Why Unmanned Systems are Having a Maritime Moment

Effective Usage of Unmanned Systems is Dependent on…

Oceans are vast, there are hundreds of thousands of vessels at sea, and security threats rapidly evolve and change. With too much sea, ground, and air to cover, and limited resources available to law enforcement and defense agencies, achieving effective and actionable maritime domain awareness (MDA) is daunting.

Manned assets – in the sea and air – have been the primary way to monitor maritime activities for decades. But these missions are inherently limited in scale and duration, due to concerns about safety and cost. The recent shift toward increasingly relying upon and utilizing unmanned systems (also frequently called “autonomous systems”) for MDA has been a natural response to overcoming the constraints and limited scalability of manned missions.

Unmanned systems offer numerous advantages, but they also come with a set of challenges that may compromise effectiveness. Whether these assets can be moved around during their missions, like drones, or are stationary, like drifters, their effective usage is totally dependent upon knowing both where and when to deploy them. 

Additionally, autonomous systems enable greater coverage of the seas, but they also produce a sea of data that creates a major challenge.

The Race to Cover the Most Ground

Total, 100% coverage of the seas 100% of the time is impossible. But threats are continuously shifting and emerging, demanding attention and constant monitoring: 

• The great power competition and illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the South China Sea
• Houthi and Iranian disruptions in the Red Sea
• The global network of narcotics smuggling
• Arms trafficking in the Caribbean
• Russia’s dark and gray fleets evading sanctions
• Oil smuggling
• Much more… 

In light of increasing risks worldwide, national governments are shifting efforts and resources to fund unmanned capabilities to enable surveillance and monitoring.The global unmanned systems market size is expected to grow by 15.7% from 2023 to 2032. In 2022, the market’s size was projected to reach a valuation of $16.3 billion. By 2032, the valuation is set to reach $34.16 billion.

The U.S. Department of Defense is set to invest more than $2.6 billion in unmanned aircraft systems (UAS)  in 2023, with at least 29 programs fully dedicated to the procurement of UAS. The UK is expected to spend $5.8 billion by 2024. Globally, increasing the use of unmanned systems for combat and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions drives the unmanned systems market growth. Defense forces are highly invested in developing and procuring autonomous systems, to reduce the risks of soldier casualties and enhance accuracy during combat operations.

Unmanned’s Maritime Moment & How to Meet It

Unmanned and autonomous systems are having a moment. They have been around, in scale, for at least two decades, yet as the data above shows, there is unprecedented momentum around unmanned capabilities. This is only partially due to their inherent advantages. The core driver of this trend is the dramatic gap between the manufacturing power of the West and East.

China is building ships faster than the U.S. and its navy is expanding faster than any other navy on the planet. The manufacturing power and pace of the East, led by China, is creating an unbalanced battlefield, which holds true for surface, airborne, and underwater vehicles. Benefits of unmanned technology aside, the propulsion of unmanned systems is mainly a numbers game. 

An arms race that focuses on hardware (who has the most drones, aircraft, or ships) is more difficult to win now than ever before for the West, given the dizzying pace of military growth in China and other Eastern countries. 

Instead of an incessant and ineffectual hardware race, strategic advantage can be achieved by the West through being smarter and more agile. A shift from trying to have the largest number of weapons and the most expensive ones, to cheaper swarms that can be deployed cost-effectively and quickly. This means incorporating technology, specifically artificial intelligence (AI), to gain an edge. 

The more hardware that is developed, the more it is understood that battlefield victory likely depends on who has the best common operating picture to manage and coordinate unmanned/autonomous and manned assets. 

Possessing the most robust data analytics tool to scan an endless churn of data from numerous feeds to make faster and more informed decisions is critical as are systems that create high-quality security leads.

Windward’s NEW white paper, The Two Factors that Unlock the Effectiveness of Unmanned & Autonomous Systems, can help you meet this important moment! It highlights the benefits of unmanned technology, provides two critical factors for maximizing unmanned tech, and explains how to create common operation pictures. 

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