university records, including journal articles and scientific studies, and analyzed more than five years of movement by 42 research vessels active in the Pacific, Indian or Arctic oceans using a ship-tracking platform built by New Zealand company Starboard Maritime Intelligence.

While the research has civilian purposes – some of the surveying covers fishing grounds or areas where China has mineral prospecting contracts – it also serves a military one, according to nine naval-warfare experts who reviewed Reuters’ findings.

To gather information about underwater terrain, research vessels map the sea floor while traveling back and forth in tight lines. The tracking data shows that type of movement by the vessels Reuters tracked across large sections of the Pacific, Indian and Arctic oceans.

At least eight of the vessels Reuters tracked have conducted seabed mapping, while another 10 have carried equipment used for mapping, according to a review of Chinese state media articles, vessel descriptions published by Chinese universities, and press releases by government organizations.

The vessels’ survey data “would be potentially invaluable in preparation of the battlespace” for Chinese submarines, said Peter Scott, a former chief of Australia’s submarine force. “Any military submariner worth his salt will put a great deal of effort into understanding the environment he’s operating in.”

The ship-tracking data show that China’s seabed-surveying effort is focused in part on militarily important waters around the Philippines, near Guam and Hawaii, and near U.S. military facilities on Wake atoll in the north Pacific.

“The scale of what they’re doing is about more than just resources,” said Jennifer Parker, an adjunct professor of defense and security at the University of Western Australia and former Australian anti-submarine warfare officer. “If you look at the sheer extent of it, it’s very clear that they intend to have an expeditionary blue-water naval capability that also is built around submarine operations.”

Moreover, Parker and other experts added, even where data is gathered for scientific purposes, the integration of civilian scientific research and military technology development has become a key focus of the Chinese government under President Xi Jinping. Beijing refers to this approach as “civil-military fusion.”

China’s ministries of defense, foreign affairs and natural resources didn’t respond to requests for comment about the seabed mapping and ocean-monitoring activities.

The U.S. Defense Department didn’t respond to questions from Reuters.

In testimony to a congressional commission this month, Rear Admiral Mike Brookes, the commander of the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, said China had dramatically expanded its surveying efforts, providing data that “enables submarine navigation, concealment, and positioning of seabed sensors or weapons.”

He added that “potential military intelligence collection” by Chinese research vessels “represents a strategic concern.”

America recently overhauled its own efforts to map and monitor the ocean, but it typically does so with military vessels that are allowed to turn off the tracking system monitored by civilian software. China’s civilian survey ships also sometimes disable tracking, meaning its campaign may go further than Reuters could determine.

This is the first time the extent of China’s mapping and monitoring across the Pacific, Indian and Arctic oceans has been reported. Previous reporting has revealed a portion of the effort around Guam and Taiwan, and in parts of the Indian Ocean.

“It is frankly astonishing to see the enormous scale of Chinese marine scientific research,” said Ryan Martinson, an associate professor specializing in Chinese maritime strategy at the U.S. Naval War College.

“For decades, the U.S. Navy could assume an asymmetric advantage in its knowledge of the ocean battlespace,” added Martinson. China’s efforts “threaten to erode that advantage. It is obviously deeply concerning.”

‘PARANOID ABOUT BEING BOXED IN’

The data that Chinese research vessels are collecting about the seabed and water conditions is critical to submarine operations and anti-submarine warfare, according to naval experts. Most obviously, said Australian defense scholar Parker, commanders need information about underwater terrain to avoid collisions and hide their vessels.

But that data is also essential for detecting submarines, which operate within a few hundred meters of the surface. Typically, submarines are identified through the sounds they emit or echoes from signals sent by sonar systems.

Tom Shugart, a former U.S. submarine commander who is now an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said the movement of those sound waves changes depending on the underwater landscape.

Sound waves and submarine movements are also affected by water temperature, salinity and currents.

The vessels involved belong to Chinese state entities like the Ministry of Natural Resources or state-affiliated research institutions like Ocean University, whose president in 2021 publicly celebrated its “close ties” to China’s navy and commitment to “the construction of a maritime power and national defense.” The university didn’t respond to a request for comment.

China has done its most comprehensive ocean surveying east of the Philippines, which sits along the First Island Chain, the string of territories largely controlled by America’s allies that runs from the Japanese islands in the north through Taiwan and on to Borneo in the south. The chain forms a natural barrier between China’s coastal seas and the Pacific.

“They’re paranoid about being boxed in to the First Island Chain,” said Peter Leavy, formerly Australia’s naval attache to the U.S. and now president of the Australian Naval Institute. China’s mapping “indicates a desire to understand the maritime domain so they can break out.”

The tracking data shows that China’s mapping also covers waters surrounding Guam – where some American nuclear submarines are stationed.

Strikingly, Chinese vessels have also mapped waters around Hawaii, one of America’s other regional military hubs; examined an underwater ridge north of a naval base in Papua New Guinea to which the U.S. recently gained access; and scouted around Christmas Island, an Australian territory on a route between the South China Sea and a vital Australian submarine base.

China’s efforts extend further. It has mapped large swaths of the Indian Ocean, a critical route for Chinese imports of oil and other resources from the Middle East and Africa.

“China has some key vulnerabilities when it comes to dependencies on maritime trade,” said Parker, the former anti-submarine warfare officer. The surveying “indicates that they will likely be conducting more submarine operations in the Indian Ocean.”

China’s vessels have also mapped the seabed west and north of Alaska, an essential sea route into the Arctic. Beijing has identified the Arctic as a strategic frontier and declared its ambition to become a polar great power by the 2030s.

The extensive surveying and Beijing’s growing undersea capability are “symptomatic of China’s rise as a premier maritime power,” said Shugart, the former submarine commander.

A ‘TRANSPARENT OCEAN’

Around 2014, Wu Lixin, a scientist at Ocean University, proposed an ambitious effort to create a “transparent ocean” by deploying sensors that would give China a comprehensive view of water conditions and movement through specific areas, according to a statement published by the state-affiliated Chinese Academy of Sciences. The proposal quickly received at least $85 million in support from the Shandong provincial government, according to comments by Shandong officials.

The project began in the South China Sea, where Ocean University public statements boast it has now built an observation system covering the deep-sea basin.

Brookes, the director of the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, told the congressional commission that China is building undersea surveillance networks that “gather hydrographic data – water temperature, salinity, currents – to optimize sonar performance and enable persistent surveillance of submarines transiting critical waterways like the South China Sea.”

After surveying the South China Sea, Chinese scientists expanded the transparent ocean project to the Pacific and Indian oceans. In the Pacific, records from the Chinese Ministry of Natural Resources, Ocean University and the Shandong government show that China has deployed hundreds of sensors, buoys and subsea arrays to detect changes in water conditions like temperature, salinity and subsea movement through the ocean east of Japan, east of the Philippines, and around Guam.

In the Indian Ocean, documents from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Ministry of Natural Resources describe a sensor array ringing India and Sri Lanka, including along an underwater mountain range known as Ninety East Ridge. The ridge – which Chinese vessels have also combed, according to the Starboard data – is one of the world’s longest undersea mountain ranges and sits astride the approach to the strategically essential Malacca Strait, through which much of China’s oil supply passes.

Ocean University and the Institute of Oceanology, which is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have said the wider network of sensors now provides China with real-time data about water conditions and subsea movements.

Some naval-warfare experts expressed caution about that claim, given technical challenges with real-time communication of data from underwater. But even delayed data is valuable, Parker said, as it could help China detect U.S. submarine operations.

Many sensors are placed in sensitive locations. For example, Reuters recently reported on a U.S. effort to fortify a key strait between Taiwan and the Philippines to cut off Chinese access to the Pacific. Ocean University studies show that China has deployed advanced sensors in parts of the strait through which U.S. submarines would move to reach the South China Sea.

