Maritime Law

Discipline as a Tool to Achieve Readiness: A Utilitarian Approach to Discipline

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By Lieutenant Colonel Pete Combe, USMC

The goal of this article is to articulate one past commander’s approach to discipline, with a focus on improving operational readiness.  The author does not mean to imply that other O5 and O6 commanders pursue discipline for solely punitive reasons.  Rather, this is an attempt to articulate an approach built on rehabilitative potential and getting Marines “back in the fight.”  The framework discussed will rely largely on a “utilitarian” theory of discipline – one in which each decision a commander makes, and each punishment imposed on a Marine serves some larger purpose.1 

In this framework punishment does not exist for punishment’s sake, but serves some goal.  The article will proceed in four parts.  First, a description of the purpose and theory of discipline under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).  Second, a discussion of military theories of sentencing and their utilitarian value.  Next, outlines a utilitarian framework and potentially useful rules of thumb in  applying that framework using non-judicial punishment (NJP) as a demonstrative.2  Finally, a brief discussion of how to connect punishments to utilitarian principles.

1. Nature and Purpose of Military Law

The statutory mission of the United States Marine Corps is “… to provide fleet marine forces of combined arms, together with supporting air components, for service with the fleet in the seizure or defense of advanced naval bases and for the conduct of such land operations as may be essential to the prosecution of the naval campaign.”3  In short, the mission of the Marine Corps is to provide ready forces which are organized, trained, equipped, and staffed to conduct operations.4  With this larger mission in mind, the goal of any subordinate commander is to conduct operations as directed, and necessary to that end to maintain her unit at the peak of operational readiness.

One responsibility of commanders that is relevant to ensuring operational readiness is the use  of measures to impose appropriate administrative or disciplinary sanctions in response to substandard performance or misconduct.  These can range from purely administrative measures such as written counseling5 or extra-military instruction,6 through courts-martial.  Regardless of the tool employed, the purpose of military law is to “promote justice, deter misconduct, facilitate appropriate accountability, assist in maintaining good order and discipline, promote efficiency and effectiveness, and thereby strengthen the national security of the United States.”7  This broad statement of purpose encompasses a number of goals, both utilitarian and retributive, in order to serve the broader “strengthen[ed]…national security purpose” which exist exists outside any perceived need to punish the accused for the sake of punishment.8

There are other offices within the military disciplinary system that exist to deal with offenses of such heightened severity that punishment for the sake of punishment could be the most appropriate theory of discipline.9  The Offices of Special Trial Counsel come readily to mind, as they are tasked with making referral decisions and prosecuting the most serious offenses such as homicide, sex offenses, crimes involving harm to minor children and domestic partner abuse.10  For these types of serious offenses, retributive justice is a more viable theory than utilitarian for reasons beyond the scope of this piece.11

However, for many of the less serious offenses, I offer that retributive theories of punishment should not weigh in a commander’s calculus.  Non-Judicial Punishment (NJP) in particular is a commander’s tool, and one exercised solely within the discretion of the commander.12  Non-Judicial Punishment provides a commander with a broad range of disciplinary approaches to address minor offenses for which court-martial is not necessary to meet the needs of justice.13 NJP is intended to maintain good order and discipline, and promote positive behavior changes14 without the stigma of a court-martial conviction.15  It is this commander’s opinion that NJP is appropriate where the “needs of justice,” do not require punishment of the accused for the sake of punishment alone.  Rather, NJP is an appropriate tool where the circumstances of the offense and offender favor the primary goal of achieving positive change.16

II. Military Theories of Sentencing

The military justice system recognizes five theories of sentencing or punishment:17

  • Rehabilitation of the accused.
  • Incapacitation of the accused to further offend, sometimes couched as protection of society.
  • Maintenance of good order and discipline.
  • General18 and specific.19
  • Punishment of the accused.

Of these theories, the first four are primarily or solely utilitarian in nature – they serve a larger, if somewhat abstract or intangible, purpose aside from the imposition of punishment itself.20  The last is expressly retributive.

I argue that a purely retributive approach for cases of less serious offenses is both unnecessary and inconsistent with the policies governing NJP.  As previously expressed, NJP is intended to address minor misconduct for which permanent incapacitation is not required.  The purpose of NJP is to bolster military efficiency and good order and discipline, while returning Marines  who have demonstrated rehabilitative potential “to the fight.”  With that in mind, how then to apply a framework focused on achieving positive goals on behalf of both the individual Marine and the unit?

III. The Framework

I argue that the commander should ask three questions in assessing potential courses of disciplinary action, and that the first question embraces a theory of sentencing other than punishment.  Rehabilitation. 

A. Determining an Appropriate Forum

The three questions I ask of my staff and subordinates, are as follows:

  • Does the accused have potential for further useful service in his current assignment?
  • Does the accused have potential for further useful service in the Marine Corps, but in a different assignment?
  • If the answer to either question above is “no,” how do I go about creating a vacancy so that my unit can obtain another willing and motivated Marine?

