Drone warfare is expanding from the skies to the seas, and the United States must be ready. The Russia-Ukraine war, which has become synonymous with aerial drone warfare, has now featured the “first naval battle in history between unmanned boats,” according to the Ukrainian Navy. On September 14, 2026, a Ukrainian Sargan 300 drone boat fired at and sank a Russian unmanned surface vessel (USV) in the Black Se. This is a significant milestone in warfare’s rapid evolution. 

Unmanned naval platforms are also starting to see combat beyond the battlefield laboratory of Eastern Europe. During the Iran conflict, in July 2026, three American one-way attack USVs struck an Iranian submarine and naval facility, the first-ever American use of USVs to strike enemy targets. Just weeks prior, a USV rescued two U.S. Army pilots from nearby waters after an Iranian drone struck their helicopter. 

Nor are recent U.S. unmanned successes confined to the Middle East. They have occurred right in America’s backyard. Reporting from August 5, 2026, indicated that an American USV recently detected, tracked, and helped intercept a U.S. bound narcotics shipment worth $81 million in the Caribbean Sea. 

Now, building on these recent tactical successes requires accelerated U.S. efforts, not complacency. Greater strategic imagination is the first step. The Pentagon needs to think both bigger and smaller about unmanned military platforms. Bigger thinking means integrating them into a single network with manned assets and human warfighters. Smaller thinking means complementing high-end platforms with inexpensive, expendable ones. Today, the U.S. military does neither at scale. 

The American military’s recent success with autonomous platforms, along with the unmanned advances of partners like Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan, offers three main lessons for the Pentagon’s next unmanned leap forward. 

First, expendability has its own currency. Ukraine has achieved outsized battlefield effects with lower-end, expendable unmanned platforms, as well as Iran and Russia. This is true for sea-based autonomous systems too. However, one-way attack USVs, like those American forces used against Iran, remain in short supply. That shortfall stems from bureaucratic, not technological, reasons. The Pentagon applies the same rigid standards to unmanned, expendable platforms as to high-end, manned surface combatants. Yet overly rigorous testing and evaluation inhibit production at the pace the battlefield demands. 

Second, as the recent USV rescue of U.S. aviators from the Arabian Gulf demonstrates, unmanned platforms offer more than strike or surveillance functions. In fact, those lower-tech functions may have a greater upside, involving less rigorous testing and faster deployment timetables. Take, for example, the since-axed UCLASS program to build carrier-based surveillance-and-strike drones. Due to a lengthy requirements list, the project became unsustainable. That is subtraction by addition. Now, the Navy is developing the MQ-25 Stingray, an unmanned aerial refueler and a simpler platform meeting a fundamental need. 

Unmanned platforms offer additional unconventional utility, such as logistics resupply and forward basing. For example, an Israeli firm is exploring turning commercial ships into camouflaged floating drone bases. Another has developed heavy-lift drones to move materiel to the battlefield. These concepts address a primary challenge America would face in a future Pacific war: contested logistics across a broad geographic area far from the homeland and near the enemy’s surf and turf. Fortunately, unmanned systems could ease those logistical headaches by offering greater concealment, dispersal, and flexibility, while preserving manpower. 

Another potential evolution is now on the horizon: unmanned amphibious landings. A Ukrainian startup has a prototype autonomous amphibious vehicle that resembles a small truck. It can carry drones, travel underwater with a low radar profile, and drive onto enemy shores. The United States, by acquiring that capability, could facilitate a naval version of Operation Spiderweb, where Ukrainian drones hidden inside cargo trucks infiltrated Russia and neutralized strategic Russian bombers across the country. 

Third, and finally, the Pentagon’s unmanned advances must be complementary. However, they are not presently. This is the “think bigger” half of the equation, and what makes the first two lessons pay off. Expendable autonomous mass, low-cost single-purpose platforms, and distributed unmanned hubs reach their potential only when they work as a team. Recognizing this, Taiwan is seeking over 200,000 one-way attack drones and over 1,200 USVs, including the systems architecture to link them together. 

To prevail in a hypothetical Pacific war, American forces must maintain persistent surveillance of the adversary. That interconnectivity is currently lacking, which impedes readiness. Surveillance drones cannot directly communicate with nearby submarines or USVs, nor fuse data into a common operating picture. 

