Unmanned maritime vehicles offer the potential for substantial impact and corresponding implications in futuristic maritime operations. Legacy philosophies of naval combat operations are witnessing a transformation in providing the naval commander a more effective and flexible capability to deliver ordnance at sea. The prospect of unmanned platforms offering a capability to destroy high-value maritime and structural assets, ranged with a low cost-to-engagement ratio has much appeal globally.
This briefing will examine the evolution of unmanned maritime platforms, explore global development initiatives and trends.
Transcript
Before we get into the content, here’s a quick overview of what we will be covering over the course of this presentation. I shall start by discussing the emergence of unmanned maritime platforms as an integral asset in a country’s maritime inventory, for intelligence gathering and ordnance deliverance missions. At Janes we have coverage of this domain split across Janes Unmanned Maritime Vehicles, which provides data on general unmanned naval platforms designed for operations such as mine warfare and survey, and Janes Naval Weapons, which picks up one-way vehicles designed to deliver an integral kinetic effect. Next, the presentation will outline different types of unmanned platforms, their advantages, and countermeasures, followed by a discussion on global efforts at a macro level. Thereafter, I’ll discuss concerns on technology proliferation. An analysis of global trends in the development of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) will be undertaken before concluding the webinar with some final thoughts.
The success of Ukrainian maritime drones in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict reignited a relatively dormant vertical of low-cost uncrewed expendable maritime platforms being exploited in war, in variance to traditional ordnance delivery methods. A country’s order of battle (ORBAT) no longer seemed to be the sole yardstick to measure the success probability in a conflict. This translated to a shift in naval concept of operations (CONOPS) globally and acted as a catalyst to renew global interest in the unmanned platforms vertical of asymmetric warfare.
USVs and UUVs have varied structural designs aligned with their role for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) activities, combat operations and anti-submarine warfare activities or as a non-recoverable attack vehicle. In terms of size, large unmanned surface vehicles (LUSVs) measure 200–300 feet in length with a full load displacement of 1,000–2,000 tonnes, almost the size of a corvette. Medium unmanned surface vehicles (MUSVs) measure less than 200 feet in length with a displacement of less than 500 tonnes corresponding to the size of a patrol craft. Extra-large unmanned undersea vehicles (XLUUVs) are UUVs with a diameter of more than 2 meters.
Unmanned vehicles or UVs score over conventional manned maritime platforms in terms of cost to manufacture and procurement costs as, in the absence of an integrated operator, UVs leapfrog the design requirements of support equipment and space to incorporate humans.
The absence of human operators also offsets the risk of mortality while exploiting the UVs for dangerous and suicidal missions. UVs are suitable for long range uninterrupted missions without the rider of physical endurance and facilities required by a manned platform. Lastly, in terms of ordnance delivery capabilities, UVs can be armed with mission specific modular payloads to ensure maximum operational effectiveness.
The surge in development of unmanned attack vehicles and their widespread acquisition by world navies and non-state actors in the future imposes the necessity of integrating adaptive countermeasures doctrines. The first and foremost element in offsetting an attack is early detection, identification, and classification of the incoming threat. While this can be undertaken by onboard sensors; however, since USVs have a low freeboard and a reduced radar cross-section area along with being highly manoeuvreable, detection by shipboard sensors has been a challenge. Also, the concealed transit of UUVs contest acoustic detection by minimal radiation of self-noise. As an early warning measure, aerial surveillance has proved to be effective. Once detected and classified, engagement of the UVs can be undertaken by hard-kill and soft-kill measures. Hard-kill measures will involve engagement with deck guns, close-
in weapon systems like the Phalanx 1B with a forward-looking infrared system, UAVs, and high-energy lasers, while soft-kill measures will comprise jammers, high-power microwaves, smoke screens, propeller tangling nets, and the deployment of decoys. Maritime platforms underway can carry out evasive high-speed manoeuvres.
Moving on to the Asia-Pacific region:
The Chinese Academy of Sciences and China Shipbuilding Industry Corp (CSIC) are the two major suppliers of USVs/UUVs in China. The 912 Project at the Shenyang Institute ofAutomation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences is developing artificial intelligence (AI)- driven UUVs that also include XLUUVs. CSIC is developing a range of USVs and UUVs for mine warfare and ISR missions. Some prominent UV programmes include the A2000, Marine Lizard, HSU001, and Zhu Hai Yun USV A2000 is a medium-sized combat USV designed to launch surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), support vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) operations, and is capable of being networked to launch smaller unmanned vessels for a swarm attack.
