No One Thought This Missile Could Sink an Iranian Submarine… But the U.S. Just Did

No one thought this was possible.

A weapon built to kill things on the ground just killed something beneath the ocean.

A missile that cannot hit moving targets just put a hole in an Iranian submarine.

And that submarine, one of the most dangerous assets in Iran’s underwater fleet, is now resting at the bottom of the Persian Gulf.

Not because of a torpedo, not because of a depth charge, not because of any of the weapons actually designed to hunt submarines, but because of a short-range ballistic missile launched from an artillery platform that was never ever supposed to touch a naval asset.

That is the story of Operation Epic Fury.

And that is the kind of military history that gets written in moments just like this one.

We’re going to break this down completely.

We’ll tell you exactly what weapon the United States used, why it should never have worked, how it actually did work, and what it means for Iran, for the Straight of Hormuz, and for the future of modern warfare.

Stay with us until the end because the full picture here is even more extraordinary than the headline.

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Let’s start with the weapon itself.

The Army tactical missile system known as a tax is what the US military calls a conventional surfaceto-surface artillery weapon.

That term matters.

Surfacetos surface, not surface to sea, not surfaceto submarine.

This is a missile designed and manufactured by Loheed Martin to strike fixed targets on land.

Radar installations, ammunition depots, command posts, things that do not move, things that sit still and wait to be destroyed.

Adakams carries a blast fragmentation warhead weighing up to 500 lb.

It has a maximum range of 300 km or roughly 186 miles.

It can be fired from both the M142 highimars and the M270 multiple launch rocket system.

Both of which are road mobile platforms.

Fast, flexible, powerful, and entirely built around the concept of hitting static ground targets.

That is what makes what just happened so remarkable because the US has used ATAS EMS not just to strike ground targets in Iran.

It has used it to sink ships, multiple ships, and then it went further.

It used ATAS EMS to sink a submarine.

That confirmation came directly from the highest military authority in the United States.

At a Pentagon press conference on March 13th, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, US Air Force General Dan Kaine, spelled it out in terms that left no room for interpretation.

In just the first 13 days of this operation, Kaine said, “Our artillery forces have made history.

They fired the first precision strike missiles ever used in combat, reaching deep into enemy territory.

They used Army ATACMS to sink multiple ships, including a submarine.

And they’ve done all of this with the precision and determination that comes from relentless training and trust in each other and in their weapon systems.

That is not a rumor.

That is not speculation.

That is the chairman of the joint chiefs telling the world that a ballistic missile built for land warfare just pulled off a submarine kill.

The war zone, one of the most credible open-source military intelligence outlets in the world, confirmed the same story that Haimar’s launchers firing at and the newer precision strike missiles had been systematically dismantling Iran’s naval capability throughout the opening phase of operation epic fury.

The war zone also noted something important.

Because ATAS EMS has no known capability to hit moving targets, the submarine had to have been stationary when it was struck.

It was in port.

And that fact tells you everything you need to know about the state of Iran’s military leadership right now.

Before we go deeper, we have to talk about what Operation Epic Fury actually is.

Because this is not a minor skirmish.

This is a war.

a full-scale historically unprecedented campaign launched on February 28th, 2026 by the United States and Israel.

The strikes began with coordinated hits on Iranian military facilities, nuclear infrastructure, and the country’s senior leadership.

According to Esoff News, more than 40 top leaders of Iran’s government and military were killed in the opening salvos.

The decapitation was immediate and severe.

What followed was a four-phase campaign designed to systematically destroy Iran’s ability to fight back at sea.

First, the buildup.

The United States assembled a massive naval presence in the waters around Iran in the 60 days before the operation began, deploying multiple aircraft carriers and strike groups while gathering intelligence on every Iranian target of value.

Second came the opening blitz, simultaneous strikes against Iran’s air defenses, command networks, and the naval assets that could have retaliated immediately.

