It's so odd that in modern America weapons being cheap and practical is often seen as a negative. Have to make sure to fork over a couple million per shot to a defence contractor.
You're comparing apples, bananas, and pineapples while pretending they're all one thing. Switchblades are extremely effective (albeit expensive) anti-personnel (300 model) and anti-armor (600 model) drones. Shaheds are much larger, cheap, low on capabilities, but attritable used to attack fixed positions (e.g., buildings). These are all very different.
I don't understand your point. Switchblades are (roughly) more akin to FPV (300 model) and Vampire drones (600 model) with reapect to size and payloads. Shahed style drones are roughly like like low end cruise missles. Different form factors and different capabilities. All of them are needed, but they're all very different.
Could be a copy of those? They don't look that complicated - tube with explosives, battery, electric motors, some sort of computer/radio control. Not so different to a Shahed in complexity.
It's not impossible. Iran has connections with China, who is great at designing and manufacturing UUVs.
That said, a UUV fleet would have downsides for Iran. It's expensive, dependent on imports and an overmatch for swarm-style attacks. Attack boats are a closer fit for the "cheap/attritable" tactics we see used with Shaheds.
I think you're overestimating the complexity of small unmanned subs. Drug traffickers are building _manned_ subs now in South American jungles.
You just need a body (plastic tube), batteries, motors, and a computer. Maybe with a "range extender" gas engine. Everything can be COTS, and Iran certainly can manufacture occasional custom components.
After all, it can manufacture centrifuges for uranium enrichment.
Maybe! Most of those unmanned narcosubs are cut-down speedboats hulls, to my knowledge. The truly watertight/submerged ones are few and far between; it's a lot of investment for marginal decrease in observability.
My money is still on low-observable attack craft, or a high-low mix that deprioritizes submersibles. Iran has an impressive panopoly but also has casus belli to lie out their nose. If Iran does have fully submersable UUVs, I'd expect them to be saved for a direct confrontation with the US Navy, not tankers.
I could definitely be wrong though, I don't have any insider info to work with here.
I think it is indeed more likely that they used a low-profile boat, but I won't discount a full submersible. Or maybe a combination: a low-profile boat that uses a regular outboard gas engine to get close to the target, and then dives and attacks like a torpedo.
> If Iran does have fully submersable UUVs, I'd expect them to be saved for a direct confrontation with the US Navy, not tankers.
I don't think they can do serious damage to large US Navy vessels.
Shaheeds are aerodynamic clones of the Israeli Harpy SEAD drone, which in turn were based on the German Dornier DAR of the 1980s.
Compared to the loitering anti-radar DAR, the Shaheed is electronically extremely simple and not much more advanced than the WW2 V-1.
The fact that Russia started producing Shaheeds reflects more on the poor state of Russian industry than any sophistication of Iranian technology.