Iran is deploying explosive-laden drone boats disguised as wooden fishing vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, a defense expert has warned — a move that signals a new phase of hybrid maritime warfare in one of the world’s most critical shipping lanes.

Cameron Chell, CEO of drone technology firm Draganfly, spoke after the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) confirmed that a Marshall Islands–flagged oil tanker was struck March 1 by an Iranian unmanned surface vehicle north of Muscat, Oman.

«UKMTO has received confirmation that the vessel was attacked by an uncrewed surface vehicle (USV), and that the crew has been evacuated to shore,» UKMTO said in a threat assessment.

Reports also indicated that two additional oil tankers were hit March 11 by remote-controlled explosive boats in the Gulf, as Iran intensified attacks on foreign vessels following the start of the U.S. Operation Epic Fury against the regime on Feb. 28.

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The use of so-called «suicide skiffs» represents a growing asymmetric threat in the narrow, 21-mile-wide Strait, Chell warned, while highlighting the technological capabilities behind these attacks.

«The Iranians probably have use of radio remote control, line of sight, frequency hopping, or encrypted radio communication between the skiffs and the Hormuz shoreline,» Chell told Fox News Digital.

«These can be jammed and tracked, but when there’s 50 of these boats, it’s hard to try to find them all along this shoreline or to find a 20-foot wooden fishing boat that is laden with explosives.

«They can have one person controlling a swarm of 10 boats,» he said before describing how there «could also be autonomous swarming where they might have 10 boats that can act with a large level of independence, because they’re pre-programmed.»

«The boats would be used to ram into targets and explode,» Chell clarified.

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Naval units from Iran and Russia simulate the rescue of a hijacked vessel during joint drills at the Port of Bandar Abbas in Hormozgan, Iran, on Feb. 19, 2026. (Iranian Army/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Chell’s comments followed a March 12 Reuters report stating that six vessels had been attacked in the Gulf and Strait of Hormuz. 

Sources said that Iran had also deployed about a dozen mines, complicating efforts to maintain any traffic through the critical waterway.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Sky News Thursday that the U.S. Navy, potentially alongside an international coalition, would escort ships when militarily feasible.

U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey also said discussions were underway with European counterparts stressing the global economic stakes tied to the strait. Chell, however, questioned current defensive readiness.

«The drone defense fleets that the U.S. Navy would not have been set up to take these suicide skiffs out,» Chell said.

«The U.S. would be using manned aircraft in order to take them out, which are fantastic at taking out a large target, but inefficient in taking out 50 boats at one time that are an average of 25 or 30 feet in size, laden with explosives.

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A screenshot of a marine traffic terminal showing vessels in the Strait of Hormuz on March 4, 2026. (Kpler/Marine Traffic)

«Given the Strait’s geography, it would require patrolling by many aircraft and would require pervasive surveillance over the area, a rapid response to any activity that’s happening,» he said.

As Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei vowed to keep the Strait closed as leverage against the U.S. and Israel, oil prices continue to surge, with Chell also highlighting the geographic advantage Iran holds.

«The geographic layout of the Strait lends itself very well to relatively unsophisticated suicide skiffs, unmanned surface vehicles or USVs,» he warned before describing how the area «lends itself to this low-cost, automatic, asymmetric warfare.»

«The Iranians can disguise them as fishing boats and can be anywhere from 12 to 30 feet, and a boat could be of any description,» Chell said.

«These skiffs are equipped with basic remote control capabilities that may or may not be using GPS waypoints or manual remote control.»

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«The skiffs are not autonomous, because the distance across the Strait is so short, and it’s very flat across this waterway, the communication signal could be carried for quite some time via a line of sight,» he added.

«They could literally have hundreds out there at a time, because they’re also so inexpensive to defend against,» Chell said.

The Pentagon said Friday it has opened a formal command investigation into the Feb. 28 strike in Minab, Iran, where Iranian regime officials claim dozens of children were killed in a strike at a school beside a military compound. 

Questions continue to mount about possible U.S. involvement in the strike, the intelligence used before it and whether Iran placed military assets near civilians to shield them or weaponize potential casualties.

War Secretary Pete Hegseth said at a Pentagon briefing that U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) has appointed a senior officer from outside the command to lead the review. 