Once those three questions are answered, the appropriate disciplinary forum is readily apparent.  If a Marine has the potential for further useful service in a special duty assignment, then administrative counseling alone may be sufficient.  If a Marine has the potential for further useful service in the Marine Corps, but not in a special duty assignment then relief for cause may be sufficient.21  Even if a Marine has potential for further useful service, NJP may still be appropriate.  The goal is simple.  So long as the Marine has the potential for further useful service, how do we go about realizing that potential? 

However, I contend that only by considering rehabilitative potential at the outset can a commander determine  the appropriate course of action.22  Imagine a commander neglecting to consider rehabilitative potential, and referring a Marine to a special court-martial at which the Marine is sentenced to a punitive discharge.  Even if the commander believes the Marine has rehabilitative potential, and would welcome the Marine back into her unit, she has lost that decision space.  The commander should also consider the “demand for court-martial,” should a Marine exercise their right to refuse NJP.23 In the event the accused refuses NJP, the commander must consider what actions to take.  Is court-martial appropriate, though not required?  Could the commander proceed with purely administrative actions such as relief for cause or administrative separation?

B. Assessing Rehabilitative Potential

How then to assess a Marine’s ability to return to productive service in either the unit, or the Marine Corps?  One needn’t start from zero – as there are a number of rehabilitative factors described in law and policy.24  These factors bearing on rehabilitative potential can generally be grouped into three categories: offender specific, offense specific, and unit impact related factors.

Offender specific factors relate to the accused’s past performance and future potential.  These can include individual character observed over time, the accused’s performance of duty, the accused’s moral fiber,25 the willingness or determination of the individual Marine to be rehabilitated; past instances of misconduct by the accused26 the impact of NJP on the Marine, and whether the accused has accepted responsibility for his actions.27

Offense specific factors include the nature and severity of the offense, which is a particularly relevant factor when determining appropriate forum.  Other offense related factors should include the accused’s role in the offense – was the Marine the principal offender, or did he aid or abet another?  Was the accused somehow induced to commit the offense by another more culpable person, or was the Marine naturally predisposed?28  In addition to taking corrective action at an organizational level, if the commander cannot put in place appropriate guardrails to mitigate against the same offense by another then a punishment consideration based upon the goal of general deterrence may be appropriate.29

Finally, unit wide considerations should also inform the appropriate punishment.  Perhaps the accused cooperated with the commander or law enforcement in investigating and addressing other offenses within the unit.30  While less concrete, there may be instances in which a certain disciplinary measure is appropriate to enhance good order and discipline within the unit.

In many cases this concept of rehabilitation is procedurally “built in.” In many instances a Marine must be counseled concerning shortcomings, provided an adequate time to rehabilitate, and then only if failing to do so can the Marine be processed for separation.31  Once the commander determines on a course of action – in our case, NJP – then I argue that the commander should focus on the four utilitarian theories of punishment discussed above: rehabilitation of the accused, incapacitation of the accused to reoffend, preservation of good order and discipline, and general and specific deterrence.

C. Nature of Punishments and Connection to Utilitarian Principles

Once the commander has assessed that the accused Marine has the potential for further useful service, but that imposition of NJP is still appropriate then she should consider what form of punishment is appropriate.  Punishment should be aimed towards the four utilitarian principles.  While the range of punishments available to the commander at NJP are not particularly severe, most utilitarian sentencing theorists argue that punishment should be no more severe than necessary to achieve the goals (deterrence, rehabilitation of the accused, or incapacitation of the accused) the sentencing authority seeks.32  Furthermore, while concepts of restorative justice aimed at restoring victims to a status quo ante have gained traction in civilian systems and certain administrative proceedings, the NJP process provides no function to achieve restorative justice.33

In crafting an appropriate sentence, it may help to consider which forms of theories best support a particular utilitarian theory of sentencing.  An admonition or reprimand may best support specific deterrence.  Restraints on liberty may best support general deterrence, and incapacitation of the accused from offending in the near future.  Reduction in grade is a visible action that may contribute to general deterrence, as well as preservation of good order and discipline.  The commander imposing NJP should carefully consider what forms of punishment will best achieve her goals.  This framework and concepts hold true for other administrative and disciplinary matters within the scope of the commander’s discretionary authority.

IV. Connecting Punishments to Utility

Assume at this point, following the rubric above, the commander has assessed the Marine’s rehabilitative potential, and whether to proceed with some form of discharge or administrative reassignment.  However, NJP does have lasting consequences and will remain in a Marine’s record for the remainder of their career.34  This is likely to have significant impacts on a Marine’s future opportunities for promotion or special duty / screenable assignments.35 Accordingly, the commander should carefully weigh the appropriate punishments, and give consideration to suspension, mitigation or remission and set-aside. 

