The revolution of driverless vehicles is not limited to the sky and ground. The maritime environment, with its vast spaces and harsh conditions, is witnessing a similar disruption of combat doctrine through Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) and Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs).

1. Surface Combat Shock: Kamikaze USV

The combination of satellite positioning technology, infrared cameras and high-speed hulls has turned small boats into ship killers. Instead of having to build missile destroyers worth billions of dollars, modern combat forces can deploy dozens of USVs carrying hundreds of kilograms of powerful explosives.

The most popular strategy today is “Wolfpack”. Multiple remotely controlled USVs, hundreds of nautical miles from the target, coordinate attacks at the same time on a large warship from many different directions. They are designed with a low profile, moving close to the water surface to avoid the radar of the close-range defense system (CIWS) on enemy warships. When a USV penetrates the air defense net and crashes into the side of the ship, the destructive force from the explosion across the waterline often leads to serious damage, even sinking the most fortified warships.

2. UUV: Undersea Ghosts and Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW)

Below the surface, UUVs are reshaping anti-submarine warfare and ocean intelligence. Unlike manned submarines that require complex life support systems, UUVs can be designed to be more compact, operate in absolute silence and withstand pressure at extreme depths.

  • Mine Warfare: UUV is equipped with high-resolution sonar to map the seabed, detect and neutralize mines remotely, ensuring the safety of maritime routes. At the same time, they can also carry intelligent mines to establish automatic barrier zones.

  • Large Unmanned Submarine (XLUUV): Extremely large underwater vehicle (Extra-Large UUV) prototypes are designed to patrol independently for months. They act as mobile sensor stations, lying in ambush in strategic straits to monitor the sound signals of enemy submarines and automatically send intelligence data to the command center when they surface.

3. Protecting Subsea Platforms

Global telecommunications infrastructure depends on fiber optic cables running under the ocean floor, along with gas and oil pipelines. In asymmetric conflicts, these infrastructures become ideal targets for sabotage attacks to paralyze the economy. The presence of UUV systems continuously patrolling along fiber optic cables is the most feasible solution to early detect activities of cutting off or attaching eavesdropping devices to underground data transmission lines.

4. Technological Bottleneck: The Problem of Underwater Communication

UUV development faces a huge physical barrier: Radio waves (like GPS or Wi-Fi) attenuate extremely quickly and are nearly impossible to transmit through water. UUV control is mainly based on:

  • Acoustic Comm: Similar to how dolphins communicate, but has very low bandwidth, only enough to send coordinates or basic commands, cannot transmit real-time video.

  • Tethered fiber optic cable: Only applicable for close-range diving devices (ROV).

Because of this communication limitation, underwater vehicles are required to possess a much higher level of artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomy than airborne UAVs. The UUV must be able to orient itself using an inertial navigation system, analyze sonar signals to avoid collisions, self-identify targets and make action decisions in a state of complete isolation from the operator for many consecutive days.