«CENTCOM has designated an investigating officer to complete a command investigation,» Hegseth said, noting that the investigator is a general officer from outside the command. «The command investigation will take as long as necessary to address all the matters surrounding this incident.» 

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«There’s only one entity in this conflict, between us and Iran, that never targets civilians, literally never target civilians,» he said, defending U.S. targeting procedures while the investigation unfolds. «We will investigate. We’ll get to the truth and we’ll share it when we have it.»

The strike has drawn scrutiny as the investigation continues without answers. 

If U.S. forces carried out the attack, it would raise questions about how American military planners assess civilian risk in densely populated areas and whether safeguards designed to prevent unintended casualties functioned as intended in the opening phase of a high-intensity conflict.

CENTCOM, the military department tasked with overseeing the U.S. operation in Iran and all Middle East operations, has declined to confirm whether American forces launched the missile, saying only that «it would be inappropriate to comment given the incident is under investigation.»

Iranian-American journalist Banafsheh Zand, who has been following the reporting in Iran, pointed to the school that has been there for more than a decade, reported affiliation with Iran’s military. 

«The school itself was for the children of the (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) Navy, and it speaks volumes to where the place was and how they use civilian shields,» she said. 

The use of human shields is against international humanitarian law.  

While the regime claims between 168 fatalities and 180 fatalities, mostly girls between the ages of 7 and 12, along with teachers and parents from the school, Zand told Fox News Digital that there has been no independent confirmation of the reported casualty figures. 

«There is no confirmation on the number of people, from anyone other than regime sources,» she said. «Some people in the area said it was 65 boys. Sixty-five boys? What are 65 boys doing in a girls’ school at 10:30 on a Saturday morning?»

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth looks on during a joint press conference with Admiral Charles Bradford «Brad» Cooper II, Commander of US Central Command, at US Central Command (CENTCOM) headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, on March 5, 2026.  (Octavio JONES / AFP via Getty Images)

Addressing satellite images that appear to show newly dug graves, Zand added: «The number of graves are not in keeping with the number of people that they claim is dead. It doesn’t match up.» 

The U.S. government has not confirmed the death toll. 

Preliminary findings from U.S. officials suggest the strike was likely carried out by American forces, The New York Times reported Wednesday, though the investigation remains ongoing.

In response to the Times’ reporting, Central Command reiterated to Fox News Digital that the investigation is ongoing. 

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Retired Vice Adm. Kevin Donegan, who previously commanded U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and the U.S. 5th Fleet, cautioned against getting ahead of the full review and said U.S. targeting doctrine is designed to prevent civilian tragedies, including legal review and collateral damage assessments before a strike is approved.

A demonstrator holds a picture of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a rally in Tehran in solidarity with the government against Israel’s attacks and to mark Eid al-Ghadir. (Atta Kenare/Getty Images) (Atta Kenare/Getty Images)

«We actually have judge advocates that sit there and help us through the process of targeting,» Donegan told Fox News Digital. 

But even precision-guided weapons do not eliminate uncertainty.

«War isn’t precise,» Donegan said. «Mistakes can be made, and they can happen anywhere in the chain of events.»

Raytheon, the manufacturer of the Tomahawk missile, could not be reached for comment.

Wes Bryant, the Pentagon’s former chief of civilian harm assessments, said his office, the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, was tasked with advising commanders on targeting and ways to mitigate civilian harm but had been severely curtailed over the past year. 

Image shows a girls’ school struck in Minab, Iran. (Stringer/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Bryant said that taken together, the available evidence strongly suggests U.S. involvement.

«All evidence, at this point, points to a U.S. strike,» Bryant told Fox News Digital. 

If U.S. forces conducted the strike, Bryant said the more plausible explanation would involve a failure in target identification or civilian risk assessment.

«These munitions have a very small circular probable,» Bryant said. «If it missed, it would have been within a few meters.» 

This picture obtained from Iran’s ISNA news agency shows the site of a strike on a girls’ school in Minab, in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province, on Feb. 28, 2026. (Ali Najafi/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images)

Satellite imagery and reporting from Iranian officials indicate the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school sat roughly 600 meters from the adjacent Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval facility in Minab, Iran, underscoring how closely civilian and military infrastructure were positioned.