Chinese scientists say these sensors monitor changes in climate and ocean conditions. But in 2017, government officials from Shandong province said the transparent ocean project was intended to “ensure maritime defense and security” and explicitly compared the project with a U.S. military effort to build an American ocean-sensor network.

Shandong’s government, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Oceanology didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Mapping-program founder Wu now oversees the network through the Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, whose partners include China’s Naval Submarine Academy, according to the academy’s website. Wu didn’t respond to Reuters questions.

‘NEW TYPES OF COMBAT CAPABILITIES’

Together, China’s mapping and monitoring give it sophisticated tools to detect rival submarines and deploy its own in some of the world’s most contested waters.

“This is a manifestation of China’s far-seas reach,” said Collin Koh, a senior fellow in maritime security at Singapore’s RSIS Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies. “They now have a reasonably good picture of the maritime domain they hope to operate in, either in peacetime or in war.”

Chinese researchers, similarly, see strategic value in their work. Zhou Chun, an Ocean University researcher who oversees the Indian and Pacific ocean sensor arrays, was quoted last year in an Ocean University press release as saying that his work had shown him “the rapid development of my country’s maritime defense and military capabilities.” He didn’t respond to Reuters questions.

Going forward, Zhou pledged to “transform the most advanced scientific and technological achievements into new types of combat capabilities for our military at sea.”

Analysts studying military matters and geopolitics disagree.

While countries including the U.K. and France have said they’re ready to “contribute to appropriate efforts” to ensure safe passage through the Strait, those plans remain in the preparatory stage for now. Western navies operating in the narrow waterway would be well within range of Iranian missiles, cheap drones and even artillery, defense analysts say.

“No, it isn’t easy,” François Heisbourg, a special adviser at the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research, said in a response to Trump’s statements posted on Bluesky. “If it were, you presumably wouldn’t be asking us to help you clean up the mess you made.”

The Strait of Hormuz is a relatively constrained maritime waterway, around 50 kilometers wide at the narrowest stretch, though the water is deep enough for fully laden very large crude carriers, or VLCCs — the industry term of art for the biggest oil tankers — to navigate most of the strait. Iran controls the northern coast of the Persian Gulf and along much of the Gulf of Oman, with the Strait of Hormuz the choke point between the two.

“The Strait of Hormuz reminds us that geography matters,” said Frank Hoffman, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, in an online commentary. “Iran holds a significant advantage there with the ability to range the narrow international shipping channel with small boats with rockets and guns, and an array of anti-ship cruise missiles.”

Iran had more than 1,000 fast attack craft specifically designed for swarming larger naval vessels, an estimated stockpile of more than 2,000 naval mines, shore-based anti-ship ballistic missiles with ranges of more than 700 kilometers and drone swarms capable of saturating point-defense systems, Roxana Niknami, a professor in European studies at the University of Tehran, wrote in a March 5 analysis for the European Institute for Studies on the Middle East and North Africa.

“Any naval presence will be at considerable risk from Iran’s still-extant ability to launch drones and missiles from any point along the coastline,” said Emma Salisbury, a non-resident senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “Without allied contributions, controlling the Strait will likely be extremely difficult, and those contributions are certainly not forthcoming at the moment.”

The Strait is a vital passage for world trade, according to UN Trade and Development data, with 38% of the world’s traded crude oil, 29% of liquefied petroleum gas and 13% of traded chemicals passing through the waterway in the week before the U.S. and Israel started striking Iran on Feb. 28.

India, Taiwan and South Korea are highly dependent on Hormuz.

Iran has been targeting commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf with missiles and drones, resulting in 17 confirmed incidents between March 1 and March 16, with ships damaged and at least 11 seafarers dead or unaccounted for, according to the International Maritime Organization.

Trump said the Strait of Hormuz will have to be “guarded and policed, as necessary,” by other nations that use it, in a post on his Truth Social account on March 20. The president said the U.S. would help with the effort if asked, though that shouldn’t be necessary once the threat of Iran was removed, saying it would be “an easy military operation for them.”

In another post, he called NATO without the United States a “paper tiger,” unwilling to join the fight against Iran. “Now that the fight is militarily won, with very little danger to them, they complain about the high oil prices they are forced to pay, but don’t want to help open the Strait of Hormuz, a simple military maneuver. So easy for them to do, with so little risk. Cowards, and we will remember.”

Taking questions from reporters on Friday, the U.S. president called reopening the Strait “very simple” and “relatively safe,” but demanding in terms of the volume of ships.

The narrow nature of the Strait would put naval vessels operating there in about the same range as the drone-swarm kill zone in Ukraine, said retired U.K. Air Marshal Martin Sampson, executive director for the Middle East at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in a webinar on Wednesday.

“Smaller, lower-caliber, one-way drones have not had the opportunity to come into play in this conflict so far,” Sampson said. “But Strait of Hormuz operations may well bring different capabilities to bear. So the nature of the operating environment fundamentally changes.”

Meanwhile, China is watching and learning, and U.S. capabilities in the Strait of Hormuz will be of direct operational relevance to the Indo-Pacific theater, according to Sampson.

“Whatever the U.S. deploys there is likely to compromise some of its advantage that it feels that it’s developing and able to deploy in the Indo-Pacific, a priority region,” Sampson said.

Iran’s capabilities today mean the operational challenge of reopening the Strait of Hormuz today is “categorically more demanding” than in 1988, according to Niknami. Meanwhile, the U.S. without allied support doesn’t have the assets for strike, escort and mine-sweeping at the same time, said Salisbury at the FPRI.

The American operation Earnest Will to protect Kuwaiti-owned tankers from Iranian attacks in 1987 and 1988 was “a different world,” said Nick Childs, IISS senior fellow for naval forces and maritime security, in a webinar with Sampson. He said the U.S. at the time had a fleet of nearly 600 ships, compared to fewer than 300 today, and the Navy already overstretched.

The Strait of Hormuz is a more challenging environment than the Red Sea, with lower warning times, according to Childs. Additionally, even residual Iranian capabilities may be more potent that those of the Houthis in the Red Sea, while facing warships with limited capabilities and with questions around strategic stockpiles of munitions, he said.

The mine threat was underestimated in Operation Earnest Will, and mine countermeasures remain a weakness today, Childs said. While the U.S. has Littoral Combat Ships that can be equipped for mine clearing, those were never meant to be in high-intensity operations, and like any other mine clearing assets, would need protection if combat operations were still underway, according to the researcher.

Allies in the Gulf region have modern ships that could contribute to escort or mine-countermeasure missions, but with “a limited ability, actually, to look after themselves in that such a situation, let alone protect others,” Childs said.

Childs said some estimates suggest Iran has 5,000 to 6,000 mines of different types, and if its mine-laying assets are destroyed, Iran could in a worst case just “roll down mines off the back of a dhow.” He said that just the threat of mines could make shippers reluctant to send their vessels through the Strait.

“Mines have two warheads,” Childs said. “One is a high-explosive warhead, and the other one is a psychological one. Just the threat and thought of the possibility that there might be a mining threat may be enough to maintain that stranglehold.”

The two nations are seeking a comprehensive suite of commercial systems that can detect and destroy a variety of undersea robots, including unmanned underwater vehicles, remotely operated vehicles and semisubmersibles.

“Current solutions are fragmented, expensive, and limited in number,” warned the solicitation. The primary focus of the Robotic Exclusion and Engagement Framework, or REEF, project is to protect “ports and harbors from underwater threats of varying size and sophistication, while the broader goal is to protect all U.S. critical waterways.”

DIU envisions using off-the-shelf sensors, edge processing, active and passive sensors, sensor fusion, decoys and other technologies to create a stand-alone solution that can be quickly deployed as needed. This can include fixed systems such as moored buoys and buried cables, or mobile systems such as USVs, UUVs, UAVs and drifting buoys.

Sensors should be able to utilize artificial intelligence to discriminate between hostile undersea drones, versus nonthreats such as marine life, cargo ships and fishing vessels.