The Marine Lizard amphibious combat USV has been designed as an autonomous mobile weapons platform that can support combat and logistics operations. The HSU001 is an LUUV designed for long-range cruising. The HSU001 has retractable masts fitted with electro-optical and electronic intelligence (ELINT) payloads. HSU001 is likelyin service with PLAN.
Additional programmes under way include Zhu Hai Yun, a USV designed to carry multiple unmanned aerial and naval systems and development of XLUUVs. Global acceptance of the necessity to develop UVs also raises a concern for proliferation of this technology to non-state actors. As an example, the Ansar Allah (also known as the Houthis), have carried out several USV attacks in the past, the most recent being against a commercial vessel in June 2024 off the Red Sea coast. This capability could percolate into other non-state armed groups and hence there is a need to adopt a legal framework incorporating transfer of technology through treaties and internationally adopted guidelines.
Having discussed some of the prominent global unmanned vehicle developments, I would now like to highlight future trends and the expected growth of the unmanned sea vehicles market. The USV market projection for 2023–32 shows a 24.2% rise in the overall market value. The United States leads the unmanned sea vehicles market with an estimated market value of USD11.86 billion between 2023 and 2032, accounting for 53% of the global market. Growth is attributed to significant funding requested in FY 2024–29 for procurement of nine LUSVs and three XLUUVs. The US is followed by Japan and China at USD2.33 billion and USD1.8 billion respectively in the same period. In the future, multifunction platforms will be the key spending area, accounting for 22.3% of the total market requirement, followed by mine warfare and intelligence/surveillance platforms accounting for 22.2% and 18.1% market share respectively.
Development of weaponised UUVs is expected to pick pace in the near future. This would also translate to focus on improving C4ISR sensors and payloads to overcome technical and tactical challenges in subsurface domain operations. In addition, the use of AI to facilitate multimission operations is envisaged to be an integral part of UUV development plans. Co-ordinated missions between manned and unmanned platforms are likely to be an integral component of future CONOPS.
Increased regional and geopolitical conflicts in the Asia-Pacific region will trigger growth of unmanned platforms. The expanding US market and potential increase in non US market are expected to drive the total growth over the next 10 years.
The disruptive potential of sea mines witnessed in regional conflicts will be a catalyst for development of anti-mine unmanned maritime platforms and is expected to be a key spending area for navies around the world.
Legacy unmanned vehicles instituted a basic architectural design with limited scope for operational exploitation. This however changed with significant technological advancement in hull design and material, propulsion, navigation, communication, ISR, AI, and payload capacities, which allowed UVs to be equivalently effective in littoral waters and prolonged deployment in the high seas. Unmanned maritime platforms have proved to be efficient and lethal while being difficult to detect. Swarm attacks have demonstrated the capability to overwhelm onboard sensors while challenging crew alertness.
Looking forward, as a prospect to integrate unmanned maritime vehicles as an integral vertical in a navy’s ORBAT, UVs may well be exploited in diverse fleet manoeuvres and deployments as part of a distributed fleet architecture synchronising with manned platforms. In terms of technology, futuristic AI-enabled UVs could evolve to be capable of independent tactical decision making without man-in-the loop operations.
However, there are issues which need to be addressed before integrating unmanned maritime vehicles in the fleet. The adherence of unmanned platforms to the convention on international regulations for preventing collisions at sea is a challenge. This can however be overcome by development of algorithms to facilitate maritime domain awareness and engagement in manoeuvres, which adhere to ‘rules of the road’ and follow the global regulatory framework.
Second, there is a danger of escalation in case an unmanned maritime platform inadvertently collides and destroys a nation’s maritime or structural asset.
I would like to conclude this webinar by noting that maritime warfare is staring at a paradigm shift in execution of operations and future naval ORBATs are expected to lean towards uncrewed technology as an apex combat system to complement existing ordnance delivery measures at sea. Unmanned vehicles will provide a distributed force structure to maritime countries, armed with the capability to have a modular payload to facilitate diverse ISR and ordnance delivery deployments.