«I’m leaning more toward that this is complete misidentification,» from the U.S., he said, arguing that the likely issue would be a failure to properly vet or update targeting information rather than a random malfunction.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told Fox News Digital, «This investigation is ongoing. As we have said, unlike the terrorist Iranian regime, the United States does not target civilians.»  

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Possible Tomahawk missile and strike location

Open-source video analysis and reported missile remnants have fueled speculation that the munition resembled a U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile — a weapon Iran does not operate. 

The Tomahawk is fielded by the U.S. and a limited number of close allies, including the United Kingdom and Australia, neither of which have been firing missiles in the conflict.

The Tomahawk is a long-range, precision-guided cruise missile capable of striking targets hundreds of miles away and typically carrying a high-explosive warhead.

Independent open-source investigators, including Bellingcat, a Netherlands-based investigative journalism group specializing in open-source analysis, have examined video and satellite imagery from the area and reported that multiple strikes hit the compound within a short time window. 

However, commentators on social media have their own theories. 

«The wing-to-body ratio of the munition in question matches an Iranian Kh-55–derived Land Attack Cruise Missile,» said podcast host and veteran Matt Tardio on X. «So what could have caused this? Simply put, GPS jamming of an Iranian KH-55. The USA and Israel were, and continue to actively jam the Iranian airspace.»

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An aerial view shows funerals underway at a graveyard in Minab, Iran, March 3, 2026, for students and staff from a girls school who authorities said were killed in a Feb. 28 strike. (Handout/Getty Images)

Former National Security Council official Javed Ali, now a professor at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, told Fox News Digital the central question is the quality of intelligence that informed the strike decision.

«How solid was the intelligence picture on that facility?» Ali said. «How good was the intelligence that went into what’s called a target package?»

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Ali, who previously worked on targeting analysis at the Defense Intelligence Agency, said military strikes are typically built from multiple streams of intelligence — human, technical, geospatial and open source — designed to provide high confidence that a structure is a legitimate military objective.

«Clearly something went wrong,» Ali said.

Civilian proximity raises targeting questions

Bryant said the Pentagon’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence and broader civilian harm mitigation enterprise were scaled back in 2025, reducing the number of personnel available to conduct investigations into civilian harm.

The center was established by Congress to help the military minimize harm to civilians in conflict, but reporting shows its dedicated staff were folded into broader bureaucratic units or removed as part of a departmental reorganization. 

Its teams were designed to work with commanders on target planning to make sure targets were active military sites and advise on the potential for civilian harm, according to Bryant. 

A general view of Tehran with smoke visible in the distance after explosions were reported in the city, on March 02, 2026 in Tehran, Iran. (Contributor/Getty Images)

The Pentagon has not publicly detailed the current status or staffing of the office, nor confirmed whether the office is involved in the ongoing Minab, Iran, school investigation.

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An open source intelligence expert and former intel official, who requested anonymity, told Fox News Digital the structure resembles the other military buildings that were targeted in the strike, which could help explain how an intelligence misreading might occur and lead analysts to believe the site was another military facility within the compound.

Analysts say when civilian casualties occur during precision strikes, the explanations generally fall into three categories: intelligence failure, technical malfunction or human error.

Mourners attend the funeral of children killed in a reported strike on a primary school in Minab, Hormozgan province, Iran, on March 3, 2026.  (Amirhossein Khorgooei/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images)

Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, told Fox News Digital incorrect or outdated intelligence could lead to misidentification, while a GPS-guided munition could malfunction or be disrupted. Human error — such as incorrect coordinate entry — is another possibility. 

If an investigation ultimately finds negligence or a breakdown in targeting procedures, the U.S. military has a precedent for imposing consequences.

Bryant pointed to the 2015 U.S. strike on a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, that killed dozens of patients and medical staff at a facility operated by Doctors Without Borders, the international humanitarian medical charity which a U.S. army investigation later concluded was «a tragic and avoidable accident.»

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A U.S. military investigation later concluded that airstrike was «a tragic and avoidable accident» caused primarily by human error and procedural failures, with the medical facility mistakenly identified as a combat target.

«In that case, a couple of different commanders were removed,» Bryant said, noting that accountability can range from administrative measures to the revocation of certifications, depending on findings.

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