Sea Control - Sea Control 558 - The Proliferation of Drones in Naval Warfare with Tuneer Mukherjee

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

Links1. "The Proliferation of Drones in Naval Warfare," by Tuneer Mukherjee, ORF, July 16, 2024.2. "Sea Control 422: Artificial Intelligence in Naval Operations with Tuneer Mukherjee," by Jared Samuelson, CIMSEC, March 26, 2023.3. Tuneer Mukherjee biography, Observer Research Foundation.4. Tuneer Mukherjee biography, Stimson Center.

Welcome aboard the Sea Control Podcast from the Center for International Maritime Security. I'm Walker Mills, and my guest today is Tanir Mukherjee, a researcher of Asian security with a focus on the maritime domain. Tanir is a former junior fellow with the Observer Research Foundation's Maritime Policy Initiative in New Delhi, India. He has worked as a researcher with the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. as well. Today, we're going to discuss his recent article, The Proliferation of Drones in Naval Warfare, that was published by the Observer Research Foundation. Tanir, welcome aboard. Can you start by telling the listeners a bit more about your background? Thank you, Walker, for having me on your podcast. Welcome to all the listeners of the SimSec Sea Control Podcast. I am an independent researcher of Asian security studies. I look into specifically the maritime domain and its accompanying developments,

mainly looking at naval modernization efforts of different navies across Asia, the kind of geopolitics that accompany maritime security dynamics inside the region, the broad Indo-Pacific region and also in other maritime areas such as Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, South Asia, specific issues that deal with the geopolitics of that specific geography. Recently, I have taken a keen interest into looking into how artificial intelligence and unmanned systems are transforming naval warfare and how that domain might look like in the future. I initially came across or I started researching this topic when I was a junior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.

I authored a paper on how artificial intelligence will impact naval operations. uh before that i used to be a researcher with the asia maritime transparency initiative in csis in washington dc and i used to track maritime disputes in the south china sea in the east china sea using open source intelligence and satellite imagery and my academic as my academic background i did a double degree master's from university of warwick where i study international relations and and then went on to study the american university in washington dc where I did a degree in Asian security studies. Well, thank you for joining us.

And we should definitely note that this is not Tanir's first time on the podcast. You previously did an episode with Jared on artificial intelligence and naval warfare, and we'll make sure to put a link to that in the show notes if the listeners want to catch that as well. Another reminder, as always, the opinions here are our own

and not reflective of any of the institutions with which we might otherwise be associated. You start by talking about Hellscape, as described by U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Sam Puparro. Can you describe what that is to the listeners who might not be familiar to kind of set the context for your discussion of naval drones? Well, Walker, I recently authored an article for the Observer Research Foundation, as you mentioned, on the proliferation of drones in naval warfare. And one of the most important developments in this space was the Hellscape scenario, the Hellscape concept that consecutive U.S. naval commanders have advocated in use, or at least propagated in a contingency scenario when the People's Republic of China invades Taiwan. Hellscape is essentially a United States counter-invasion strategy in the scenario of an invasion of Taiwan. Former U.S. Indo-PACOM commander, Admiral John Aquilino, first spoke about this concept in August 2023.

And very recently, the current Indo-PACOM commander, Admiral Sam Paparo, propagated the concept on the sidelines of the Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore while giving an interview to The Washington Post. Admiral Papar remarked that he wanted to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hillscape using a number of classified capabilities in the event that the PRC invades Taiwan. He specifically said that so that I can make their lives, referring to the Chinese naval force or Chinese armed forces, lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me enough time for the rest of everything. what this envisages is basically the deployment of a large swarm or large swarms of unmanned or uncrewed systems across various domains across various domains i mean to say air surface and

subsurface in a coordinated manner across the taiwan strait to serve as a vanguard to counter install a chinese invasion of taiwan this would in turn actually provide the united states and its partner forces enough time to mount a full counter-invasion response with all its assets that might not be, that could probably not be deployed in the initial stages of invasion scenario. This concept that has been propagated by these two successive Indo-Pekom commanders also serves as a deterrence message towards China, warning Beijing that any attempt to invade Taiwan would be met with a swift response and it would probably result in large casualties for the

