What could be the mysterious jellyfish drones a downed American pilot allegedly saw over Iran?

The F-15E Strike Eagle pilot who was shot down over Iran says he saw a jellyfish-like drone swarm or potentially even a flying minefield of drones operating in Iranian airspace shortly before his fighter was hit by a surface-to-air missile.

And that’s got a lot of people asking: What kind of drones did he see, and how has Iran managed to keep them a secret all this time.

The first thing to address is the pilot’s account. His name has not been disclosed but these reports did not come directly from him; instead, they were relayed to journalists at CNN by unnamed sources they claim have knowledge of the matter.

CNN also reports that the pilot’s claims were met with mixed responses within the American intelligence community. This was partly because the pilot suffered a concussion during the ejection and because this was the second time he had been shot down over a span of only about five weeks, which certainly means he was going through very significant stress.

These factors have been enough for some to dismiss the claims as the pilot simply misremembering something that he saw in the split second before being hit by the missile, like a flock of birds or a group of kamikaze drones flying toward far-flung targets.

But, let’s assume for now that this report is entirely factual.

According to CNN, the pilot saw “multiple Iranian drones hovering in the air, moving as one, in a formation that resembled a jellyfish.”

Related: How a kamikaze drone that is just ‘good enough’ is changing warfare

There is a difference between a drone swarm and a large number of drones flying in close quarters toward a target. As Thomas Newdick and Tyler Rogoway pointed out for The Warzone, drone swarms are interconnected via datalink and work cooperatively in real time to maximize their effect on the battlefield. That is not the same as a big group of independent, unconnected drones all flying toward the same target at the same time, even though it might look the same.

Iran operates drones that are capable of the latter, but as far as we know, it doesn’t have any systems capable of real swarming. Russia and China, however, both do, and both countries are known to be providing military hardware to Iran.

This jellyfish drone swarm was also described as “Multiple drones interconnected and moving as one with smaller drones below the bigger drones like legs.”

This description closely resembles the types of drones people reported seeing over military bases in and around Langley, Virginia in December 2023. Those drone swarms were described as including a larger fixed-wing drone being orbited by smaller quadcopters. Similar formations were also reported over Colorado in 2019 and 2020.

A graphic displaying the drones witnesses reported seeing over Langley Air Force Base in 2023, next to a graphic of an F-15 Strike Eagle. (Sandboxx News)

There are lots of reasons for drones to coordinate in such a manner. Drones armed with explosives could loiter over a defended area, taking their cues from a larger, sensor-bearing aircraft to close with any inbound aircraft – though, this is something that’s never actually been demonstrated, as far as we know, and does not seem to have been what brought that Strike Eagle down.

Another reason you might see drones operating in this manner is to extend the sensor reach of the larger drone at the formation’s center, using that larger craft to manage the swarm while serving as a communications node, sensor relay, and potentially even as a navigation anchor in GPS-denied environments.

We can’t say what the Strike Eagle pilot saw, but if this jellyfish drone swarm was really operating in the Iranian skies, it was likely not Iranian or even Iranian-operated. With the U.S. and Israel actively scouring the Iranian landscape for ballistic missile launchers and surface-to-air missile batteries, it’s more likely that the pilot saw undisclosed drone-based tools operated by American or Israeli forces.

Feature Image: A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft arrives at RAF Lakenheath, England Jan. 15, 2025. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Alexander Vasquez)

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