Iran unveils submarine-launched AI suicide drone

Suicide drones are already difficult enough to intercept when launched from a flatbed truck on land. Iran is now taking the concept underwater.

Iran’s Ministry of Defense has released state media footage demonstrating what it claims is the world’s first submarine-launched loitering munition. According to open-source defense tracking accounts, the system is designated the Hadid 110. The video shows a torpedo-shaped delivery canister surfacing from beneath the water, rapidly deploying a folding-wing drone into the sky, and tracking the drone as it dives into a simulated land target.

Wireless targeting via on-board vision

Beyond the underwater launch, Iranian defense officials highlighted one key feature: complete autonomy. The drone allegedly identifies and engages targets using artificial intelligence and computer vision, operating without human piloting or real-time remote commands.

Basically, the drone cuts the cord the moment it launches. Because it requires no radio frequency link back to a ground station, standard electronic warfare tactics like RF jamming cannot divert or disarm it. OSINTWarfare noted the airframe also incorporates low radar and acoustic signatures.

Iran also claims the system can be deployed from unmanned underwater vehicles (AUVs) as well as conventional manned submarines. The canister shown in the official footage closely resembles the torpedo-like autonomous underwater vessels U.S. forces have previously tracked in the Red Sea conflicts.

Why it matters

We think the real danger of this platform is not raw payload capacity, but reaction time.

When a loitering munition launches from hundreds of miles inland, modern naval and shore radar arrays have minutes to calculate intercept trajectories. But if a cheap unmanned underwater vehicle can quietly station itself off a coast and pop a drone out of the water just offshore, defensive reaction windows shrink from minutes to seconds.

This forces naval groups to divert costly anti-submarine warfare resources toward small, expendable underwater delivery canisters. It fundamentally alters coastal perimeter security by blending sub-surface stealth with low-altitude swarming.

That said, state-released footage always warrants skepticism. Packing reliable computer vision compute and sufficient target libraries into an expendable, folding-wing airframe is a steep technical hurdle. While Western militaries continue debating the ethical boundaries of fully autonomous lethal weapons, the race among countries like Iran, Russia, and Ukraine to eliminate human-in-the-loop controls appears to be moving ahead regardless.