Chinese in case they do decide to invade Taiwan in uh in any any at any point in time and over the last one year we have seen this hellscape evolve from just being a deterrence message or you know a concept into actually a viable strategy inside the corridors of the DOD become a strategic reality in terms of what needs to be done to implement the strategic posture in real time. And some big questions are being asked right now, if unmanned systems should be positioned and deployed in Taiwan, or if they should be part of an American forward operating base, or bases in the Western Pacific. In essence, I think this captured my imagination as to how we have always been talking about in naval warfare, or even in geopolitics as a

conflict in Taiwan between the United States and China being, you know, the big turning point in global warfare. And in the unmanned scenario context or use of drones context, I think this hellscape captures the essential place that unmanned systems might have in global naval warfare in the days to come. Tunir, can you talk a little more specifically about what the role of unmanned systems in uh hellscape is uh and then is that associated with the with the replicator uh initiative as well unmanned systems and hellscape are actually the linchpin of the whole hellscape asymmetric strategy hellscape relies on producing or deploying drones in mass which would then overwhelm the Chinese invasion force

and target the Chinese invasion force from different dimensions. Again, across multiple domains, as I mentioned earlier, what the United States and its partner forces would aim in a hellscape scenario is to deploy a networked force that consists of thousands of these unmanned systems across the Taiwan Strait

I think the U.S. Naval Chief Admiral Franchetti has argued that the key to maintaining an edge over opponents like China is to integrate conventional capabilities with hybrid unmanned and disruptive technologies. And I think Hellscape kind of captures that line of thinking that alongside conventional naval assets, advanced unmanned systems ranging from high altitude endurance aerial drones, such as the MQ-4C Triton or the MQ-9BC Guardian to unmanned surface vessels like the Muskie M-18, the T-38 Devil Ray, and a slew of other systems, underwater vessels that are being developed by the DOD under the Coast Fleet Overload Initiative, which have aimed at rapid development of unmanned ships. I think the more important part being of Hellscape is these thousands of drones that will be developed. They might be working alongside both high-endurance drones and low-endurance drones. There will be a variety of unmanned systems that will be developed in a Hellscape scenario. And the main reason being that I don't think what Hellscape aims to do is to just deploy drones to achieve its objective.

It is a part of unmanned systems that are part of a larger sort of strategic maneuver that the U.S. naval forces in the region will make to arrest China's attempt to invade Taiwan. Hellscape, essentially, by the use of unmanned system, provides the United States an asymmetric edge in a contested geographical area that is the Western Pacific. While the U.S. has dominated the region in terms of strategic capability and technologically advanced warfighting assets in the past, China over the past 10 years has quickly narrowed that gap and holds a huge home field advantage due to the proximity of the contested zone to the Chinese mainland. And I think what then Hellscape essentially captures is that by the use of unmanned systems, what Hellscape basically wants to capture is deter the Chinese forces' capabilities in the beginning of a conflict. what hellscape has been said as a strategic concept has actually had been put into implementation by the replicator initiative that was announced last year by deputy secretary of defense kathleen hicks replicator is basically an initiative that will use existing funding existing programming lines and existing authorities to accelerate production and

delivery at scale by exerting leadership focus and attention on singular operational challenge and maturing solutions, because that's what ultimately delivers. And these are the words of Deputy Secretary Hicks herself. Replicator aims to begin with all domain treatable autonomy to help overcome China's advantage in mass. So what the U.S. forces lack in a Taiwan Strait scenario is that they will be severely outnumbered u.s and its partner forces china will have more ships more missiles more forces and these asymmetric unmanned systems that will be deployed in a hellscape scenario and will be possibly produced under the replicator initiative will help provide america an asymmetric advantage but fewer naval forces in the line of fire

