Invisible, Lethal, Affordable, Unmanned: Reshaping Naval Warfare

The advent of unmanned systems at sea has become a paramount concern for contemporary military planners, rivalling the disruptive impact of drone warfare on land and air. Ukraine has vividly demonstrated this new state of affairs over the past three years, effectively rendering a much larger Russian fleet in the Black Sea insignificant.

Echoing the transformative impacts of the torpedo, submarines, naval air power, and anti-ship missiles, this revolution is now redefining the very foundations of naval technology, strategy, and the balance of power at sea.

This article outlines key naval developments, extrapolates these lessons to other scenarios, and addresses the implications for Western maritime asset allocation, including R&D and shipbuilding programs.

Naval robotics existed before the war in Ukraine, and the United States arguably possessed the most advanced vision and practical programs. The ‘Unmanned Campaign Framework‘ published in 2021 became the foundation for all subsequent thinking in this direction, including for Ukraine. It envisioned a full spectrum of robotic systems for the Navy and Marine Corps, including surface, undersea, aerial, and ground-based platforms. It detailed plans for platforms of various sizes to serve as carriers for strike, anti-submarine, and mine warfare. It also called for unmanned aerial vehicles to perform strategic reconnaissance, air-to-air refueling, and logistics, while ground vehicles were to be developed as carriers for MLRS, cargo transport, and engineering support. However, this comprehensive program failed to fully address one-way reconnaissance and strike platforms. Furthermore, it did not account for surface platforms capable of carrying small attack UAVs and other armaments for destroying surface and air targets.

It is worth noting that Russia had a number of projects in terms of unmanned naval warfare, including the French-made USVs Inspector Mk2 and Iskatel, the undersea vehicle Galtel, and ongoing integration work for the Orlan-10 and Forpost UAVs into their fleet structure. Yet, like many Western countries, their programs were too slow and failed to anticipate kamikaze USVs, and these efforts were not appropriately funded until Russia found itself in significant operational trouble in 2022.

To be clear, the role of unmanned warfare during the most publicized naval engagement of the Ukraine war was initially zero, with Ukrainian drone ISR assets failing to appear at the right time and the right place. The Russian flagship Moskva was hit by a Neptune anti-ship missile, a weapon of the same heritage that devastated the British Navy during the 1982 Falklands conflict. In many other actions during the first phase of the war, aerial drones were involved exclusively in a conventional ISR role, providing extremely valuable intelligence, but nothing beyond that. The true unmanned innovation began much later, when it became necessary to strike the large and reasonably competent Russian Navy, oil and gas rigs, and other land-based assets far from Ukrainian bases.

Consequently, Ukrainian forces are now fielding an asymmetric unmanned force capable of hitting any naval asset in the Black Sea. Systems like Magura and Sea Baby operate with a stealth and lethality that resembles that of submarine warfare, where an invisible hunter uses a torpedo or a guided missile to destroy targets, yet their versatility and the sheer scale of threats they pose exceed those of submarines. Some variants are also equipped with machine guns or rocket launchers, electronic warfare modules, and even short-range surface-to-air missiles capable of engaging nearby aircraft. They are remarkably cheap and easy to produce, making them comparable to the naval carrier aviation of World War II, which rendered the capital ships of that era entirely obsolete.

Unmanned naval platforms do not replace guided missiles or torpedoes; rather, they enhance their lethality by allowing them to be carried closer to the target and launched at the most opportune moment without any risk to the human operators.

The threat to all modern capital ships, including aircraft carriers, from naval drones is absolutely real. For instance, Cold War-era heavy anti-ship missiles, such as the Soviet Kh-22 designed to strike American carriers, typically carried a 500 kg to 1,000 kg conventional warhead. Today, the payload of the Sea Baby can reach up to 850 kg of explosives, highlighting the readily available disruptive potential. Coupled with a speed of around 40 knots and a low visibility profile, these USVs represent a substantial probability of a successful hit, especially in swarm attacks.