A commander may suspend part of a sentence at NJP, declining to impose that sentence at the current time but retaining the option to impose any suspended portion of the sentence at a later date if the Marine commits further misconduct. The impact of a suspended punishment which is not later imposed is effectively no punishment – the suspended portion ceases to exist if the Marine stays out of trouble for an appropriate length of time (ordinarily 6 months).  The same is true if a punishment is remitted or set aside after imposition.36  Similarly, just because a commander considers a Marines case at NJP, does not mean that the commander must impose any punishment.  The commander may determine after hearing the evidence, that the Marine did not commit the charged offense(s), or that the misconduct is so minor as to warrant no imposition of punishment. 

These concepts can seem amorphous or difficult to pin down in the abstract.  Accordingly, a series of hypothetical examples which emphasize different theories of sentencing as appropriate to each individual case may be illustrative.  Each hypothetical case below is intended to highlight how a different theory of sentencing may appropriately contribute to utilitarian goals, getting Marines back into the fight, and ultimately bolstering readiness.

A. Staff Non-Commissioned Officer Fraternization

Hypothetical:  A Staff Non-Commissioned Officer (SNCO) assigned as an instructor at a formal school is suspected of violating a lawful general order which prohibits unduly familiar relationships with student personnel.  The SNCO has been counseled previously for non-sexual instances of unprofessional conduct with students, across several classes / school years. 

What punishment is appropriate from a deterrent standpoint?  In terms of specific deterrence, a verbal or written reprimand appears unlikely to deter the SNCO from offending further.  He’s already on notice that his conduct is unacceptable.  Thus, the commander should consider what punishment is apt to have a deterrent effect.  Restraints on liberty and forfeiture of pay are both available options. However, their deterrent effect on the SNCO is not entirely clear.

In this case the interests of good order and discipline are directly impacted by the accused’s position.  Removing the SNCO from his position, including any direct contact with students is likely an appropriate administrative measure.  Administrative removal and punishing the SNCO to restriction – including twice-daily check-ins with all other Marines on restriction – will send a powerful message to the unit.  All are subject to discipline, regardless of their grade or position.37

Restraints on liberty, coupled with administrative reassignment may also work to incapacitate the SNCO from offending in the future – at least in the short term.  By restricting the SNCO to locations in which students are not likely to be, along with administratively reassigning him to a role that has no contact with students, his access to students will be curtailed. 

If the commander determines that the SNCO lacks rehabilitative potential in the school environment, then a range of options including removing the Marine from the particular school either for the Good of the Service (GOS) or Relief For Cause (RFC) may be appropriate.38

B. Non-Commissioned Officer DUI

Hypothetical:  A Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) with a history of alcohol related incidents is ticketed, but not yet convicted, for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) out in town.  The NCO has no prior history of DUI, nor do prior alcohol related incidents involve violence.  After initial actions including Substance Abuse Counseling Center assessment and treatment, the command must assess whether to proceed with NJP.39

Is an admonition or reprimand formally imposed at NJP likely to deter the NCO from further DUI or other alcohol related incidents?  As a threshold matter, it would appear not.  Aside from the imposition of NJP itself, there is no directly foreseeable link to remaining available punishments (restraints on liberty, reduction in grade, forfeiture of pay) and specific deterrence.

The interests of good order and discipline may also require that this NCO be removed from his position administratively.  In particular, if the NCO has a security clearance, his repeated irresponsible consumption of alcohol may impact his eligibility for access to classified information.40  However, from a disciplinary standpoint the visibility of the NCO’s conduct will likely be an important factor to consider.  If he is an NCO In Charge (NCOIC), then removal from his position or reduction in grade may be appropriate. 

The NCO here may be rendered incapable of further abusing alcohol either by restriction, or by limiting his disposable income by forfeiture of pay.  In conjunction, this may work to limit the NCO’s ability to commit the same or similar misconduct in the future. 

Should the commander decide that the NCO does not have rehabilitative potential, then the commander may choose to recommend separation of the Marine for failure of alcohol rehabilitation.41 

C. Non-Commissioned Officer on Barracks Duty

Hypothetical:  An NCO assigned overnight barracks duty falsifies logbook entries indicating that she made her required rounds.  The greater weight of evidence indicates that not only did she fail to make her rounds, but that she left her post without authorization.  Her whereabouts during this time are unknown.

Whether an admonition or reprimand is likely to deter the NCO from similarly offending in the future may depend on the circumstances of her absence from post.  For example, assume she is a single mother, who during the course of questioning freely admitted her misconduct, and explained that she left because pre-arranged childcare fell through. 

This case on its surface has a direct connection with good order and discipline, through the regular maintenance and accurate logging of security posture in the barracks.  However, in the circumstances described involving childcare, there are likely better ways to reinforce good order and discipline than through severe punishment.

D. Thoughts on General Deterrence

In theory, any sufficiently visible form of punishment serves general deterrence.  The concept of general deterrence is also closely related to the preservation of good order and discipline.  If Marines are aware of their fellow service member’s misconduct, and there is a visible consequence for that misconduct, this serves general deterrence.  If Marines are sufficiently deterred, this bolsters good order and discipline.

