USS Boxer
On July 18, Amphibious warship USS Boxer (LHD-4) took down an Iranian drone, the US claimed. According to the US version of the events, the drone threatened the ship as it entered the Persian Gulf.
“At about 10 a.m. local time, Boxer was transiting Strait of Hormuz when an Iranian fixed-wing drone approached the ship, a defense official told USNI News.
The crew of the ship took “defensive action against the unmanned aerial system to ensure the safety of the ship and the crew,” the official said.
The official would not detail the method in which Boxer downed the drone. The ship is armed with RIM-7 Sea Sparrow short-range anti-ship missiles, and the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) and Phalanx CIWS point defense weapons systems. Additionally, the Navy and the Marine Corps have begun to field a wide variety of non-kinetic systems capable of downing a drone by other means. News of the intercept first came from a press event at the White House in which President Donald Trump told reporters of the downing of the Iranian drone.
“This is the latest of many provocative and hostile actions against vessels operating in international waters,” Trump told reporters in the White House on Thursday afternoon,” USNI News reported.
I want to apprise everyone of an incident in the Strait of Hormuz today, involving #USSBoxer, a U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship. The BOXER took defensive action against an Iranian drone…. pic.twitter.com/Zql6nAUGxF
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 18, 2019
Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif re-tweeted a map that shows the border of Iran and the border of the United States.
Reminder pic.twitter.com/mOOt9sG3ir
— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) July 18, 2019
Earlier on July 18, Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps annouced that their naval forces had seized a foreign vessel smuggling fuel in the Persian Gulf. According to the videos released by Press TV the detained vessel was the UAE tanker, sailing under a Panama flag, which “disappeared” in the Persian Gulf earlier this month.