and would actually give American forces speed in countering a Chinese invasion. When we talk about fielding a treatable autonomous systems, Kathleen Hicks mentions that, Deputy Secretary Hicks mentioned that in the next 18 to 24 months across all domains of seas, subsurface and aerial, across multiple domains, surface, subsurface and aerial, It is about pushing the American advantage in a way where Chinese forces are not able to complete a Taiwan invasion scenario, because once the unmanned systems sort of overwhelm the initial invasion force, American conventional assets will then come in and for in larger numbers and with more conventional strategies to stop the chinese invasion there are a lot of

questions that still have not been answered about a replicator and hellscape because of the classified nature of these capabilities and these strategies and rightly so recently there are a couple of reports that have come out from washington dc uh brian clark of the hudson center and stacy Patty John of CNAS have both authored reports that give us some idea as to how unmanned systems may be used. But a lot of information is still not available to us. So we are still guessing as to how replicator will function or how Hellscape will function. But the important thing is to recognize that both Hellscape and replicator and especially replicator is just in an initial phase where a lot of systems might be tested

and a lot of systems might be produced. But what systems need to be scaled up for mass production might be a decision that might be made in a six to 12-month timeline from now on. So these concepts are still being developed and are still being thought upon. So we still have a long way to go to see how these sort of shape up in the future.

A lot of us have been watching what's been going on in Ukraine regarding unmanned or uncrewed systems, both in the air, but also especially in the maritime domain. Do you have a sense or an idea of how that might look different in the Western Pacific or in a kind of a conflict in the Taiwan Strait scenario than what we're seeing in Ukraine in the Black Sea, or perhaps it would be very similar? I think the use of drones by Ukraine in the Black Sea

has opened the world to the possibilities of drone warfare in the naval domain. Until now, every country or most capable navies have had some development program that has aimed to create long endurance unmanned naval systems so a lot of countries have developed undersea underwater vessels that aim to create large forces of unmanned systems for these navies in the future but most of these systems have been either in development or in their testing phases While what we have seen in Ukraine is a confrontation-fueled innovation process where the Ukrainian naval force, in the absence of a more conventional naval capability, has used rudimentary commercial drones at times or has gone into a very rudimentary level of development of surface drones to counter the Russian naval might in the Black Sea.

and they have been very successful at doing so as well. But what in the future we might see, even with the Ukrainian forces at this point in time as well, that they are innovating and developing more and more advanced drones. What we have initially seen in the Ukraine war are more classified or could be classified as kamikaze drones, which are one-way drones that are surface vessels or boats that are fitted with explosives

rely on either a satellite link or a radio communication link for maneuvering and navigation and then uses the kinetic impact with its target to deliver a lethal blow or deliver lethality. What the replicator initiative or a hellscape scenario would envisage

the systems that are envisaged that uh that it might not be an expendable kamikaze system it might be an attributable system but an attributable system does not need to be a one-way system like we have seen in ukraine uh in in a perfect scenario such systems will be available for reuse an attributable system must have the fuel in endurance navigation and control to make it back to the American or American allied base. It does, however, mean that the loss in combat of such a system might not cause a huge, will not deal a huge impact to the capability of the naval forces.

And more importantly, the distinction between the vessels or assets that are being used in the Black Sea by Ukraine and the ones that might be used in the Western Pacific is how autonomous these systems could be. autonomy could be a simple autopilot or cruise controls it can be automatic takeoff and landing system in case of the aerial assets it can be an agent or rule-based swarm of a certain number of systems that will work in a network swarm and i think that's another distinction that could be important in a replicator produced drone and then one produced in ukraine right now

It's its reliability on artificial intelligence running on the edge of a complex drone or just artificial intelligence or machine learning software that is informing the commander about the actions of a whole swarm of drones. I think the ability of a system to accomplish its missions has been tasked to an operator in a Ukrainian scenario without further human involvement. But in the case of a replicator scenario, I think the operator would have significant control over how to control the drone in various other missions rather than just delivering lethality. It could be used as a decoy. It could be used in form of electronic warfare. It could be used in delivering intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance assistance to cruise missiles. And I think what we have seen in Ukraine as well, that drones are not only functioning in an isolated manner, they are functioning together with cruise missiles and other assets, which are then finally delivering the impact that they are in the battlefield. And in the same Western Pacific context, we will also see that the drones that will be produced by these initiatives that has been taken by different players in the industry, they will have different capabilities and will perform their missions along with conventional assets. And I think it needs to be very clearly mentioned that the replicator initiative is just not going to be producing attributable or one-way use or low-cost drones. There is going to be in the future, in my opinion, a lot of these initiatives have successful operational trials would also result in larger systems, long endurance systems that could be deployed along with small, attributable drones as well.