Ukraine’s rapid development and deployment of these systems can be attributed to three key factors: access to critical Western technologies; extensive use of commercial hardware and open-source software components; and support by a highly motivated domestic computer science and naval engineering workforce. Starlink deserves a special mention: it enables unrivalled beyond-line-of-sight control, and its performance significantly outpaces that of competing services like Eutelsat OneWeb, SES, Viasat, and Inmarsat. Yet, lingering doubts about Starlink’s management make that dependency a serious and still not alleviated concern.

Ukraine’s innovation offers vital lessons that must be intelligently adapted to different operational environments and strategic contexts to be effective.

First of all, in terms of ongoing conflict with Russia, it is necessary to acknowledge that the Russian Navy is getting better in terms of countering Ukrainian unmanned forces, with many attacks lately failing to reach their targets. Russians are clearly learning on the sea just like they are learning in the air, perhaps a bit slower, as their loss of aircraft and continuous damage to oil rigs and port facilities demonstrate. This is a normal tug of war, and a sign for Ukraine to continue its innovation drive.

In a hypothetical Mediterranean scenario, a potential conflict between Turkey and Israel may soon erupt in relatively open seas. Both sides are known champions of unmanned warfare, and their operations will certainly involve the integrated use of unmanned aircraft and maritime systems, strikes on enemy ships at bases, and extensive 24/7 use of long-range loitering munitions, autonomous mine and countermine activity. Their large, crewed warships will be confined to their respective coastal areas, forced to launch missiles at maximum ranges, possibly from inside their own bases. Even Israeli submarines armed with long-range cruise missiles may find their covert deployment and long-range strike potential challenged, as very few safe areas may exist due to the presence of stealthy, robotic reconnaissance and strike vehicles that can track and attack submarines in advance, including underwater.

The recently announced Turkish sea-skimming drone Talay is an ekranoplane, a hybrid between a surface vessel and an aircraft. Despite some visually impressive features, such technology is both more expensive and less practical than it appears. The device’s flight altitude is only a few meters above the water, and its relatively low speed makes it vulnerable to modern anti-aircraft weapons.

The Baltic Sea scenario will be markedly different. Immediately before an active conflict, both sides are expected to prioritize blocking enemy forces and preventing their deployment from bases. Here, the most effective tools will be unmanned surface and underwater vehicles that can covertly lay active minefields for the Russian fleet at the entrances to the Baltic Sea, and for NATO fleets on the expected exit routes from the Gulf of Finland and near bases in Baltiysk and Kronstadt. In addition, Russia may attempt to disrupt European merchant marine traffic, adapting tactics from its Black Sea experience and demonstrating a strong learning curve on land and air. While NATO possesses a significant advantage in long-range airborne ISR platforms such as the Predator and Global Hawk, none of the European NATO member states have yet trained and deployed the required quantities of unmanned reconnaissance and strike maritime systems. Moreover, their ability to defend against highly probable Russian onslaughts of Shaheed-like UAVs is questionable.

The Indo-Pacific scenarios may involve China attempting to capture Taiwan, enforce its claims in the South China Sea, or extend its sphere of influence 1500 km or more east of its coast. Both the United States and China are actively developing unmanned maritime systems and will rely on them for covert reconnaissance, strikes, delivery of weapons and other materiel, and sabotage. Even though both sides are already building thousands of mid- and long-range aerial drones, the decisive factor will be the timely deployment of numerous small, stealthy unmanned vehicles and their motherships near the enemy’s shores and areas of operations, which will allow them to strike the adversary’s assets such as aircraft carriers, expeditionary ships, and even strategic nuclear submarines right at the beginning of the active phase of the conflict or even preemptively. Based on the Ukrainian experience, the tempo and scale of such operations will overshadow Port Arthur, the Battle of Taranto, or Pearl Harbor, and the damage to both naval assets and critical infrastructure both in the sea and onshore can be absolutely devastating.