Commanders may also maximize the effect of the NJP proceeding itself.  This may include “command observers” during the NJP, to demonstrate to Marines that the commander is fair, impartial, and approaches the proceedings with integrity.42  If the accused requests witnesses be present, then the commander may permit those witnesses to remain in the room while the commander considers the evidence and makes a final decision.43  The commander may also provide the unit senior enlisted advisor a chance to address those present.  However, if deviating from the NJP guide in the JAGMAN,44 the commander should closely coordinate with the senior enlisted advisor and servicing Staff Judge Advocate to avoid any impermissible actions.45

Commanders should consider publication of the results of NJP to their units.46  The intent is not to embarrass the accused, but to show all Marines how the commander addresses misconduct.  Publication can also be used as a teaching tool for other Marines, and highlight where even “good” Marines may succumb to outside pressures.  Publication should be anonymized by removing the name of the Marine and the specific subordinate unit or section.  However, the publication should provide sufficient facts so that unit members can understand the misconduct and any mitigating factors.

V. Conclusion

Ultimately, this framework is about accomplishing one overarching goal – bolstering operational efficiency through exercise of the tools at a battalion or regimental commander’s discretion.  However, I argue that below the level of a court-martial punishment alone as a theory of sentencing has no place.47

At the root of this approach is a simple question, that should be foundational to formulating an appropriate punishment: does the accused have the potential for further useful service?  With this question as a basis, commanders can craft appropriate punishments at NJP, and either return good Marines to the fight, or create a vacancy for another willing volunteer.

Lieutenant Colonel Pete Combe is currently assigned as the Staff Judge Advocate, Marine Forces Reserve / South.  This article is informed by his career as a Marine Judge Advocate, and his experience as the Commanding Officer, Region 5, Marine Corps Embassy Security Group from 2024 to 2026.

The views expressed here are those of the author and are not intended to reflect or convey any official policy of the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

References

1. While this article uses the term “Marine,” one may well substitute the Service neutral term “servicemember,” or for that matter Sailor, Soldier, Airman, Guardian, or Guardsman.

2. Why non-judicial punishment (NJP) pursuant to Article 15 of the U.C.M.J.?  Because, when accepted by the Marine it is truly the only form of statutory punishment under the U.C.M.J. which is wholly within the discretion of the Commander.

3. 10 U.S.C. § 8063.

4. 10 U.S.C. §§ 161, 162.

5. Marine Corps Order 1900.16 w/CH-2, ¶ 6105.

6. JAGINST 5800.7G w/CH-2, ¶0103.

7. Manual for Courts-Martial (2024 ed.), I-1 (emphasis added).

8. See, e.g., Charles L. Pritchard, Jr., Punished as a Court-Martial May Direct, The Army Lawyer, 33 (December 2015).

9. One viable theory where the other four theories of sentencing may also play a role in crafting an appropriate sentence.

10. 10 U.S.C. 824a; 10 U.S.C. 1044f.

11. Pritchard, Punished as a Court-Martial May Direct, 35.

12. This in contrast to Administrative Separation Boards which include members, and generally an outside “separations authority.”  See. MCO 1900.16 w/CH-2, ¶1603.  Also, for courts-martial in which counsel, military judges, and panel members will play significant roles – and in which the commander must abandon desire for a specific result, and instead work to ensure the integrity of the process.

13. MCM, V-1.

14. I would argue that the use of the plural “servicemembers” here indicates the intent to effect positive behavior changes on the part of the accused, and others.

15. Id.

16. Pritchard, Punished as a Court-Martial May Direct, 35.

17. Pritchard; DA PAM 27-9.

18. Deterrence of others from committing the same or similar offense(s) in the future.

19. Deterrence of the accused from committing the same or similar offense(s) in the future.

20. Pritchard.

21. Relief for Cause (RFC) is a term of art used in Marine Corps screenable billets, and encompasses removal from a “screenable” billet prior to the expected / designated end of tour.  RFC is ordinarily used when a Marine’s conduct falls below that expected of a Marine in a high visibility assignment, and can either follow or be independent of NJP.  See, generally MCO 1326.6 w/CH-1, and MCO 1300.8 Chapter 3.

22. Obviously other factors will weigh in, such as the severity of the offense, impact to the unit, etc.  There are clearly offenses of such seriousness than rehabilitative potential should not be a consideration in determining an appropriate forum.

23. MCM, V-2.

24. See, for instance, MCM II-148 (RCM 1001(b)(5)); MCM V-1; DA PAM 27-9, pp. 116, 2051; MCO 1900.16 w/CH-2, ¶ 6309.

25. Though not entirely clear from the DA PAM 27-9 paragraph what this entails, perhaps it includes rescuing multiple students from grindylows in the Black Lake a la, Harry Potter.

