Inside a massive warehouse located at a US Navy base in Bahrain, a tiny island country in the Persian Gulf, there are nearly a dozen drones on display.
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They come in different shapes, sizes, and capabilities. Some resemble conventional speedboats, while others look like they could have been plucked right from a science fiction movie. They are used for reconnaissance or to gather intelligence, and, when needed, they can be quite lethal.
These drones belong to a Navy task force that's working to merge unmanned systems and artificial intelligence with maritime operations across the Middle East. It's an increasingly important task as wars become more and more reliant on autonomous platforms.
Known as Task Force 59, this initiative is the first of its kind for the Navy. It is intended to give the US greater surveillance and deterrence options in this volatile region where American and coalition forces are finding themselves facing threats from multiple of adversaries.
Drones help "augment our traditional combatant force," said Capt. Colin Corridan, the Task Force 59 commodore. For commanders, this gives them "the option to take on greater operational risk while maintaining a tactical and strategic advantage." Put more simply, they don't necessarily have to put their personnel in danger to get the tough jobs done.
Task Force 59 was established in September 2021 by US Naval Forces Central Command, or NAVCENT, and is headquartered at Naval Support Activity Bahrain, a major US base in the Gulf state that hosts the Navy's Fifth Fleet.
Business Insider recently visited the installation, where, for over two and a half years, Task Force 59 has experimented with its diverse arsenal of drones and employed these systems in exercises and missions around Middle Eastern waters.
Since its inception, Task Force 59 has conducted at least 34 bilateral and multilateral exercises, and operated its drones at sea for more than 60,000 hours across the vast Middle Eastern waterways, Corridan said in emailed remarks to BI earlier this month.
A majority of Task Force 59's drones are unmanned surface vehicles, or USVs, meaning they function with some degree of autonomy at the water's surface.
They vary in size — some are as short as 10 feet long while others push nearly 40 feet in length — but are similarly used for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, or ISR, purposes.
Beyond the USVs, Task Force 59 also operates unmanned underwater and aerial vehicles, UUVs and UAVs, respectively, giving it a wide range of capabilities and options above and below the surface to collect data.