Third came the follow-on strikes, targeting peers, ports, and munitions depots, stripping what remained of Iran’s navy of safe harbor and resupply.

And fourth came the sustained campaign, picking off stranded assets at will.

The submarine fell somewhere in phase three or four.

And by the time Sentcom commander Admiral Brad Cooper spoke in a video address on March 5th, he described what had happened in stark terms.

According to Cooper, the United States had struck the most operational Iranian submarine so hard that it now had, in his words, a hole in its side.

He did not say which class of submarine it was, but the satellite imagery spoke for itself.

Images from Planet Labs, a commercial satellite provider, show that one of Iran’s three kilo class submarines, which Iran designates as the Tar class, appeared to be sunk at the Bander Abbas Naval Base as of March 4th.

Imagery from just two days earlier on March 2nd showed the submarine intact and apparently undamaged even after the initial waves of Operation Epic Fury.

Then came March 4th, the submarine was gone.

Cooper spoke on March 5th.

Connect those dots and the picture becomes very clear.

So what exactly is a kilo class submarine? To understand the significance of this strike, you have to understand what the US was dealing with.

The nuclear threat initiative reported in September 2025 that Iran’s Navy commanded a submarine force of up to 30 vessels.

That sounds significant until you realize that 24 of those vessels are mini submarines, small shallow water boats designed for literal operations.

The remaining six are the serious ones.

Three are TAK class boats which are Russianbuilt kiloclass diesel electric submarines repurposed for Iranian service.

These are capable vessels.

They can reach speeds of 17 knots when submerged and they carry six 533mm torpedo tubes along with mine laying capabilities.

The other three are FATE class submarines commissioned in 2019 and 2023 respectively with similar armaments and top speeds ranging between 14 and 23 knots.

Iran had also been pursuing upgrades across all of its submarines to install air independent propulsion systems, a technology that would have extended their underwater endurance dramatically, making them far more dangerous in the confined and strategically critical waters of the Persian Gulf.

That upgrade program is now largely academic.

Now, the United States also took out at least one of the mini submarines.

According to the war zone, Sentcom released imagery confirming the destruction of what appeared to be a Gadier class mini sub.

But that strike was conducted differently using AGM114 Hellfire missiles fired while the boat was sitting in port.

A Hellfire kill against a stationary target.

Impressive, but conventional.

What makes the Kiloclass strike different? What makes it the headline of this entire naval campaign is the weapon used.

Attacus is not a hellfire.

It’s a ballistic missile, a surfacetos surface artillery system.

The fact that it put a hole in a full-size submarine is either a testament to extraordinary planning, extraordinary intelligence, or extraordinary Iranian incompetence.

In this case, it appears to be all three.

Let’s talk about how this was actually possible.

Because this is the question that every military analyst has been wrestling with since Kane’s press conference.

Submarines are among the most difficult targets on Earth to locate and destroy.

Even when you have weapons specifically designed to hunt them, torpedoes, anti-ubmarine rockets, depth charges, finding a submerged submarine is an extraordinarily difficult problem.

You need sonar.

You need hunter killer submarines or maritime patrol aircraft.

You need time and patience and luck.

ATAS CMS has none of those capabilities.

It is a dumb weapon in the anti-ubmarine context.

A very fast, very powerful, very accurate weapon against fixed ground targets, but completely blind to anything beneath the water’s surface.

The answer then is simple.

Iran’s submarine was not beneath the water’s surface.

It was sitting in port docked at Bandar Abbas right there on satellite imagery in plain sight within range of US bases in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates and Iran left it there.

This is not a minor oversight.

This is a strategic catastrophe.

Bandar Abbas is Iran’s main naval base.

It sits directly on the straight of Hormuz.

Every military planner on Earth knows it.

Every intelligence agency watches it.

And when Operation Epic Fury began dismantling Iran’s military from the inside out, someone in Thrron’s chain of command, a chain of command that had just lost over 40 of its senior leaders in the first hours of the operation, failed to give the order to get that submarine to sea, failed to disperse it, failed to hide it, left it sitting in a port that US forces could reach with ATAXMS, with cruise missiles, with fighter jets, with bombers, with virtually any weapon in the American arsenal.