26. MCM, V-1 (para. 1.d).

27. DA PAM 27-9, p. 2051.

28. Id.

29. A particularly useful tool for general deterrence, and one used by the author, is to publish the results of performance and misconduct proceedings (sufficiently anonymized to avoid the potential for embarrassment or humiliation) as a means to bolster the general deterrent effect.  See., e.g., JAGINST 5800.7G w/CH-2, ¶ 0115.

30. DA PAM 27-9, p. 2051.

31. MCO 1900.16 w/CH-2, ¶6105.  See, e.g., MCO 1900.16 w/CH-2, ¶¶ 6205 (Entry-Level Performance and Conduct), 6210.2 (Minor Disciplinary Infractions), 6210.3 (Pattern of Misconduct) – all of which require counseling and consideration of the rehabilitative guidelines discussed in ¶6105.  Contrast, for example, with ¶¶ 6210.4 (Sexual Misconduct), 6210.5 (Drug Abuse), 6210.6 (Commission of a Serious Offense), or 6210.8 (Sexual Harassment) – none of which require said counseling and consideration, and for some of which processing for separation is mandatory upon substantiating the conduct.

32. Bentham, supra, CH XIV, pt. XIII, “punishment ought [not] be more than what is necessary.”

33. See, e.g., MCO 5354.1G, Chapt. 7 and the discussion of informal resolution through conflict management (mediation) between a victim and accused in instances of sexual harassment.

34. MCO 5800.16, Vol. 14.

35. MCO 1326.6 w/CH-1.

36. MCM, V-7,8.

37. Though speculative, a SNCO in a special duty assignment may find acceptance of NJP preferable to either risking a court-martial, or being relieved for cause from that special duty assignment.

38. See, generally, MCO 1000.6 and MCO 1326.6 w/CH-1.

39. See, MCO 5300.17A.  The command will also potentially be required to initiate separation proceedings pursuant to MCO 1900.16 w/CH-2, ¶ 6209 – thought the commander may recommend retention if assessing the Marine has rehabilitative potential.

40. 32 C.F.R. 147.2.

41. MCO 1900.16 w/CH-2, ¶ 6209.  Separation processing may be mandatory at this point, but the commander may still recommend that the Marine be retained.

42. JAGINST 5800.7G w/CH-2, ¶ 0110.c.

43. MCM, V-3.

44. JAGINST 5800.7G w/CH-2, App. A-1-f

45. See, e.g., 10 U.S.C. § 837.

46. JAGINST 5800.7G w/CH-2, ¶0115.

47. And perhaps even at any level below a general court-martial.

Featured image: A U.S. Navy staff judge advocate questions a witness in a mock trial. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Elizabeth Davis)

Information Warfare

Russia’s Drone Machinations: Reflexive Control and Cognitive Warfare in the Maritime Domain

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By Catherine Marie Abbott

A version of this article was originally published by the Center for Maritime Strategy, a non-profit, non-partisan think tank and research institution dedicated to studying maritime issues and their context within wider American national security policy. This article is republished with permission.

Reflexive Control in the Maritime Domain

Originating in 1960s Soviet strategic military doctrine, reflexive control (RC) allows the user to employ and orchestrate manipulative tactics, including disinformation, deception, overload, provocation, and distraction, to compel adversaries to voluntarily adopt courses of action favorable to the user’s interests. Since the intensification of the Ukrainian-Russo War and NATO’s extended support to Ukraine, Russia has attempted to reconfigure the environment’s balance of power and assess the limit of the alliance’s collective deterrence.

The Federation, using its fleet of shadow tankers as a tool for asymmetric coercion, has leveraged the vessel’s plausible deniability to enable drone incursions for reconnaissance against the Western alliance. Flyovers have reportedly occurred in proximity to civilian areas, airports, critical infrastructure, and military installations, with at least 39 drone-related incidents between September 2025 and October 2025, and a suspected incident as recent as June 2026. Despite being generally interpreted as surveillance operations, drone incursions launched from naval platforms have received limited attention as instruments of cognitive warfare designed to alter NATO’s decision-making and induce strategic miscalculations.

Cognitive Warfare: Leveraging Plausible Deniability in the Maritime Domain

Russia’s augmented strategy leverages grey-zone asymmetry to conduct cognitive warfare against allied states by exploiting maritime legal safeguards and persistent drone activities. Notably, cognitive warfare, according to NATO, is deliberate strategic synchronized use of military and non-military to influence human cognition, degrade rational decision making, and secure a cognitive advantage over an adversary. Within this context, cognitive warfare specifically targets allied rational processing, strategic beliefs, and threat perceptions under the cover of constant, exploitable intrusions. In recent years, drone technology has fundamentally altered the calculus of modern conflict, allowing comparatively weaker states to counteract the air superiority of major powers through inexpensive, adaptable, and deniable means. While the vast majority of drone incursions occur along NATO’s eastern flank, with Russian and Ukrainian assets encroaching on Estonia, Latvia, Poland, and Romania, these instances are widely recognized as spillovers from the adjacent conflict. Notably, these incursions require sustained and aggressive air policing operations, as well as increased investment in NATO anti-drone capabilities.