“The system must provide sufficient detection-to-response time for human in-the-loop decision-making such that underwater threats can be safely interdicted or neutralized,” the solicitation noted.

The system will employ kinetic and nonkinetic approaches to stop drones. Nonkinetic methods can include rapidly deployable nets, bubble curtains and synthetic barriers. Kinetic defenses can include kinetic payloads, acoustic directed energy and physical coupling devices.

Preference will be given to nonkinetic solutions, the solicitation said.

REEF will emphasize decoys to protect waterways and critical infrastructure. “Capabilities to confuse adversarial underwater craft are of high interest. These can be low-cost attritable systems or more technologically advanced systems that use signals to act as a decoy to prevent the successful completion of the adversary’s mission,” according to the solicitation.

REEF should require little training to operate, and use AI to provide users with suggestions. It must be compatible with existing U.S. command-and-control systems and common operating pictures.

Cooperation with the U.K. will be eased by a 2024 Department of Commerce interim final rule that allows some controlled items to be shared with Britain. British companies are eligible for export control relief under General Export Authorization No. 001.

The Independence-class littoral combat ships USS Santa Barbara and USS Tulsa entered the U.S. Seventh Fleet area of responsibility earlier in the week, the spokesperson said, stopping first in Malaysia for a port call.

Each ship is equipped with a mine countermeasures mission package designed to detect and destroy naval mines.

“Tulsa and Santa Barbara are conducting scheduled maintenance and logistics stop in Singapore,” the spokesperson said.

The two nations, according to the spokesperson, have an agreement to allow littoral combat ships to operate primarily from Singapore as a logistics and maintenance hub.

As of Monday, the USS Canberra, the other Bahrain-based LCS with a mine countermeasures package, was in the Indian Ocean, parts of which are in the U.S. Fifth Fleet area of responsibility.

The US Navy decommissioned Middle East minesweepers last year. Here’s what they did.

The U.S. Navy previously deployed four Avenger-class mine countermeasures ships in the Middle East, but they were decommissioned in 2025 after each serving for over 30 years.

Those minesweepers are made of wood and fiberglass and possess a nonmagnetic signature and low acoustic footprint that allows them to operate inside and near a mine zone.

The vessels used acoustic devices, electromagnetic tools, cables and cutters to hunt, detonate and destroy over 1,000 mines off of Kuwait during the Gulf War.

Three Independence-class littoral combat ships with a mine countermeasures mission package replaced those vessels in 2025.

The LCS with the MCM package is made of aluminum and can only operate outside the mine threat zone.

These ships deploy unmanned surface and underwater vehicles, along with an attached Sikorsky MH-60S Seahawk helicopter, to identify and destroy mines.

The migration of the two littoral combat ships with the MCM package could be a strategic repositioning by the U.S. Navy, according to Dr. Steven Wills, a navalist for the Center for Maritime Strategy and a U.S. Navy veteran who served aboard a mine countermeasures ship.

“I think that was a desire to just reduce the number of targets,” Wills said.

The LCS has a 57mm MK-110 gun system and a SeaRAM self-defense system, but it isn’t as defensively capable as a destroyer, which wields a vertical launch system, according to Wills.

Defense officials in Berlin portrayed a preliminary contract with the German shipbuilder, approved by lawmakers on Wednesday, as part of “bridge solution” that would ensure the sea service gets urgently needed anti-submarine ships beginning in late 2029, in time to meet NATO commitments.

The plan comes amid mounting questions about a batch of six F126 frigates — previously called MKS-180 — that Germany initially ordered from Dutch shipbuilder Damen in 2020 for a price tag potentially approaching $10 billion.

At the time, the contract award sparked a debate in Germany’s naval-industry circles, with critics arguing the capability was too important to outsource even to a company in the neighboring Netherlands, a close ally.

Damen said it would build the ships in Germany, aiming to have 70% of the contract value go through German vendors.

Construction of the first unit in the class of 10,550-ton frigates started in December 2023, with first steel cutting at the Peene shipyard in Wolgast, Germany, followed by a keel-laying ceremony attended by German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius in June 2024.

According to the German defense ministry, the plan to order four MEKO A-200 DEU ships does not mean the F126 program is altogether sunk.

Officials have been negotiating with NVL, or Naval Vessels Lürssen, as a new main contractor for the program, according to an agency statement.

The firm, newly acquired by defense giant Rheinmetall, describes itself on its website as an “independent, privately owned group of renowned Northern German shipyards and related companies.”

Damen has signaled it would go along with a German lead, though the Dutch company wants to remain “an essential partner,” it said in its annual earnings statement in October 2025.

Rudy Ruitenberg in Paris contributed to this article.

British Prime Minister Kier Starmer said on Monday the United Kingdom “will not be drawn into the wider war,” while German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said “this is not our war.” Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said member states have no appetite to expand their maritime-security operation in the Red Sea to the Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the Persian Gulf.

Iran declared the strait closed to traffic on March 2, following the start of strikes against the country by the U.S. and Israel two days earlier. While saying the U.S. doesn’t need anyone’s help, Trump has simultaneously called on allies to aid in securing navigation in the waterway, reportedly going as far as to threaten consequences for the NATO alliance if European countries reject those demands.

“The feeling is, this is not Europe’s war,” Kallas told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday. “Of course we are allies with America, but we don’t really understand their moves recently. We haven’t been consulted, and we don’t really understand, what are the objectives of this war.”

The US has several options to counter Iranian mines. These are some key assets.

The EU’s foreign-policy chief said there is no willingness on the part of member states to change the mandate of the bloc’s Aspides naval mission, tasked with securing navigation in the Red Sea, and “nobody is ready to put their people in harm’s way in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Iran has attacked more than a dozen commercial vessels with drones, missiles and small boats in the strait since the start of the conflict, while multiple media reported the country has started laying sea mines, citing U.S. intelligence. The Strait of Hormuz is relatively narrow, around 50 kilometers wide at some points, well inside the range of Iranian coastal attacks.

Around 20% of the world’s oil consumption transits via the waterway, and Brent crude oil futures have jumped to more than $100 a barrel following the closure, causing anxiety among economists and policymakers about the impact on the global economy.

Trump in recent days explicitly linked U.S. involvement in NATO and support to Ukraine to the efforts by allies with what he called “a very small endeavor, which is just keeping the Strait open.” The president on Sunday told the Financial Times that “if there’s no response or if it’s a negative response I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO.”

French President Emmanuel Macron has said he is working on a mission of European and non-European partners to escort shipping to “gradually” reopen the waterway, but only once the hottest phase of the conflict is over.

Setting up a mission of warships accompanying tankers through the dangerous passage would be a “complex undertaking,” requiring collaboration with “all stakeholders in the maritime transport sector,” including insurers, Macron said at defense Cabinet meeting here today.

“We are not a party to the conflict,” Macron said. “And so France will never take part in operations to open or liberate the Strait of Hormuz in the current context.”

France has sent around half of its fleet of major surface combatants, including the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, to the Middle East to protect navigation, French citizens and allies in the region, though the country has emphasized the deployment is strictly defensive in nature.

Two India carriers secure safe passage through Strait of Hormuz

Germany’s primary responsibility is towards NATO territory, and any deployment outside the alliance area would require both an international framework and a mandate from the Bundestag, the country’s parliament, Pistorius said in Berlin on Monday. The defense minister said he sees “no reason whatsoever” for such a move, saying “it is not our war, we did not start it.”

Germany is calling for diplomatic solutions and a swift end to the conflict, and more warships will likely not contribute to that, according to Pistorius.

“What does Donald Trump expect from, let’s say, a handful or two handfuls of European frigates in the Strait of Hormuz to accomplish what the powerful U.S. Navy cannot manage there on its own?” Pistorius said. “That’s the question I ask myself.”

The U.K. will defend itself and allies, but will not be drawn into the wider war, Starmer said on Monday. He said the country is in talks with allies, including European partners and Gulf states, on a viable collective plan to restore freedom of navigation as soon as possible, to ensure stability in the market and ease the economic impacts, emphasizing no decisions have been made.

