The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - The Revolution in Military Affairs: Naval Advances || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

Trying to predict the long-term future of naval warfare may be futile, but we can examine some of the weapon systems emerging in current conflicts.Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/the-revolution-in-military-affairs-naval-advances

Hey all, Peter Zion here coming to you from Arches National Park in Utah, and today we're doing another episode of our future of military technology series. Basically, we've had a series of breakthroughs and energy transmission and data processing, digitization, material science that are basically opening up a whole new wave of military technologies that we're inventing as we go. So anyone who says that they know what's going to be the weapon system in five years, 10 years, 20 years, whatever, we're kind of making this up as we go. Don't be too harsh. but what we know now from the Ukraine war is that, wow, if you have a conventional military ship that requires to be within 100, say, miles of the coast, you're going to lose that ship. Basically, if it can be seen, it can be targeted, and it can be targeted with weapons that you might not be able to detect until they've blown up the size of your wrestle.

The Ukrainians in particular have taken motorboats and jet skis and things like them, loaded up with equipment and with bombs, and either gone out and used them to shoot down things like planes and drones or simply ram the ships on the other side. And naval vessels are among the most expensive things that a military can field. So to be taken out by a jet ski is kind of embarrassing from both and strategic, political, and of course a financial point of view. But that's just where we are now. The question is, how far out does the range have to go before a naval vessel is safe? And if you're talking about a military asset being safe because it has to be so far back that it can't function, it's no longer really serving the purpose

anymore. At the moment, in Ukraine, 100 miles is absolutely the death zone for any Russian vehicles. In addition, the Ukrainians have shown on multiple occasions that they can strike much further away, sometimes as much as 350 miles, if they know where the target is. And that, at the moment, means that it can't be a mobile target. So they can say attack ports at places like Noverasisk with limited effectiveness, certainly anywhere in the Crimean Peninsula, but they can't necessarily go after a ship just because it's out there. So the whole world, War II story of sending destroyer squadrons out to find the other guy's aircraft carriers. That is not what we're talking about, or at least not with today's technology, 10 years from now,

who knows? Which means that in this interim period, while these technologies are still being developed, detection is going to be the big thing. And that is going to be a combination of service radar, satellite reconnaissance, and a network of drones that can go out at distance and network their information together. Just keep in mind that at the moment, getting a clear signal from your operator to your drone is the limiting factor in drone warfare. One of the reasons why those fiber optic spools

that can go out several miles are so important because they can't be jammed. You put any jamming out, however, and a drone that's 100 miles from shore is just going to fall into the sea because it can't report anything, it can't be directed, you can't see through its eyes.

So we're going to see this kind of arms race with two technologies when it comes to naval issues. Number one, detection, and that can combine the old with the new, And number two, jamming, and the question is how powerful the jammer can you fit onto a naval asset? I don't have an answer for that. Like I said, these are being invented as we go. But the old days of being able to do easy amphibious landings,

I say there's nothing easy about an amphibious landing, or patrolling relatively close to the coast, those are pretty much in the past now. And any country that has naval access that is somewhat constrained. So basically if your ports are within, say, 500 miles of anybody else, those ports are no longer functional for military assets in the world we're in. That includes every port in Russia. That includes every port of Saudi Arabia.

That includes every port in China. And we need to start thinking of naval power in a completely new way. That is a lot more flexible and has a lot more range.