However, unlike these generally regarded accidental land-border spillovers, drone operations launched from maritime platforms represent deliberate psychological efforts to impose societal distress and sow distrust between citizens and state authorities. Russian-affiliated sanctioned vessels such as Astrol 1 and Pushpa have been observed launching and operating airborne assets into NATO airspace. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has noted the use of these civilian-marked vessels for reconnaissance and potential sabotage coordination. Notably, when navigating in the Baltic Sea, shadow vessels operate exclusively within international waters and the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of European littoral nations, using the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as an international legal shield against allied interdiction and seizures, effectively weaponizing international law to conduct cognitive warfare with near impunity.

NATO continues to contend with shadow vessels, with varying solutions and effects, including increased sanctions and barring known sanctioned vessels from accessing allied ports. However, the primary nexus constraining interdiction and seizure efforts being the region’s strict adherence to international conventions. Accordingly, UNCLOS does not permit seizure or interdiction operations and obligates states to allow freedom of movement on the high seas, with vessel authority delegated to the designated flag state. Shadow vessels notoriously employ deceptive tactics to maintain plausible deniability on the international stage, including opaque and decentralized ownership structures, shell corporations, flags of convenience, and opportunistic flag registrations. By amalgamating the legally insulated fleet into a nearly impenetrable mothership for drones, Russia can maintain plausible deniability while leveraging drones as an exploitable means of regional coercion.

Altering NATO’s Decision Calculus

Viewing itself as diametrically opposed to the West, Russia has leveraged a cumulative cognitive warfare diaspora, including deniable offensive cyber campaigns, misinformation operations, and the weaponization of existing migration pressures, to destabilize Western states and diminish institutional trust. Ideologically, Europe has exhibited political fragmentation, with NATO member states such as Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic shifting toward illiberal democratic models. Through these targeted efforts, Russia seeks to influence and exploit the vulnerable domestic political environments of NATO member states in ways that weaken alliance cohesion and reduce sustained support for Ukraine.

Because Russia’s RC strategy operates just below NATO’s Article 5 threshold, the Kremlin can observe and evaluate NATO’s collective responses, operational timelines, and escalation thresholds. Since the onset of the Ukrainian-Russo War in 2022, and following the annexation of Crimea in 2014, NATO has dynamically increased its kinetic deterrence posture. In conjunction with initiatives such as Eastern Sentry, the NATO Force Model, and the Allied Reaction Force, NATO has adopted a deterrence-oriented defensive posture, increasing conventional presence along its eastern flank. While these efforts strengthen deterrence, this shift from crisis management toward sustained territorial defense increases the frequency of NATO-Russia interaction, raising the probability of strategic miscalculation within a persistently contested operational environment.

Notably, maritime-enabled drone incursions function as a key instrument of Russia’s RC strategy to diminish institutional trust and generate perceptions of insecurity among NATO allies. Russia’s maritime hybrid campaign has coincided with repeated damage to subsea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea domain, alongside sustained surveillance and mapping of NATO’s critical undersea infrastructure (CUI) as pre-crisis preparation. Repeated incursions conducted via shadow fleet vessels function as observable probes that evaluate NATO’s deterrence, attribution capacity, and response timelines within the gray-zone threshold. Despite increased defensive measures, the persistence of such incidents may erode perceptions of institutional reliability and alliance security guarantees.

If NATO responds to persistent gray-zone activities with kinetic measures, it risks reinforcing the central dilemma of RC: restraint is interpreted as strategic weakness and an inability to provide security guarantees, while escalation enables Russia to frame NATO as the aggressor, thereby reinforcing broader narratives of anti-Western sentiment, hostility, and escalation.

Strategic Considerations for NATO

While NATO has undertaken significant aggressive efforts to counter Russia’s shadow fleet activities, including initiatives such as Baltic Sentry and the Nordic Warden System, these mechanisms primarily focus on protecting CUI and monitoring suspicious maritime activities. Notably, these strategies do not address the vessels as drone-enabled platforms, requiring NATO to consider initiatives targeting maritime-enabled drone incursions.  

Firstly, NATO cannot allow maritime-drone-enabled incursions to become a normalized non-kinetic activity. If left unchecked, Russia will perceive the passivity as permissive, emboldening the Federation to test alliance resolve through escalating behavior. Russia’s reflexive control strategy primarily relies on sustained ambiguity to reconfigure the decision-making calculus of a target; therefore, such incursions are likely to continue, if not exacerbate, over time to achieve its salami-slicing tactics to gradually reduce alliance credibility and security apparatus without invoking Article 5. Accordingly, NATO requires a comprehensive attribution mechanism addressing continual unauthorized drone activity, including a coordinated identification system linking vessels to drones, as well as non-kinetic interception strategies such as leveraging radio frequency jamming to diminish links between drones and pilots. Coastal states maintain sovereignty over their territorial sea and the above airspace, providing a legal basis for states to regulate unauthorized aerial activity within territorial waters.