Starmer said ultimately the Strait of Hormuz will need to be reopened, “not a simple task.” U.K. assets in the region that could help with reopening the strait are autonomous mine-hunting systems, according to the prime minister.

Smaller NATO allies have also been keen to keep their distance from the conflict, with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre saying on Sunday that “it is not our war,” with the outlook for how the conflict will develop “pretty unclear.”

“We are not part of this war, we did not initiate it, but we are all affected by it,” Gahr Støre said. “It should be the responsibility of the concerned parties to find ways of ending the hostilities that now have great impact around the world.”

Finland’s President Alexander Stubb responded positively to a suggestion that Europe could make demands on the U.S. regarding Ukraine, in exchange for assistance in the Gulf.

“I think it’s actually a really good idea,” Stubb said at a Chatham House meeting in London on Tuesday, in response to an audience question. “I’ll talk about it with my colleagues.”

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy views the maritime weapon as a key pillar of its military strategy, according to a 2017 Office of Naval Intelligence report, and reportedly began laying mines in the sea passage last week.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a Pentagon briefing Friday, however, that there was “no clear evidence” of mines in the strait.

The US Navy decommissioned Middle East minesweepers last year. Here’s what they did.

Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, said Monday that U.S. forces destroyed storage bunkers for naval mines during a U.S. strike on military targets on Iran’s oil export hub, Kharg Island, on Friday. U.S. forces also destroyed 16 Iranian minelayers last week, according to CENTCOM.

Iran is estimated to possess roughly 6,000 mines, according to a congressional report published Wednesday. The stockpile may include limpet mines, which are typically attached to a ship manually by a diver; moored mines, which float below the water’s surface and are tethered to the seabed; bottom mines that rest on the seabed; and drifting mines, which float above the water’s surface and detonate upon contact.

Here’s a look at the U.S. Navy’s arsenal of minesweepers, littoral combat ships equipped with counter-mine capabilities and helicopters outfitted with anti-mine technology.

Avenger-class minesweepers

The Navy currently has four Avenger-class mine countermeasures ships stationed in Sasebo, Japan, that it could forward deploy to the Middle East in support of Operation Epic Fury if necessary.

The service commissioned 14 Avenger-class minesweepers beginning in the 1980s, but has since retired nearly all of them.

The service had four deployable minesweepers stationed in Bahrain up until 2025, but they were decommissioned and replaced with littoral combat ships equipped with minesweeping and mine-hunting capabilities. Each of the minesweepers decommissioned had served for over 30 years.

These vessels, which utilize sonar and tethered remote operating vehicles to identify mines beneath the water’s surface, were used during the Gulf War to destroy over 1,000 mines off of Kuwait.

Pentagon reportedly sending more warships and Marines to Middle East

They sweep and destroy mines by detonating them with an acoustic device that emits a noise meant to trigger sound-sensitive mines or with an electromagnetic tool that emits an electromagnetic field to trick magnetically induced mines into exploding.

They also drag cables and cutters behind them to intercept and sever the tethers attached to moored mines. Once the tether is cut, the mine floats to the top and is destroyed.

Minesweepers are constructed of wood and fiberglass in order to produce a nonmagnetic signature and low acoustic footprint that will not trigger mines to explode, allowing the vessels to operate inside and near a mine-threat zone.

Minesweepers also host two .50-caliber machine guns and two Mk 19 grenade launchers.

Independence-class littoral combat ships

The Navy has sought to modernize its minesweeping capabilities by rotating out its aging minesweepers in Bahrain for Independence-class littoral combat ships uniquely fitted with a mine countermeasures mission package.

The USS Canberra was the first LCS with the MCM mission package to arrive in the Middle East on May 22, 2025. The USS Santa Barbara and USS Tulsa, two other littoral combat ships with the MCM mission package, joined it shortly thereafter.

All three are homeported in Bahrain.

As of Monday, the USS Canberra was operating in the Indian Ocean, parts of which fall under the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility, the U.S. 5th Fleet told Military Times in an emailed statement.

The USS Santa Barbara and USS Tulsa were conducting brief logistical stops in Malaysia, according to the U.S. 5th Fleet.

“U.S. forces routinely make port calls in Malaysia as part of our operations,” the statement read.

The MCM mission package is used exclusively by Independence-class littoral combat ships.

Littoral combat ships are made of aluminum and do not possess the same unique ship architecture as the nondetectable minesweepers, and as a result, they can only operate outside a mine-threat zone.

The LCS employs unmanned surface and underwater vehicles to travel into an area where mines have been laid to discover and destroy the mines.

These unmanned vessels utilize the AN/AQS-20 mine-hunting sonar system, which is towed and uses sensors to pinpoint the location of bottom mines and moored mines.

There is also the unmanned influence sweep system, which provides common unmanned surface vehicles aboard the LCS with the ability to sweep or detonate mines through a magnetic sweep cable that emits a magnetic field or a towed acoustic device that emits sound.

The unmanned vehicle moves along a predetermined route but sends camera footage and radar readings back to a remote operator who can steer the vehicle away from obstacles underwater.

The littoral combat ships with the MCM mission package have yet to be deployed in combat.

The ships have a noticeably upgraded weapons package, compared to the Avenger-class mine countermeasures ships, including a 57mm MK-110 gun system, SeaRAM self-defense system and .50-caliber machine guns.

Helicopters

The Independence-class littoral combat ship’s MCM mission package includes the aerial capabilities of the Sikorsky MH-60S Seahawk helicopter, which can deploy from the LCS to assist with mine hunting and minesweeping.

These helicopters are equipped with the AN/AES-1 Airborne Laser Mine Detection System, which detects floating and near-surface moored mines, as well as the AN/ASQ-235 Airborne Mine-Neutralization System, which sends an expendable unmanned underwater vehicle to intercept and destroy a mine.

Prior to the MCM mission package, Sikorsky’s MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopter served as the Navy’s main counter-mine aircraft, which was deployed during the Gulf War to help destroy mines and clear shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf.

The MH-53E uses side-scan AQS-14A mine-hunting sonar to identify mines and can tow the Mark 105 Hydrofoil Magnetic Minesweeping Sled and the Mk-103 mechanical minesweeping system to destroy mines.

The helicopter is currently out of production, with 28 aircraft in operation, according to the Naval Air Systems Command website.

The Navy is in the process of “evaluating its requirement” for future airborne mine countermeasures missions after 2025, the website states.

The tankers crossed the strait Saturday after New Delhi stepped up diplomatic engagement to secure its energy imports.

India is also seeking safe passage for 22 of its vessels that remain stranded west of the strait, according to officials in New Delhi and Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has said that he is hopeful that talks with Iran will begin to ease shipping disruptions for the country’s vessels.

India has been grappling with severe shortages of cooking gas supplies since the targeting of several cargo vessels effectively shut off the narrow strait leading to the largest crude oil supply disruption in decades. Roughly half of India’s crude oil and liquified natural gas imports come through this waterway, which lies between Iran and Oman.

New Delhi, which has good relations with the United States, Israel and Iran, has maintained a neutral position on the conflict.

But it has intensified dialogue with Tehran amid the energy squeeze that it faces.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Jaishankar cited the passage of the tankers through the strait as an example of what diplomacy could achieve.

“I am at the moment engaged in talking to them, and my talking has yielded some results,” he said.

However he clarified that there is no formal “blanket arrangement” for Indian-flagged ships and that “every ship movement is an individual happening.”

“Certainly, from India’s perspective, it is better that we reason and we coordinate and we get a solution than we don’t,” Jaishankar said. “So if that sort of allows other people to engage, the world is better off for it.”

U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday that his administration is talking to seven countries to send warships to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. “I’m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory because it is their territory,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on the way from Florida to Washington. “It’s the place from which they get their energy.”

Trump did not name the countries, but previously in a social media post he had urged China, France, Japan, South Korea, Britain and others to help secure the waterway.