A recent military parade in Beijing showcased China’s growing capabilities for underwater robotic warfare: ultra-large underwater vehicles of the AJX-002 and HSU100 types, which, according to image analysis, are similar in size and structural features to the Russian autonomous Poseidon and American Orca vehicles. The presence of such weapons significantly increases China’s ability to conduct aggressive actions in the Indo-Pacific region and create threats to US national interests.

In all these scenarios, unmanned surface and undersea vehicles can (and will be) covertly delivered around the world by converted merchant vessels, similar to the German raiders used in World War II.

Crucially, the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the context of unmanned naval warfare mirrors the trend seen with aerial drones. Edge-deployed AI assists in autonomous target and threat detection, applying relevant tactics accordingly (including swarm coordination). Concurrently, AI applied at the operational and strategic level—on the shore or a mobile control center—summarizes the data from the edge, analyzes the situation, and makes predictions, similar to how the Ukrainian DELTA battle-management system operates for aerial and land warfare today. AI completely changes the entire dynamic of operational art by reducing preparation time and elevating the quality of decisions and eventual operational advantage by an order of magnitude.

Coming back to the ‘Unmanned Campaign Framework‘ and the United States Navy funding priorities, the current administration would do well to focus on the gaps that became evident during the war in Ukraine. Expand the line of surface and underwater unmanned systems, create small-sized, autonomously operating at long distances and relatively inexpensive reconnaissance and strike vehicles to target large surface ships and submarines of potential opponents, while reducing its own reliance on the large capital ships and investing into protecting the existing manned ships by robotic platforms. Recent policy directives and increased funding priorities from the US Department of War indicate a focus on addressing these gaps, signaling a move in the right direction.

While there is valid discussion on the danger of “over-learning” from the Ukraine experience, a much bigger danger comes from ignoring those lessons and protecting both sunk costs of the existing fleets and commercial interests of the established major naval shipbuilders. The US Navy is rapidly testing the capabilities of naval drones during the exercises of tactical formations. Specifically, TF59 (a maritime task force within the U.S. Central Command, established in 2021 to test unmanned systems and AI) and TF66 (a maritime task force within U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa and U.S. Sixth Fleet, established in 2024 to introduce robotic and autonomous systems) are leading this effort. For similar purposes, NATO has created TF-X. However, the question still arises: are the key ideas they are working out correct?

It is fashionable to deride Russia’s predicament in the Black Sea, yet it is not entirely clear whether the United States Navy would fare much better. After all, the Pentagon’s Millennium Challenge 2002 was at once a marvelous and humiliating event. The Red Team commander, retired Marine Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, used low-tech methods (light signals and motorcycle messengers) to relay his plans to Red forces, thereby confusing the ultra-sophisticated Aegis radar system of the inbound Blue Team fleet with a barrage of missiles. Once blinded, speedboats laden with explosives on kamikaze runs swarmed the fleet and struck nineteen ships. The attack took ten minutes and resulted in an estimated 20,000 casualties for a well-equipped and superbly trained Blue Team.

The aircraft carriers and other advanced ships of today are the battleships of WW2, and they should be treated as such in terms of the 80/20 manned/unmanned fleet ratio debate. The needle must move quickly towards investment into robotic systems taking priority, while abandoning building new manned capital ships entirely can make a lot of sense. The primary lesson of the Russian-Ukrainian war is that the only effective answer to the robotic threat is the rapid deployment of an asymmetric counter-force, supplemented by weaponry and training. While the U.S. Navy’s defense against Houthi anti-ship missiles and unmanned surface vessels in March 2025 in the Red Sea demonstrated the potential for success, the long-term strategic imperative remains a radical overhaul.

The emergence of these silent, lethal, and affordable sentinels marks the definitive end of the naval era dominated by massive, crewed capital ships. Nations that cling to legacy doctrine and shipbuilding programs will inevitably find their costly fleets relegated to the role of historical artifacts. The future of maritime security belongs entirely to those who conquer this new, unmanned calculus of power, and that master must be the West.

Fair winds and a full battery!