Simultaneously, NATO must continue to expand legal efforts to address shadow vessels. Although, according to UNCLOS, surveillance conducted by vessels operating within a coastal state’s EEZ is not inherently prohibited, with its legality depending on the activity conducted and the status of the vessel permitting it. Shadow fleet vessels equipped with specialized surveillance systems, military-grade communication equipment, or drone launch capabilities may challenge their designation as ordinary commercial vessels, especially when operating in proximity to CUI. Given that civilian vessels under UNCLOS do not maintain equivalent sovereign protections afforded to military vessels, NATO member states should reassess whether vessels engaged in state-directed intelligence collection or military support activities can continue to benefit from the legal assumptions afforded to legitimate commercial actors.

Conclusion

Russia is leveraging multi-domain campaigns as part of its greater RC strategy. While not actively seeking conventional warfare with the Alliance, it is simultaneously defining the informational and operational environment in ways that preserve escalation optionality and strategic positioning in the event of a near-peer conflict. In this sense, Russia’s maritime-enabled RC has increasingly determined NATO’s decision-making environment through sustained uncertainty and ambiguity by leveraging regional vulnerabilities and international frameworks. Given the fragmented and expansive nature of the maritime domain, NATO is likely to contend with this challenge over an extended period, as efforts to constrain shadow vessel fleet activity are offset by Russian adaptation through vessel reconstitution. Currently, Russia is incorporating known sanctioned vessels, such as Pushpa, now Feniks, into its naval directory while continuing to acquire new tankers for shadow fleet activities, sustaining conditions that enable sanctions evasion, infrastructure disruption, and its maritime-enabled drone incursions as part of its larger RC strategy.

Catherine Marie Abbott holds a master’s degree in security policy studies from George Washington University and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, specializing in maritime security, intelligence analysis, and counterintelligence. Her research primarily focuses on maritime logistics, emerging technology, and intelligence processing, with a distinct focus on analyzing overlooked variables and externalities that disrupt strategic decision-making.

The views and opinions are those of the author and do not reflect or represent those of her employer or any other organization with which she is affiliated.

Featured image: The Tactical Resupply Vehicle-150 lands on the beach after a series of contested logistics experimentations from ship to shore as part of Project Convergence-Capstone 4 at Camp Pendleton, Calif., Feb. 29, 2024. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Howard Lee)

Maritime Security

Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance in the Western Hemisphere

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By Bruce Stubbs

I. Introduction

The United States should designate the U.S. Coast Guard as its lead agency for maritime security in the Western Hemisphere. In military command and control terminology, this would make the Coast Guard the “supported” service with all other armed services and federal agencies as “supporting” services. Such a designation would reverse the customary approach for the Navy to lead at sea, but this reversal is long overdue.

Restoring America’s maritime dominance in the Western Hemisphere aligns with the 2025 National Security Strategy and the 2026 National Defense Strategy.1 The former directs a reconsideration of the U.S. military presence in the Western Hemisphere. It specifically calls for “a more suitable Coast Guard and Navy presence to control sea lanes, to thwart illegal and other unwanted migration, to reduce human and drug trafficking, and to control key transit routes in a crisis.”2 The latter declares that “the U.S. military’s foremost priority is to defend the U.S. Homeland” through securing the U.S. border, countering narco-terrorists, and securing key terrain.3

These two strategic documents frame their guidance for the entire Western Hemisphere to reflect what the strategies describe as a renewed emphasis on limiting external influence in regional affairs. Their specific objectives and tasks, however, are primarily oriented toward operations in U.S. Homeland Seas. This term is used here to refer to the four maritime approaches to the United States, the Arctic, Caribbean, Eastern Pacific, and Western Atlantic. This commentary examines the structural and operational impediments that impair fully achieving these national policies. It also explains why a more suitable maritime presence in the U.S. Homeland Seas must begin with the U.S. Coast Guard.

Of note, presence itself is not a mission. Presence is no more than the geographic location on the globe where the Navy conducts its five core functions. The term, “maritime dominance,” is used to refer to the sustained ability to monitor, control, and enforce law and sovereignty across the U.S. Homeland Seas, vice naval superiority over a peer competitor. The article advances two arguments. First, maritime security in the Western Hemisphere is fundamentally a persistence problem, not a warfighting problem. Second, and more consequentially, the Coast Guard should be the supported service for the mission and lead its command architecture.

II. The Security Challenges of the Western Hemisphere and the U.S. Homeland Seas

Although the two national strategies employ different terminology, both state similar objectives: secure the U.S. maritime approaches, suppress illicit activity, protect U.S. borders, and ensure control of critical sea lanes during a crisis. Notably, these objectives predominantly emphasize maritime security vice military force, except for the control of key transit routes. Threats to these strategies’ objectives fall into two distinct categories that require different operational responses.