So I think there's a range of drones that could be developed under this initiative and a range of drones that will be deployed in the Western Pacific Taiwan scenario. But again, the classified nature of this project does not give us enough idea until now as to what might happen. And when it comes to the USVs that we have seen, again, being developed in Ukraine, in that scenario as well, what I see happening in the near future is that these USVs will also be getting more and more advanced because at the end of the day, the Western forces, Western NATO forces are assisting and informing Ukrainian forces on the battlefield and learning from them as well. So it's going to be a process as they will be learning from what the battlefield feedback is from Ukraine and also be informing Ukraine as to what kind of developments are happening in the West and how they can also improve their capabilities when it comes to using naval drones against Russia. Expanding on that a little bit, Tanir, what do you think the future looks like for unmanned systems in the maritime domain? And what are some of the implications or consequences of that for fleet design and naval strategy broadly, not just in the Black Sea and not just in the Asia-Pacific region? I was recently at this Expo conference called UDT, Undersea Defence Technology in London. And over there, I saw the industry developing a whole range of assets in the unmanned domain, in the unmanned maritime domain. there's a lot of conceptualization that is going on and advancement is going on in regard to how

autonomous these systems will be the kind of payloads that will be need to be made the sensor systems that need to be included in unmanned vehicle and a lot of focus is also happening on the network that these unmanned systems will be using for either swarming or communicating with either the operator or between the machines i think it is very important to recognize that alongside the physical assets that will be developed in this space there will be a concerted effort into developing the network-centric communication architecture that will go behind this deployment of a plethora of these unmanned systems and once these systems get more and more developed and might be deployed in real time that will have a real-time impact on how logistics

and force structuring works in inside naval forces navies will need to train personnel accordingly as i said network communications will need to be developed accordingly a lot of these drones are right now coming with multi-mission capability designs that means you know their payloads might be substituted uh the same drone might have different kinds of payloads it could be used for mine laying it could be used for scouting uh it could be used for you know hunter killer uh missions and lethal engagements we then come to a position of how would then you know a hybrid fleet look like u.s navy i think expects a force structure where 40 percent of unmanned vessels will exist in its naval fleet by 2050. And while that does not mean that each naval

mission will be 40% unmanned, it does say that some missions will more heavily rely on unmanned platforms than others will. I think the basic point to recognize over here is that naval strategy will go through a period of fundamental transformation. And I think the United States has taken the lead in that regard, where it has clearly mentioned that it is implementing a distributed maritime operations concept in its naval forces and its naval force structuring, where it is moving away from career-focused task forces or action groups into a more distributed maritime concept of focusing action around surface action groups, which are going to be smaller in number, but more efficient and faster to be deployed in a contested environment.

And I think unmanned systems will figure into that scenario as well. And as more and more naval forces co-opt unmanned systems into their fleet, they will also realize that apart from supplementing conventional naval assets in a conventional naval strategy, systems will be uh sort of operating alongside submarines and destroyers or and uh aircraft carriers there may be a time when naval forces will realize okay maybe we need to relook at how naval strategy is and deploy unmanned systems in a different scenario while they where they will operate by themselves and that might create this ripple effect in turn where you will see a slow movement away from large ticket naval assets such as submarines and