India’s foreign ministry said Monday that New Delhi has not engaged in bilateral discussions with the U.S. regarding deploying naval vessels to protect ships through the Strait of Hormuz.

Meanwhile, India has repatriated about 180 crew members of an Iranian warship that had sought sanctuary in India.

It was one of three Iranian warships that were sailing in the Indian Ocean after taking part in naval exercises hosted by New Delhi when hostilities erupted in the Middle East. One was torpedoed by a U.S. submarine while two were given refuge in India and Sri Lanka.

“That was a goodwill gesture. India is not the warring party so it was India’s responsibility to ensure their safety,” according to Chintamani Mahapatra, chairman of the Kalinga Institute of Indo Pacific Studies. “Iran allowing Indian ships to get through the Strait of Hormuz is a vindication of India’s policy of neutrality.”

Sri Lanka has also sent back the bodies of 84 Iranian sailors who died when the warship was sunk. Their bodies were recovered during a rescue operation mounted by the Sri Lankan navy.

“We are ready to take on complex shipbuilding,” George Moutafis, the CEO of Fincantieri Marine Group, told Defense News.

Fincantieri was ramping up production of Constellation frigates last year at its Wisconsin yard for the U.S. Navy when the program was scrapped due to delays driven by the Navy’s request for design modifications.

The service is now ordering smaller FF(X) vessels from HII’s Ingalls yard which are based on a U.S. Coast Guard cutter design.

Last month Fincantieri instead received orders to build Marine Landing Vessels.

Moutafis said the firm was now looking beyond that order at future potential contracts.

“The Navy is working on the full and final mix of the Golden Fleet and the Small Surface Combatant segment could be 70-plus vessels,” he said.

“They are favoring the lighter FF(X) but I can see also other types of vessels becoming part of the segment — 20 of them could be smaller but extremely lethal corvettes, or even large, unmanned vessels at some point,” he said.

“Apart from Small Surface Combatants, we are ready to build ice breakers, cable layers, manned and unmanned aluminium boats,” he added.

“We are monitoring how that dynamic evolves. We are well positioned to serve that,” he said.

Moutafis said Fincantieri’s Marinette Marine yard was primed to be a part of U.S. naval fleet expansion.

“We have already got the facilities with about $800 million invested. We were upping our game to prepare for Small Surface Combatant production in Wisconsin. We have the workforce, about 3,000 strong,” he said.

“My first priority is ensure stability in the yards today and make the most of the Landing Ship opportunity. But we will be ready to jump in,” he added.

As Fincantieri gets to work building four U.S. Marine landing vessels, the Navy has issued a Request for Proposal for a Vessel Construction Manager (VCM) to oversee the program and act as a buffer between the Navy and the yard.

The Navy has said the VCM will be “responsible for managing the entire construction program, from the design phase through to vessel delivery and post-delivery support.”

“They are aspiring to empower the VCM to make decisions on schedule, which is the key. They want quality construction fast,” said Moutafis, adding, “The Navy will hand off the program to the VCM. It is a whole different ballgame.”

The key would be the Navy giving the VCM a final design, with no later tweaking, he said.

“They are planning for the design to be final and complete on the Landing Vessels. The aspiration is zero change,” he said.

“They want to simplify, not complicate things. The intent is good. Where do we fit in? We will deal with the VCM and respect the lines. The Landing Vessels is our awesome opportunity to go back to doing what we do best - building naval vessels in serial production,” he added.

France has deployed around half its fleet of major surface combatants to the Eastern Mediterranean, including its only aircraft carrier, after Iran struck countries across the Middle East with missiles and drones and closed the Strait of Hormuz. The operation is aimed at protecting navigation, French citizens and France’s allies in the region, President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday.

With Arab Gulf states seeing the United States as an increasingly unreliable partner that started a war against Iran they tried to avoid, the French display of naval power positions the country as an additional security provider, said Laure Foucher, a senior research fellow at the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research.

“We’ve been useful partners for the Gulf, but occasionally; we’ve not been able to translate our occasional usefulness into strategic partnerships,” Foucher said by phone. “By doing this, France is waving the flag a little, showing that we can act, saying ‘It’s not true that we don’t matter, that we can’t protect your interests.’”

France has a comprehensive defense agreement with the United Arab Emirates that covers military assistance, with a permanent base in Abu Dhabi, and more limited defense cooperation agreements with most other states in the region. Failure by France to honor those agreements would be “very complicated” for credibility, according to Foucher.

The country was also the third-biggest major arms exporter to the Middle East in the 2021-2025 period, accounting for 11% of the region’s weapons imports, behind the U.S. with a 54% share and Italy with 12%, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

The deployment is a way for France to demonstrate it can lead and is a relevant naval power, said Mihai Sebastian Chihaia, an analyst at the Brussels-based European Policy Centre. It positions the wider European Union as a credible actor that stands ready to protect shipping, and share the burden of ensuring freedom of navigation and security of supply chains, he said.

“It’s also about showing that the partnership with the Gulf countries is very relevant, and we’re willing to put, in this case, military assets behind the words,” Chihaia said. “And the Gulf countries have been very happy with the European reaction. There is an opportunity here to enhance the EU-Gulf relations.”

France was deploying eight frigates and two helicopter carriers to the region, in addition to the Charles de Gaulle with its embarked air wing, an “unprecedented mobilization,” Macron said on Monday, making a point of thanking European partners for joining in.

“Grey hulls have to float somewhere, what’s not to like about having them float in newsworthy places?” said Nick Witney, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He said that “back in the last century,” the United Kingdom would station a carrier in the Eastern Mediterranean whenever there was trouble in the region.

The deployment also positions assets that would be needed for any potential operation similar to France’s maritime evacuation during the 2006 Lebanon War, said Chihaia.

France has more than 400,000 citizens in the Middle East, more than any other European nation and compared with an estimated 300,000 British citizens in the region. The two helicopter carriers and the frigates will allow France, together with other European countries, to organize evacuation and repatriation operations if necessary, according to Macron.

The French president said late March 3 he ordered the carrier strike group to sail to the Med from the Baltic and northern Atlantic, a trip of around 7,000 kilometers by sea, then boarded the Charles de Gaulle off Cyprus six days later. The nuclear-powered flat top was carrying 20 Rafale jets, three E-2C Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft and three helicopters, according to the president.

“Few navies are capable of doing what you did, and you did it at a sustained pace, and in an exceptional maneuver,” Macron told troops gathered in the hangar of the Charles de Gaulle, saying their presence demonstrated both France’s power and that of Europe.

The Italian frigate Federico Martinengo and the Spanish frigate Cristóbal Colón joined the carrier strike group on Tuesday, according to the French Navy. The Dutch air defense and command frigate Evertsen got the government go-ahead to participate in defense operations late Monday after escorting the Charles de Gaulle from the northern Atlantic.

Meanwhile, the U.K. Royal Navy destroyer Dragon set off from Portsmouth on Tuesday to head to the Mediterranean, a week after the Ministry of Defence said it was deploying the Type 45 vessel, with the government coming under fire for the delay and the limited scale of the deployment.

U.K. Parliament’s Defence Committee noted a “considerable gap” between international rhetoric and the reality of U.K support to the U.S. and regional partners, saying the situation underlined “longstanding and grave concerns, which we share, about whether the Royal Navy has sufficient capacity and resilience to respond effectively to a crisis at a time of worsening global security.”

Meanwhile, with the deployment to the Eastern Med, the French Navy had 19 of its 23 main surface vessels at sea, according to a count by specialized publication Mer et Marine. The Navy declined to confirm specific numbers, describing the deployment only as “large-scale,” with the forces constantly adapting their posture in response to threats.

The French Navy targets an 80% availability rate for its vessels, and maintains double crews for its major combatants to keep operational rates up.

Both France and the U.K. had already sent additional fighter jets and air-defense assets to the region, ahead of their warships. The naval deployment could participate in “these purely defensive missions,” Macron said on Monday. “We stand by our friends and our allies.”