Linking autonomous platforms, manned assets, and human warfighters in a shared data mesh and command-and-control system would close those gaps. The U.S. military’s Combined Joint All-Domain Command-and-Control (CJADC2) aims to forge that very integration. Yet CJADC2 remains limited to “fragmented deployments,” according to the Pentagon. Fixing this is a critical next step. 

Innovating in the unmanned domain will require the Pentagon to be more imaginative in how it acquires, tests, and links its manned and unmanned platforms. That requires thinking smaller, by acquiring more expendable unmanned systems, and thinking bigger, by operationalizing a joint-domain network. It should also involve Washington acquiring Israeli, Taiwanese, and Ukrainian unmanned technology and expanding co-production with those U.S. partners at the cutting edge of warfare. 

Successful adaptation also requires the Pentagon to re-examine how it allocates resources. Currently, cost overruns on large, manned surface combatants poorly calibrated to today’s threat landscape constrain the development and acquisition of future unmanned capabilities. Studies indicate that guided-missile destroyers would be highly vulnerable in a Pacific war, and that reliably fixing and returning them to battle would be nearly impossible. Spending on these platforms, while important, takes up a disproportionate share of the Navy’s budget, crowding out unmanned innovation and acquisition. 

The Pentagon’s recent unmanned successes show it is not completely outpaced by warfare’s rapid evolution. Yet this is a marathon, not a sprint. The U.S. will suffer if it does not keep up—particularly in the unmanned domain. 

Vice Admiral Michael Connor, USN (ret.), is a former Commander, U.S. Submarine Forces, and a Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) Generals and Admirals Program participant. He is the former director of the Pentagon’s Naval Warfare Integration Group. Yoni Tobin is a senior policy analyst at JINSA. 

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily represent those of the National Institute for Deterrence Studies.

The Next Chapter of Unmanned Warfare Has Arrived was originally published on Global Security Review.

The geometric convergence of advanced software integration, affordable autonomous systems, and distributed manufacturing has broken the long-standing paradigm of capital-intensive, platform-focused power projection. Observations from today’s high-intensity and gray-zone conflicts show that structurally outmatched actors can effectively limit the operational freedom of larger military powers. By exploiting cost asymmetries, multi-directional attack strategies, and ongoing algorithmic adjustments, smaller militaries have managed to impose prolonged attritional warfare on more advanced opponents. 

The emerging doctrine of Swarm Deterrence is that a state’s ability to mass produce, field, launch, and reconstitute autonomous and conventional munitions to incapacitate superior forces may be able to guarantee victory against both conventional and nuclear threats. 

The Collapse of Platform Hegemony 

For decades, Western military doctrine assumed that military supremacy was a function of platform exquisiteness: stealth, fifth-generation fighters, supercarriers, and precision munitions, to name a few. However, modern attrition warfare has revealed a significant weakness in this costly model. 

As asymmetric actors exploit the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) and uncrewed systems, traditional metrics of geopolitical power are being rewritten. The main driver of this shift is hyper-scalable cost asymmetry. When a $4 million traditional air defense interceptor is used to neutralize a $2,000 to $20,000 loitering munition or drone, the attritional math tilts structurally in favor of the lower-cost volume producer. 

Two Modern Case Studies of The Asymmetric Vanguard 

Ukraine: Sea Denial and the Saturated Frontline 

The defense of Ukraine illustrates how a minor military force can neutralize major conventional advantages through adaptive, software-driven decentralization. Deprived of a conventional blue-water navy, Ukraine integrated Unmanned Surface Vessels, such as the Magura V7, which were networked via multi-layered space architectures and localized electronic warfare (EW) to achieve strategic sea denial. 

On land, the frontline has become a transparent, highly lethal zone dominated by first-person view (FPV) drones and loitering munitions. The deployment of battlefield data fusion software (e.g., the Delta system) compressed the sensor-to-shooter cycle from days to just minutes. Furthermore, Ukraine’s domestic production increase, which is rising toward millions of robotic and autonomous systems annually, demonstrates that survival in modern peer conflict depends on rapid industrial adaptation and moving away from vulnerable global supply chains. 