aircraft carriers and the naval strategy focused around these large ticket naval assets into naval strategy focused around uh either unmanned systems or smaller action group because end of the day in a scenario of a drone drone warfare it would be very difficult for a naval force to strategize its entire navy around conventional assets and not include the hybrid naval strategy that will come into being in other parts of the world. That makes a lot of sense. Tanir, are there other places in Asia or around the world where we should be watching for unmanned or uncrewed system development? I mean, I'm thinking specifically about perhaps what's going on in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen. We talked about the Taiwan Strait. We talked about

the Black Sea. But where else should we be looking to perhaps kind of get a hint on what the future of unmanned systems in the naval domain looks like? There are two versions to how somebody following this trend of the proliferation of drones and naval warfare should look at the development of unmanned systems. One is the countries that are developing these systems. Mostly these are capable naval forces that are high-end defense technology industries, ones that have created naval assets such as submarines in the past, namely Japan, United Kingdom, South Korea, Russia, France, Germany, Israel, Sweden, Canada, Norway, Australia, Turkey, and India in that sense as well. These are countries that might not be deploying such systems, unmanned systems. but will be key in the production process that is involved

and will be probably incubating industry in that region. But when it comes to geographical areas, especially in Asia where we should be watching for unmanned systems and their deployment, I think the South China Sea might be a region where unmanned systems could actually be deployed by China in a very short-term scenario because the kind of, how would I say,

the gray zone warfare strategies that the chinese navy has implemented in that region unmanned systems will complement these kind of gray zone strategies or gray zone operating areas even the august agreement that was recently signed between australia united kingdom and the united states has a pillar two track where a lot of these unmanned technologies are being developed and being shared amongst the naval forces and as to how they may be deployed So in a naval confrontation that a lot of us have been talking about between the Western forces or forces that involve countries that are opposed to a Chinese dominance of the Western Pacific and between China, we'll see that arena being, or the Western Pacific, Indo-Pacific arena being inundated with such unmanned maritime systems. China, on one end, is actually the industry leader in manufacturing of commercial drones and military drones at this point in time. So we will see a lot of development happening in China around these systems.

They have already deployed some of these unmanned aerial systems around Taiwan during a recent exercise. and in a scenario where it might invade taiwan they would also be developing and deploying its own drone systems and its own drone strategies on the other end what we have seen in the red sea again more rudimentary drones similar to ones that have been deployed in ukraine but again the use of kamikaze drones basically commercial systems that are already available and a lot of these system commercial systems fitted with explosive or explosive explosive payloads do the job for them they do not need to go into more and more innovation high-end innovation what we would also see in this scenario is then non-state actors belligerent forces

in the Middle East using such drones to achieve asymmetry or achieve small missions and targets. I think I remember seeing a report where Hamas forces based out of Gaza use some unmanned underwater system to at least target or try to target Israeli naval bases. Unsuccessfully though. but what we might see in the future is again non-state

actors using such drones to strike naval bases or naval forces so port security might be very important in that sense as well and a lot of counter drone technology will also be coming through to deal with these

threats when it comes to conventional state actors and non-conventional non-state actors where energy weapons and electronic warfare and spoofing and jamming and cyber security questions will need to be answered in the future. But in the short term, I feel

when you combine the whole situation together as to what has been happening in different parts of the world, we will see an increase in the deployment and development of unmanned systems all across the board. I'm sorry, but I think that's about all we have time for today. I'd like to thank my guest, Tanir Mukherjee, for discussing naval drones with us. Tanir, where, if anywhere, can our listeners find you online and what are you working on next? thank you for again having me walker it was great talking to you about the proliferation of drones and the kind of concepts that are being spoken about around across the board about these things your listeners can find me on twitter twitter username is m-u-t-u-n-w-e-r

and i'm currently working on a long-form paper on the topic of unmanned maritime systems i'm also researching the role that unmanned systems might play in the long-term development strategy of the Indian Navy. Similarly, I'm also researching deep sea mineral mining and the use of civilian-developed unmanned systems in that industry. There's a lot happening all across when it comes to drones, artificial intelligence and machine learning, network-centric warfare. So I think there are a lot of things to look at. Awesome. We may have to invite you back on to talk about some of that ongoing work. Thanks again for joining us and to the listeners. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time.

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