The transformation of naval warfare by unmanned seaborne drones, primally driven by new technology and the advent of artificial intelligence, is a game-changing new facet of naval warfare that has evolved with incredible speed.
In less than two years, we have seen Ukraine—a country that lost almost all of its traditional naval assets when Russian annexed Crimea—successfully employ seaborne unmanned drone and missile attacks to drive Russia’s powerful Black Sea fleet far away from shore and out of range for their naval missiles to target Ukraine. The proven lethality of these relatively inexpensive unmanned seaborne drones, when in the hands of competent operators, makes this technology such a game-changer for maritime warfare.
For traditional navies, if this new capability is ignored from a defensive point of view, it will be a critical vulnerability, but if embraced and integrated into their offensive arsenal, it will be a significant force multiplier in future wars.
Asymmetric naval warfare is not new
For decades, advanced ballistic and cruise missiles, with hypersonic speeds and increased accuracy, have been the primary threat to naval combatants in wartime. As a result, navies developed sophisticated and expensive defence systems like the US Navy's Aegis weapons system to protect ships against these types of threats. However, at the same time, these systems were, in certain environments, vulnerable to asymmetric threats and tactics developed by both nation-states and terrorist organisations.
As a clear example of this type of threat, on 12 October 2000, a small bomb-laden boat with two suicidal crewmen pulled up alongside the USS Cole during a logistics stop in Aden, Yemen and detonated powerful explosives that tore through the hull. The blast ripped a 40-foot-wide hole at the waterline of the ship, killing 17 US sailors and injuring 40 others.
In the years after that attack, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) played a lead role in further developing asymmetric maritime threats to counter US traditional naval combatants that were on station in the Arabian Gulf. Called by some the "Iranian layered threat," this included fast sea-skimming anti-ship cruise missiles combined with swarms of crewed speedboats armed with machine guns, rockets and missiles along with mini-subs and small boats that deploy naval mines.
The concept was to overwhelm traditional naval ships' defence systems with a barrage of different threats from the air and sea. The concept further evolved with the addition of a prolific cadre of Iranian-developed unmanned aerial drones that were initially used for reconnaissance and ultimately became a new armed component of the Iranian layered threat.
The IRGC then began developing unmanned remote-controlled seaborne drones that would explode on contact. These were called "Explosive Boats" by the Western press, and in 2016, Iran began exporting the key components of these unmanned seaborne drones to the Houthis to use in their fight against Saudi Arabia in Yemen. Although in its early stages of development, it sometimes proved lethal.
On 30 January 2017, a video made public showed an unmanned seaborne drone boat approach and crash into the rear of a Saudi Arabian Navy frigate at high speed, detonating at the waterline just below the flight deck. The attack killed two Saudi Arabian Navy sailors and severely damaged the ship.
This past winter, the Houthis leveraged this technology again when they began their much-publicised assault on commercial shipping transiting the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. At the onset, the Houthis were using barrages of ballistic and cruise missiles along with unmanned aerial drones to conduct their attacks on unarmed commercial shipping.
Despite attempts by coalition navies to counter this threat, the unrelenting nature of these attacks and the risk they posed to merchant mariners and their cargo proved too much for the shipping companies. The result was the rerouting of the lion's share of commercial maritime traffic away from the Suez Canal and around Africa's Cape of Good Hope. This new route added over a week of transit and millions of dollars to shipping costs.
However, as the attacks continued, and the US, UK and a few other nations began to conduct strikes to degrade the Houthis' weapons inventory, the Yemeni militia shifted to air and seaborne unmanned drones. In the end, despite the hundreds of missiles and drones launched over multiple months, these attacks have not had the lethality that would have been expected—especially since most were fired at defenceless commercial ships in transit close to the Yemeni coastline.
In fact, most of the missiles and drones did not reach their target or were intercepted and destroyed by coalition navies. In total, about 30 ships were damaged, but most had only minor damage, with a total of three crew members killed.