France is the only European country able to carry out such a naval operation, with the British no longer capable of doing so and the Germans unwilling to, former French President Francois Hollande said in a TV interview on Monday. He said it’s important that France can protect its assets and citizens in the region, and deploy an aircraft carrier to help ensure the security of its partners.

The U.S. is increasingly seen by policymakers in the Gulf states as a net liability, with “serious questioning of the utility of the U.S. security umbrella,” Hasan Alhasan, a senior fellow for Middle East policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said in a webinar on Monday. He said the U.S. has now twice dragged the Gulf states into a confrontation with Iran they did not want.

There’s also “quite a bit of disappointment” of how the U.S. seems to have made reduced focus on defending the Arabian Peninsula to prioritize defense of Israel, according to Alhasan, He cited further unhappiness with both America’s strategic rationale and the operational effectiveness of its defense of Gulf Cooperation Council partners and preemptive strikes on Iranian capabilities.

“I expect a long term strategic rethinking of the U.S.-GCC relationship if and when this war ends,” the IISS researcher said. “It’s quite interesting to see that certain European countries have been forthcoming, the U.K., France, Italy and others, in lending some assistance. So there might be a greater willingness to engage there.”

Alhasan said there’s additionally disappointment with other partners, especially in Asia, some of which have yet to condemn the Iranian attacks on Gulf states, “so I suspect there will be a 360 degree rethinking of GCC foreign relations once we are out of this present conflict.”

Regional perception of the U.S. as a reliable ally started to change in the early 2010s, with the Iran nuclear deal in 2015 “really a betrayal for the Gulf capitals,” said Camille Lons, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, in the Collimateur podcast. The Americans negotiated the deal without real consultation or taking into account the interest of the Gulf countries, she said.

The Gulf countries have bought “extremely sophisticated,” expensive systems from the U.S., but are concerned that the Americans will prioritize the defense of Israel, which is “somewhat what is happening,” according to Lons. With questions around the number of available air-defense interceptors, there is a risk for Gulf states “to run out of stocks fairly quickly.”

Macron said on Monday the French Navy deployment “demonstrates France’s desire to contribute to de-escalation, to the safety of our citizens, to the safety of our partners, and the freedom of navigation and maritime security.”

“It’s important to be able to stand alongside the countries in the region with which we have defense agreements, and which may be undermined by what is happening,” Macron told gathered crew on the Charles de Gaulle.

The deployment shows France’s capability to act independently from the Americans, contribute to defense in the Middle East and be a reliable partner, unlike the U.S., whose war is hurting the interests of its allies in the region, according to Foucher. While Israel is well protected, that’s “much less” the case for the Gulf states, she said.

“The fine line Macron is walking is that we’re not coming in with the heavy-handed approach of the Americans,” Foucher said. “There is only one risk, that we get bogged down.”

“The broader stakes are those of geopolitics and credibility towards our partners,” Foucher said. “It’s really about positioning France as one of the most important military powers in the world. To position France, not as an alternative power, because we can never replace the Americans, but as having a shared vision of the region that is not the same as the Americans.”

France will contribute two frigates “over the long term” to the European Union-led Aspides mission to secure shipping in the Red Sea, according to Macron. The country is also preparing a mission with both European and non-European partners to escort container ships and tankers to “gradually reopen” the Strait of Hormuz, once the hottest phase of the conflict is over, the president said.

France already leads a monitoring mission in the Strait of Hormuz to protect trade there, and if a military operation to support opening the strait does get underway, Macron could take credit for acting to keep down the cost of living down in France and elsewhere, said Ed Arnold, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.

Deploying the carrier group deeper into the Middle East and towards Hormuz is risky, with traffic in the strait congested and due to Iran’s capabilities, according to Arnold. If France wants to stick to providing defense support to allies, it can do that from the Eastern Mediterranean, he said.

Iran has a large number of cheap aerial drones and unmanned surface vessels that make the Strait of Hormuz a riskier operating area than the Red Sea, and those risks will persist after the end of hostilities, according to Chihaia at the EPC.

On the upside, France’s deployment bolsters deterrence by showing Europeans can naval power and are willing to engage, while lessons learned from deploying such a large force to the region will be “hugely useful” for any potential future conflict, Chihaia said.

Arnold at RUSI said deploying forces into an area where there is danger but also a lot of support from allies is critical to building up experience, especially at the sailor level. While European navies have been shooting down drones in the Red Sea, “that’s a long way from the Falkland years in terms of operational and fleet experience,” he said.

With the French defense staff considering a larger war with Russia possible in coming years, the naval deployment strengthens France’s strategic posture as a military power, according to Foucher at FRS. In a hypothetical future conflict, there will be the question of the alignment of the countries in the Middle East, she said.

“If there is a war with Russia in the future, who in the Middle East can we count on?”

The sinking of the Iris Dena on March 4th was the first military strike outside the Middle East since the war began, and analysts say it raised concerns that the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran could widen beyond the Persian Gulf if it drags on.

It also became a diplomatic embarrassment for New Delhi, which had hosted the sunken vessel for peacetime multilateral naval drills.

All three Iranian ships — the two vessels that are now in India and Sri Lanka as well as the torpedoed ship — were sailing in the Indian Ocean after participating in the exercises along India’s east coast.

The South Asian countries have called their decision to permit the ships to enter their ports a “humanitarian” gesture.

Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told parliament Monday the Iranian ship Iris Lavan sailed into the southern port of Kochi last week after it reported a technical problem. Its crew, mostly young cadets, have been housed at Indian naval facilities.

He said that the government believed “it was the right thing to do.”

Sri Lanka, an Indian Ocean island country lying southeast of India, took control of Iran’s Irins Bushehr and offloaded some 288 crew members at Trincomalee port after the ship had sought assistance saying one of its engines malfunctioned.

A day earlier, its navy rescued 32 sailors and recovered 87 bodies from the sunken Dena.

The South Asian country has stressed its neutrality after finding itself caught in the conflict saying it would take no sides.

India, which has friendly ties with all parties in the conflict — the U.S., Israel and Iran — has steered clear of explicitly supporting or condemning any side since the hostilities erupted. Neither has made any official comment on the sinking of the Dena. Foreign Minister Jaishankar has only said that the ships were caught “on the wrong side of events.”

Washington has vowed to destroy Iran’s military capabilities, including its navy.

“An American submarine sank an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated last week, calling it a “quiet death.”

The ship was torpedoed in international waters, but the U.S. attack on the vessel close to Sri Lanka raised questions about the expanding scope of the military campaign against Iran.

“So far we had assumed the conflict was confined to the Persian Gulf. But when the ship was sunk off the coast of Sri Lanka, which is 3000 kilometers away, the implication was that there are chances of the conflict spreading,” said Arun Prakash, a former Indian navy chief.

“Perhaps it was also a message to India and others – after all the ship was no direct threat to the U.S. — that the U.S. has an extensive reach and can strike wherever it wants,” he added.

The naval exercises hosted by India, in which 74 countries and 18 foreign warships participated, intended to showcase its influence in its maritime neighborhood. New Delhi, which has been building its naval prowess, has often stated its ambitions to become the “preferred security partner” in the Indian Ocean, which is also a crucial artery for seaborne oil trade.

But analysts said that Dena’s sinking had cast a shadow over India’s regional aspirations.

“This episode demonstrates that we are not really the sentinels of the Indian Ocean — it shows the gap between India’s rhetorical position and the reality. Even though New Delhi was not obliged to protect the ship which the U.S. struck in international waters, there was an ethical dimension because the ship had been its guest,” according to Manoj Joshi, distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.

The targeting of the vessel also showed that the defense partnership which New Delhi and Washington have been cultivating in recent years remains “asymmetrical” and has limits, Joshi said. “When push comes to shove, the U.S. does what it feels like. Even in the Indian Ocean, it operates as it wants.”