Iran: Deep Dispersion and Strategic Coercion 

Iran’s regional security framework highlights how asymmetric maritime and aerial architectures offset deep conventional deficiencies. Rather than competing for tonnage, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy employed an Anti-Access/Area-Denial network comprised of distributed missile platforms, fast attack craft, and long-range One-Way Attack Drones like the Shahed-136. 

Tehran’s doctrine views uncrewed systems not just as tactical tools but as the core of a persistent coercive framework. By executing multi-axis, mixed-salvo strike geometries that combine low-velocity drones with high-velocity ballistic and cruise missiles, they force defenders to misallocate high-end interceptors. Additionally, by embedding production lines inside deeply buried tunnel complexes and urban infrastructure, the regime maintains a resilient regeneration node that resists suppression. 

The Theoretical Framework of Swarm Deterrence 

Swarm deterrence alters the classic balance of power by replacing standard retaliatory frameworks with an attritional denial apparatus. For swarm deterrence to function as a credible strategic posture, a state must demonstrate competency across four distinct axes: 

1. Deployment: Transitioning thousands of autonomous nodes into the battlespace without relying on centralized, easily targeted hubs like runways or major ports.
2. Launch: Using highly dispersed, mobile, and modular launchers hidden within commercial signatures to overwhelm enemy radar and sensor networks.
3. Reconstitution: Maintaining a resilient, low-signature manufacturing base capable of fabricating, assembling, and fielding replacement munitions while under active bombardment.
4. Manufacturing: Relying on standard, dual-use commercial components, 3D printing, and open-source software architectures to bypass traditional defense-industry bottlenecks. 

Evaluating Strategic Efficacy 

Conventional Interdiction—the Salvo Monopoly 

Against conventional forces, a fully developed swarm-deterrent state would possess a significant asymmetric advantage. High-end expeditionary forces are logistically vulnerable because their magazines are expensive and particularly hard to resupply. 

A state that maintains a continuous autonomous salvo ecosystem converts conflict into a pure industrial calculation. By exhausting air defense magazines, paralyzing logistical nodes, and hunting heavy and exquisite platforms with sub-$5,000 munitions, the swarming state creates a high-density denial zone where the cost of entry becomes prohibitive for an expeditionary power. 

The Nuclear Variable: Escalate-to-De-escalate Countermeasures 

The calculus shifts when evaluating nuclear threats. Swarm deterrence operates primarily within the conventional and gray-zone spectrums. If a swarming state uses its conventional mass to decisively cripple an adversary’s vital command-and-control infrastructure, it risks crossing ambiguous strategic thresholds. 

A nuclear-armed adversary facing systemic conventional paralysis might resort to tactical nuclear strikes to forcibly shift the operational balance. However, the unique structural design of a true swarm infrastructure, which is lacking high-value, centralized concentrations of troop formations or large hardware installations, significantly reduces the effectiveness of battlefield nuclear yields. Ultimately, while swarm capability offers substantive conventional protection, it does not replace a strategic nuclear deterrent. Instead, it adds a highly resilient regional layer of defense. 

The Anatomy of Future Peer Warfare  

Future peer competition will differ significantly from traditional twentieth-century conflicts, defined instead by three critical attributes:  

1. The Software-Defined Combat Ecosystem: Future parity will not be measured by hull or airframe totals, but by information management and algorithmic throughput. Peer adversaries will deploy tactical networks driven by edge-computed artificial intelligence to analyze sensor feeds, execute automated threat allocation, and continually adjust flight paths to avoid active electronic jamming.
2. Mass Over Exquisiteness: Fieldable volume has a unique strategic quality of its own. Future peer adversaries will deploy small, high-end qualitative components (such as stealth command planes or localized EW nodes) solely as command-and-control structures for large, expendable autonomous swarms.
3. Dynamic EMS Domination: Because autonomous swarms rely on data links and sensor input, the EMS will become the primary contested territory. Victory will go to the competitor whose systems can instantly switch between satellite guidance, localized mesh networking, acoustic tracking, and optical navigation in completely denied environments. 

Conclusions 

The asymmetric defensive successes demonstrated in modern Eastern European and Middle Eastern theaters signal a permanent shift in global conflict. By decoupling lethality from capital-intensive platforms, smaller militaries have successfully forced major powers into destructive wars of attrition. 

The Swarm Matrix Asymmetric Deterrence, Reconstitution, and the Tech-Industrial Future of Peer Conflict was originally published on Global Security Review.