The US had dozens of options for this strike.

It chose the most audacious one.

It used a land attack ballistic missile to put a hole in a submarine because it could.

Because Iran handed it the opportunity.

That decision, or rather that failure to make a decision, is a direct consequence of the decapitation strikes that opened operation epic fury.

When you kill 40 senior military and government leaders in the first hours of a conflict, you shatter the command and control infrastructure that keeps a military force functioning.

Orders don’t get issued.

Assets don’t get repositioned.

Subordinate commanders freeze waiting for direction that never comes.

And submarines sit in port waiting to be found.

Now, let’s take a step back and put this moment into the broader context of everything the United States has achieved in these opening weeks of Operation Epic Fury.

The numbers here are staggering.

According to reporting by Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, by March 11th, the US military had claimed to have sunk approximately 60 of Iran’s naval vessels.

That figure includes a pair of Mojiclass frigots, significant capable ships that represented real naval power.

It includes hundreds of Iran’s fast boats, the small attack craft Iran has relied on for decades to harass merchant shipping in the Straight of Hormuz.

And according to a Pentagon briefing reported by HNGN, by March 19th, the scale of the operation had reached a scope that is almost difficult to comprehend.

US forces had struck over 7,000 targets inside Iran.

Every submarine Iran possessed was destroyed.

Over 120 of its naval vessels had been sunk or put out of action.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegth summarized it with a line that will likely be quoted for years.

We’ve decided to share the ocean with Iran.

Hegsathth said, “We’ve given them the bottom half.

” And then there was the torpedo.

On March 4th, in the Indian Ocean south of Sri Lanka, an American fast attack submarine fired a single Mark 48 torpedo at the Iris Dana, a Maass Iranian frigot that had been conducting naval drills in the Bay of Bengal.

According to military times, which confirmed the strike, the Iris Dena had 180 people on board.

32 survivors were later rescued by Sri Lankan naval personnel.

The rest were gone.

General Kaine described what happened in terms that captured the full weight of the moment.

For the first time since 1945, Kain said, “A United States Navy fast attack submarine has sunk an enemy combatant ship using a single Mark 48 torpedo to achieve immediate effect, sending the warship to the bottom of the sea.

This is an incredible demonstration of America’s global reach.

To hunt, find, and kill an outof area deployer is something that only the United States can do at this type of scale.

And Hegth described it with equal bluntness.

Quiet death, he said.

The first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War II.

That is the full picture.

While Iran’s submarines were sitting in port within range of weapons that were never designed to kill them, American submarines were thousands of miles from home, hunting Iranian frigots in the Indian Ocean and sending them to the bottom with single shots.

That contrast, that absolute staggering contrast defines everything you need to know about the military gap between these two forces.

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Now, let’s talk about why eliminating Iran’s submarines was not just a tactical achievement, but a strategic necessity.

Because this was never about humiliation, though there is plenty of that to go around for Tyrron.

This was about controlling one of the most critical waterways on the planet, the straight of Hormuz, 21 miles wide at its narrowest point.

Two miles of usable shipping lane in each direction.

And according to the US Energy Information Administration, roughly 21 million barrels of oil and petroleum products pass through it every single day.

That represents approximately 20% of the entire world’s seaborn oil supply.

For context, about 91% of the crude that flows through the strait goes to Asian markets.

China and India alone account for roughly half of that volume.

Japan and South Korea take most of the rest.

This is not a regional waterway.

This is the jugular vein of the global energy system.

And Iran had been threatening to cut it.

Long before Operation Epic Fury began, Iranian officials had warned repeatedly that if the country came under attack, the strait would be closed.

Those threats were not idle.

The Kiloclass submarines that Iran operated were equipped with mine laying capabilities.