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh, who was in New Delhi last week, said that India must ask the United States why it is targeting Iranian ships in the Indian Ocean.

Iran and the U.S. have sparred over whether the Dena was a legitimate wartime target. While Iran says that the ship was unarmed, the United States Indo-Pacific Command has rejected that claim.

The United States Indo-Pacific Command on Sunday rejected Iran’s claim that the warship IRIS Dena was unarmed when it was sunk in a submarine attack in international waters off Sri Lanka on March 4. In a statement on X, INDOPACOM called Iran’s assertion that the vessel was unarmed “false.”

The response followed strong objections from Tehran, which has repeatedly characterized the warship as defenseless, saying it was returning home after taking part in a naval exercise.

An Indian navy official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media, said the Iranian vessel was not “entirely unarmed” and had taken part in drills alongside other countries’ warships.

Some experts have, however, suggested that visiting ships at such events typically do not carry a full combat load of live munitions unless scheduled for live-fire drills. They say even during the sea phase of exercises, ships generally carry only tightly-controlled ammunition limited to specific drills.

Rahul Bedi, an independent defense analyst based in India, said the vessel may have used some limited non-offensive ammunition during the naval exercises, but protocol requires “the participating platforms to be unarmed.”

“The precondition of participating in such a parade, or such a ceremony, is that it (the vessel) comes unarmed. That is the precondition of the Indian Navy and it’s a precondition of most navies when they hold such similar sort of fleet reviews,” Bedi said.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh said Friday that the warship, sunk by a U.S. torpedo, had not been carrying weapons and accused Washington of targeting a ceremonial vessel.

“That vessel was by invitation of our Indian friends, attending an international exercise. It was ceremonial. It was unloaded. It was unarmed,” he told reporters in New Delhi.

The IRIS Dena was sunk on March 4 in the Indian Ocean near Sri Lanka after being struck by a torpedo fired from a U.S. submarine, according to American and Iranian officials. The Sri Lankan navy rescued 32 sailors and recovered 87 bodies.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described the IRIS Dena as a “prize ship” and said it “died a quiet death.” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described the attack as “an atrocity at sea” and stressed that it had been “a guest of India’s Navy.”

Disputes over whether the vessel was armed have intensified tensions over the incident, which occurred as it was returning from multinational naval exercises in India, and raised questions about whether it was operating in a noncombat role when it was attacked.

India’s defense ministry said in a statement after the exercises that “live firings as part of surface gun shoots, as well as anti-air firings, were also undertaken” by participating vessels.

The warship’s sinking highlighted how the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran is spreading beyond the Middle East.

Two other Iranian vessels — the IRIS Bushehr and IRIS Lavan — are docked in Sri Lanka and India after seeking assistance from the two countries.

Associated Press writer Aijaz Hussain in Srinagar, India, contributed to this report.

“With Spain, France and Holland, we will send naval assets to protect Cyprus in the next few days,” Guido Crosetto told Italy’s parliament in a statement.

An Italian navy vessel able to reach Cyprus quickly would be the Spartaco Schergat, a FREMM frigate which is off the coast of Sicily in the Mediterranean and is due to conclude its involvement in the NATO Dynamic Manta exercise on Friday. It will however need to return to base in Sicily for refueling before a mission to Cyprus.

One defense official, who declined to be named, said a better option would however be one of Italy’s larger Horizon-class destroyers, given their longer range radar. The challenge is their location: The Andrea Doria is off the coast of Norway while the Caio Duilio is undergoing regular maintenance at La Spezia in Italy.

Nations sending vessels to Cyprus would not necessarily need to operate under one national command but could cooperate, the official said.

Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni spoke by phone with French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday, to discuss security in the Gulf and Cyprus, her office said.

Macron announced Tuesday that he ordered the Charles de Gaulle carrier strike group, deployed to northern Europe for exercises, to the Mediterranean.

The move comes as the war in Iran risks spilling over to Europe’s southeastern edge. For example, RAF Akrotiri, a British military base in southern Cyprus that has previously served as as a hub for U.S. and U.K. Middle East aerial operations, was targeted by Iranian strike drones this week.

Close Cyprus ally Greece has already sent two frigates to the island.

The French naval strike group is scheduled to arrive in the Mediterranean late this week or early next week, French Minister of the Armed Forces Catherine Vautrin told RTL radio on Thursday.

The Spanish frigate Cristóbal Colón has already joined the Charles the Gaulle formation on its way to Cyprus, Spanish defense officials said Thursday.

“The ‘Cristóbal Colón’ is our most technologically advanced frigate. Its mission in the Mediterranean will be to offer protection and air defense, thus complementing the capabilities of our Patriot battery deployed in Turkey,” reads a Spanish ministry of defense statement. “It will also be on standby to support any evacuation of civilian personnel who may be affected by the conflict.”

Meanwhile, the British Type 45 destroyer Dragon, announced by U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer as the chosen ship to help secure the country’s Cyprus base, was still being readied for the snap deployment on Wednesday, the BBC reported.

Fresh out of maintenance, the ongoing loading of ammunition means the Dragon will likely be stuck in Portsmouth until next week, according to the report.

The Dutch frigate Evertsen is also part of the group of ships heading to the Mediterranean, but defense officials in the Netherlands have yet to decide what the vessel will be tasked to do once there.

German defense officials appear to be in no rush to consider sending ships supporting a naval Cyprus protection mission in response to the Iran war fallout, though chancellor Merz has said Berlin would assist “in preventative measures.”

Regional assistance and NATO defense plans for the region currently add up to a sufficient degree of preparedness, a government spokesman said Wednesday.

Meloni said on Thursday that Italy would be sending air defense systems to protect Gulf states. “Italy, like the U.K., France and Germany, aim to send help to the Gulf states, and we clearly talking about air defense,” she said.

Speculation is mounting in Italy that Rome will send a Samp-T air defense system.

Rudy Ruitenberg in Paris and Linus Höller in Berlin contributed to this report.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed the strike during a Pentagon press briefing on Operation Epic Fury alongside Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine.

“Yesterday, in the Indian Ocean ... an American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” Hegseth said. “Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death. The first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War II.”

The identity of the fast-attack boat was not revealed, as is custom for operational security surrounding submarine operations.

The strike occurred off the southern coast of Sri Lanka, according to Reuters, which would indicate the action occurred in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility.

The IRIS Dena, a Moudge-class frigate assigned to the Southern Fleet of the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy, was in the region after reportedly taking part in a naval drill in the Bay of Bengal.

Sri Lankan Foreign minister Vijitha Herath said 180 people were on board the IRIS Dena. Thirty-two people were subsequently rescued by Sri Lankan naval personnel.

Commander Buddhika Sampath, a Sri Lankan navy spokesman, said the rescue effort was also recovering bodies from the scene.

“For the first time since 1945, a United States Navy fast attack submarine has sunk an enemy combatant ship using a single Mk-48 torpedo to achieve immediate effect, sending the warship to the bottom of the sea,” Caine said during the press briefing Wednesday.

“This is an incredible demonstration of America’s global reach. To hunt, find and kill an out-of-area deployer is something that only the United States can do at this type of scale.”

Caine added that, to date, the U.S. has hit over 2,000 total targets across Iran and destroyed more than 20 of the Islamic Republic’s naval vessels.

The campaign has “effectively neutralized, at this point in time, Iran’s major naval presence in theater,” he said.

Strikes on infrastructure and naval capability by the vast assembly of U.S. forces in the region are expected to continue over the next 24 to 48 hours, Caine noted.

“We’ll continue to assess our progress against the military objectives,” he said.

With the Strait of Hormuz closed and the Suez Canal and Red Sea threatened, France is also working on a coalition to pool assets, including military, that will allow shipping traffic to resume, Macron said in the televised speech.

“Faced with this unstable situation and the uncertainties of the days ahead, I have given orders for the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, its air assets, and its escort of frigates to set course for the Mediterranean,” Macron said.