A single Iranian submarine operating covertly in the approaches to the strait could have seated the shipping lanes with mines that would have been nearly impossible to detect and catastrophically dangerous for any vessel attempting a transit.

Add to that the torpedo tubes capable of striking merchant ships that have no means of detecting or defending against submarine attack, and you begin to understand why the destruction of Iran’s submarine capability was listed as a core objective of the operation.

According to the Long War Journal, by March 10th, US forces had already destroyed 16 of Iran’s mine laying vessels.

President Trump later stated that total had exceeded 30 by March 16th.

Every mine layer destroyed, every submarine sunk, every fastboat eliminated was another layer of protection added to the straight.

But the straight remained closed, not because of submarines, but because of the broader conflict, because of the fear of mines already potentially planted because of the insurance market realities that made any transit extraordinarily costly.

According to the 2026 straight of Hormuz crisis entry documented by Wikipedia, by early March, major container shipping companies including Marisque, CMA, CGM, and Hopog Lloyd had suspended all transits through the straight.

Brent crude prices jumped between 10 and 13% in early trading on March 2nd.

War risk insurance premiums for vessels transiting the strait increased by over 400%.

For very large oil tankers, that meant an additional quarter of a million dollars per transit before even factoring in the physical risk.

By April 9th, 230 loaded oil tankers were reported to be waiting inside the Gulf, unable to leave.

The economic consequences have been severe and global.

According to a Goldman Sachs analysis cited by Yahoo Finance, West Texas Intermediate crude surged to over $111 per barrel on April 2nd following President Trump’s prime time address pledging continued military action.

Brent crossed $109 on the same day.

The International Energy Agency labeled this disruption the largest supply shock in history, affecting nearly 20 million barrels per day.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas published research in March estimating that if the closure persisted for three quarters, global real GDP growth in 2026 could fall by 1.

3 percentage points.

That is not a footnote.

That is a recession level shock.

Goldman Sachs strategist Don Striven warned in a published note that critically low supplies of prochemical feed stocks, NAFTA, and liqufied petroleum gas were already developing in Asia with the risk of actual shortages in multiple countries during April.

The human geography of this crisis matters enormously when thinking about why keeping the strait open was worth destroying every submarine Iran had.

Countries like Japan, South Korea, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, nations with hundreds of millions of people, depend on Gulf energy for a substantial share of their import supply.

Pakistan sources more than 81% of its oil and gas from the region.

Taiwan imports roughly 40% of its energy from the Gulf.

The world was not just watching Operation Epic Fury.

The world was watching the energy math of its own economies change in real time.

So when US forces eliminated Iran’s Kiloclass submarine at Bandar Abbas, they were not simply scoring a military point.

They were removing a weapon that could have turned the straight of Hormuz from a dangerous but potentially navigable waterway into an impassible minefield.

A single submarine laying mines in those two mile wide shipping lanes could have forced the closure of the straight for months.

Regardless of what happened on land or in the air above Iran, the consequences would have made the current disruption look manageable by comparison.

That is the full strategic logic.

Destroy the mine layers, destroy the fast boats, destroy the submarines, create the conditions for a straight that can eventually be reopened.

The US has paid that price and it has done so with a combination of weapons that no military planner in Thran, those who were still alive, would have put on the threat assessment checklist.

Nobody modeled ATAMS as an anti-ubmarine weapon.

Nobody wared the scenario where artillery missiles fired from Gulf bases would sink a kiloass boat docked at Iran’s premier naval installation.

But here we are.

The impossible shot was taken.

The impossible shot connected.

There is one more dimension to this story that deserves serious attention and it is the future dimension.

Because what the United States has demonstrated in Operation Epic Fury is not just a victory over Iran.

It is a demonstration of capability that every military planning staff on the planet is studying right now.

The use of ATACMS and the newer precision strike missile, which as General Kaine noted, made its first ever combat appearance in this operation in the anti-ship role, is a preview of how the US intends to fight at sea in future high-end conflicts.