The nuclear-powered Charles de Gaulle and its escorts are being rerouted from the Baltic and the Northern Atlantic, where the carrier group had been set to participate in multiple NATO missions. The air group embarked on France’s only carrier typically consists of Rafale jets and E-2C Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft, as well as several helicopters.

The deployed carrier strike group included the Italian destroyer Andrea Doria as well as the French frigate L’Amiral Ronarc’h, according to the French Navy. The group also included the frigates Alsace and Chevalier Paul, as well as the oiler Jacques Chevallier, according to French media reports.

Macron said France has economic interests to protect, with oil prices, natural gas prices and international trade “profoundly” disrupted by the war between the U.S. and Israel against Iran.

“We are taking the initiative to build a coalition to pool resources, including military resources, to resume and secure traffic in these maritime routes that are essential to the global economy,” Macron said. “This is what we were able to do several months ago in the Red Sea. This is what we must do there today.”

French forces, which are deployed across several bases in the Middle East, downed drones “in legitimate defense” from the very first hours of the conflict between the U.S. and Israel with Iran, to protect the airspace of its allies, Macron said. France in recent hours sent additional Rafale jets, air-defense systems and radars to the region, the president said.

“It’s crucial that we ensure freedom of movement in the Strait of Hormuz because we are all affected,” retired Air Force Gen. Patrick Dutartre said on French television.

With European Union member Cyprus also struck in recent days, France will also send additional air-defense assets to the island, as well as the air-defense frigate Languedoc, which should arrive off the coast of Cyprus as early as this evening, Macron said.

While out on a patrol in Oresund, a narrow strait that separates Denmark and Sweden, a Swedish Navy ship detected a suspicious unmanned aerial system approaching the French vessel.

“Following the observation, the armed forces took countermeasures to disrupt the suspected drone – contact with it was subsequently lost, but no other ones have been observed,” the Swedish Armed Forces said in a statement.

Speaking to local media outlet SVT Nyheter, Minister of Defense Pål Jonson said that it is likely the drone was Russian, as a Russian military ship was detected operating in the immediate vicinity of the Feb. 26 incident.

Jonson called the episode a probable “violation of Swedish airspace,” and an investigation was launched to determine whether a breach was committed.

The Swedish Armed Forces declined to provide further details.

Sweden announced last month that it is undertaking a major revamp of its unmanned capabilities, including the procurement of remote-controlled electronic warfare systems that consist of drone detection sensors, which could be based on ships or ground units.

While authorities have not yet confirmed the identity of Russian the ship, several open-source maritime observers compiled a list of Russian-flagged vessels spotted in the area roughly around the same time. These included the U.S.-sanctioned Sparta IV, a cargo ship flying the Russian flag, known for transporting military equipment between Syria and Russia.

According to Guillaume Vernet, spokesman for the French General Staff, the Swedish countermeasures used to repel the drone away from the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle “worked perfectly” and did not disrupt the flagship’s activities.

The presence of the aircraft carrier is linked to ongoing and upcoming NATO exercise activities and deployments, including the Orion 2026 exercises in the North Atlantic and Baltic regions, which began earlier this month and will run until March.

The vessel is the first unmanned submarine developed by an Israeli defense company. It is the product of a joint venture with Atlas, a subsidiary of Germany’s TKMS, the manufacturer behind the Israeli Navy’s submarine fleet.

A BlueWhale was delivered in a ceremony held at the German naval base in Eckernförde after a series of tests carried out by the German Navy in the Baltic Sea.

None of the parties involved specified the number of vessels the German sea service eventually stands to get, or the scope of the deal.

IAI reported at the end of November 2024 that the German Navy had completed testing the new drone as part of the “Navy 2035+” program, which is a service initiative for rapidly testing and adopting new technologies under real-world conditions.

The BlueWhale travels at 7 knots underwater, and the Israeli company states that the unmanned submarine can sustain continuous operation of 2-3 weeks depending on the mission profile. It is equipped with surface and sub-surface sensors and can be transportable by land, air or sea in a 40-foot shipping container.

The joint IAI-TKMS announcement notes that the vessel’s envisioned missions include unmanned anti-submarine warfare and covert maritime operations.

“The vehicle is capable of conducting reconnaissance operations, detecting targets above and below the sea surface, collecting acoustic information, and locating sea mines on the seabed,” the statement reads. “It acts as an extended sensor arm for manned platforms.”

The sale of the BlueWhale is seen in Israel as a step toward deepening defense cooperation with Germany amid the supply of the Arrow 3 air defense system, also made by IAI, Israel’s largest defense deal ever.

In the maritime sector, Israel has relied for years on TKMS, which supplies Dolphin AIP submarines and Sa’ar 6 ships.

In about four years, the German company is scheduled to begin delivering three Decker-class submarines ordered in 2022.

The new submarine’s nomenclature is Type 09V, or also commonly referred to as the Type 095. Partially constructed, the boat could launch within the coming year.

After the new submarine showed up in high-resolution satellite imagery, Naval News was first to report it on Feb. 12. Its estimated submerged displacement is 9,000-10,000 tons.

Destined for the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), the incoming Type 09V platform is emblematic of China’s extensive development efforts and a construction spree of nuclear-powered submarines.

Rick Joe, an expert on the Chinese military, estimates the sea service currently has in service the following SSNs: one to two original Type 091 SSNs if they have not already been retired, plus two Type 09III, four Type 09IIIA and two to three Type 09IIIB attack submarines.

Joe surmises another 5-6 Type 09IIIB SSNs are being fitted out or are undergoing sea trials. This amounts to three new SSNs being launched annually, compared to a rate of 1.1 to 1.3 boats per year in the United States.

As for nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBN), the analyst assesses the PLAN has six Type 09IV boats and possibly another one or two being fitted out after being launched in recent years.

Clean-sheet design

Asked to assess the new SSN, Joe noted it is wider than the preceding Type 09III family at around 40 feet (12m) versus 36 feet (11m). He also listed new likely innovations such as X-shaped rudders, hull-mounted and retractable diving planes to improve speed and agility, and a pumpjet propulsor.

The boat is also rumored to be the first Chinese submarine without a double hull; instead it might use either a single or hybrid hull.

The 09V, measuring approximately 360 feet (110m) long, has universal vertical launch system (VLS) cells – estimated to be eight in number. Like the latest American Virginia-class SSNs, each cell is thought to contain all-up round canisters, containing perhaps three missiles each in China’s case.

Flurry of construction

It is difficult to say when the first Type 09V will enter service, but it could be as far away as 2029 after fitting out and extensive sea trials.

China often builds two submarines of a new type before commencing series production, to allow problems to be ironed out. That timing suggests construction of the incumbent Type 09IIIB will continue into the early 2030s.

The U.S. Navy holds an advantage over China when it comes to submarine technologies and anti-submarine warfare. However, as the Type 09V demonstrates, Beijing is working hard to close this gap.

China has sufficient production capacity at Bohai Shipyard. Its Eastern Assembly Hall has space for twelve assembly slots measuring 144m long, while the newer Southern Assembly Hall has eight assembly slots measuring 157.5m long. In theory, these halls could simultaneously accommodate construction of 20 SSN-sized boats.

China’s next-generation Type 09VI SSBN is expected to take a number of technologies from the latest SSN as well.

Accompanying weapons

One new anti-ship missile that could potentially arm the Type 09V is the YJ-19 hypersonic missile unveiled at China’s military parade in September 2025.

Joe described the hypersonic YJ-19 as an “air-breathing scramjet cruise missile sized for submarine torpedo tubes (553mm). It certainly is likely to offer quite a boost in anti-surface strike capability, especially as they don’t have to be launched via VLS, but can in theory be launched from any submarine with torpedo tubes and adequate integration with the combat management system.”

This month, the PLAN revealed that it had accepted the YJ-19 for service on its Type 039B conventional submarines. This makes China the first country in the world to arm diesel-electric submarines with hypersonic weapons.