The war zone reported that this is exactly the preview the US military has been working toward using ballistic missiles from land-based artillery platforms to strike naval targets at extended ranges as part of what would be required in a Pacific conflict with China.

PRSM, which has significantly greater range than ATCMS, reaching well beyond 300 kilometers, offers the ability to hold a much larger swath of ocean at risk from any given launch position.

The lesson being absorbed right now in Beijing, in Moscow, in Pyongyang, is that American surface ships, submarines, and aircraft are not the only threats to naval power.

American artillery properly employed is now in the anti-ship business too.

And the lesson being absorbed in Thran or what remains of its strategic thinking apparatus is even more fundamental.

You cannot hide your most valuable assets in a port that your adversary can reach with nearly any weapon in its inventory and expect those assets to survive.

The strategic incompetence on display here was not just a tactical failure.

It was a symptom of an institution whose brain had been removed in the opening hours of the conflict.

The decapitation strategy worked.

The command paralysis that followed cost Iran its submarine force, its surface fleet, and its ability to use the Strait of Hormuz as a strategic weapon.

The Solmani, the Iranian Navy’s flagship corvette named for the IRGC general killed in a US drone strike in January 2020, was sunk in the straight of Hormuz by US forces.

Hegs confirmed that kill with characteristic bluntness.

Looks like pus got him twice, hegth said.

The Iris McCran, a converted tanker that served as Iran’s forward base ship capable of supporting helicopters and special operations forces, was struck at Bandar Abbas and photographed on fire from satellite imagery as early as March 2nd.

The Iris Shahed Bagari, a merchant vessel converted into a drone carrier with a nearly 600 foot runway, described as the only ship in Iran’s fleet with a ski jump ramp for launching larger drones, was struck by Sentcom on February 28th in the Persian Gulf and reported to be sinking by March 3rd, asset by asset, base by base, platform by platform.

Iran’s naval capability was systematically erased.

By March 16th, Admiral Cooper told reporters that the US had destroyed over 100 Iranian naval vessels.

And all of this was accomplished with weapons that weren’t supposed to be able to do it.

Attack MS was never designed for this.

PRSM was brand new to combat.

A fast attack submarine used a single torpedo to sink a frigot in the Indian Ocean for the first time since the Second World War.

The US military showed up to this fight with every tool available and then used those tools in ways that no one had publicly anticipated.

The story of the Iranian submarine is ultimately the story of the entire naval dimension of Operation Epic Fury.

It is a story about what happens when a military force with a command structure still intact with clear objectives with multi-dommain assets with the intelligence to find every target and the precision to destroy it meets a force whose leadership was decapitated on day one.

The kilo class submarine that sat at Bandar Abbas on March 2nd and was resting on the seabed by March 4th was not just a warship.

It was a symbol.

a symbol of everything that Iran’s navy was supposed to be and everything it turned out not to be.

And in the weeks and months ahead, as the world watches to see whether the Straight of Hormuz will fully reopen, as oil markets gyate and shipping companies recalculate their risk models, as military planners from Washington to Beijing pour over the afteraction reports of this operation, one image will keep coming back.

A ballistic missile fired from a launcher on flat ground somewhere in the Gulf region, arcing through the stratosphere and then plunging down onto a submarine that thought it was safe in port.

A weapon that wasn’t supposed to be able to do that.

An impossible shot made possible by the combination of American military capability and Iranian strategic failure.

That is what history was made of in the first two weeks of Operation Epic Fury.

The underwater dimension of this conflict is now largely resolved, but the war continues.

The strait remains contested.

The economic consequences are still unfolding.

And there are still targets inside Iran, underground targets buried beneath concrete and rock that the United States has been systematically hunting.

B2 stealth bombers armed with massive ordinance penetrators have been striking Iran’s most hardened bunkers, including its underground missile storage and command infrastructure.

That is a chapter of this story all on its own.

And we’ve covered it in depth right here on World Brief Daily.

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