The first category consists of external military threats principally posed by China, Russia, and their state-linked actors. In practice, however, these threats manifest only intermittently in the Western Hemisphere. Consider the June 2024 deployment of the Russian Yasen-M-class nuclear-powered attack submarine Kazan (K-561) to the Caribbean. Armed with Zircon hypersonic and Kalibr cruise missiles, it illustrates the operational character of this threat category.4 To address this category of threats, the Navy’s principal mission in the Hemisphere is Homeland Defense including deterrence against external military aggression and strategic coercion.5 Because such adversary activities are episodic rather than persistent, the Navy does not maintain a continuous at-sea operational presence across the U.S. Homeland Seas. Indeed, U.S. Fourth Fleet has no permanently assigned forces and primarily functions as a coordinating headquarters. Its area of responsibility encompasses the Caribbean Sea and the waters surrounding South America.

The second category consists of persistent maritime security threats within the Homeland Seas themselves. These include illegal migration, narcotics trafficking, illegal fishing, transnational criminal activity, and other illicit uses of the maritime domain. These activities undermine U.S. sovereignty, border security, and regional stability. To address this category of threats, the Coast Guard conducts continuous homeland security centered on maritime security activities to deter and defeat non-military threats.6 The Coast Guard is a unique service, both an armed force and a federal law enforcement agency. As the Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao stated before the House Armed Services Committee in May 2026, “Border security is national security.”7 This formulation explicitly links maritime security operations in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific to the defense of the U.S. border and the protection of the American homeland.

Broadly speaking, the Navy employs high-end warfighting assets to deter infrequent military threats, whereas the Coast Guard employs maritime security-oriented forces and legal authorities to counter persistent maritime security threats. This distinction does not mean the Navy never conducts maritime security operations or that the Coast Guard does not contribute to military missions. Rather, it reflects the focus and operational specialization of each service. The Coast Guard’s comparatively affordable platforms, law enforcement authorities, and persistent presence make it the most operationally suitable maritime force for day-to-day security operations throughout the Hemisphere. Consistent with these differing missions, the Navy and Coast Guard maintain separate command-and-control structures for operations at sea.

III. Background: Operation Southern Spear

In August 2025, the Joint Force began Operation Southern Spear to detect, disrupt, and degrade transnational criminal and illicit maritime networks in the Western Hemisphere.8 The operation served purposes beyond counter-narcotics. It provided the coercive maritime presence that shaped conditions for the subsequent capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January 2026. Southern Spear was complemented by Operation Absolute Resolve, which extended homeland defense and maritime interdiction operations across the Western Hemisphere. That effort reflected the broader operationalization of the Navy’s homeland defense, counter-narcotics, and regional maritime security missions in the approaches to the United States.9 

The administration designated major Latin American drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, declared a Non-International Armed Conflict, and authorized military force, including kinetic strikes against narco-terrorist vessels at sea.10 In their September 2025 report, “Going to War with the Cartels: The Military Implications,” Mark Cancian and Chris Park, analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, assessed Southern Spear. They noted that at its peak, the operation concentrated 38 percent of all Navy ships underway in the Caribbean. That force included the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, the USS Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group, multiple guided-missile destroyers and cruisers, and a Littoral Combat Ship.11 MQ-9 Reapers operating from Puerto Rico and AC-130J gunships operating from El Salvador conducted lethal strikes against cartel maritime targets.12 By March 2026, the Defense Department reported a 30 percent reduction in drug vessel movements in the Caribbean and 25 percent reduction in the Eastern Pacific.13

Southern Spear demonstrated both the effectiveness and the limits of the existing architecture. It produced measurable results against cartel maritime networks. It also exposed the strategic costs of relying upon high-end naval combatants and improvised command structures for a mission that never ends.

IV. The Structural and Operational Impediments

Several significant structural and operational impediments exist that inhibit a more suitable U.S. maritime presence in the Western Hemisphere and U.S. Homeland Seas.

Impediment 1: Force Structure, A Navy Mismatch and a Coast Guard Insufficiency

The Navy’s existing force structure is optimized primarily for high-end deterrence and warfighting missions against peer and near-peer adversaries rather than for sustained maritime security operations in the Western Hemisphere. Carrier strike groups, amphibious ready groups, and guided missile destroyers can perform maritime security missions, but they were designed principally for power projection, sea control, and expeditionary warfare. In December 2025, defense analyst Peter Singer estimated that the U.S. forces committed to Southern Spear cost at least seven times the annual revenue of the cartels they were targeting. They cost thousands of times more than the value of the individual speedboats being destroyed.14 Cancian and Park reached a similar conclusion, describing the operation as “swatting flies with golden hammers” but the “long-term military solution is to beef up the Coast Guard” rather than relying upon scarce fleet combatants.15 The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), Admiral Daryl Caudle, agreed and stated in March 2026, “I don’t need the carrier to do maritime interdiction. I want to reserve the carrier for power projection and deterrence in the theaters that really need that capability.”16

The Coast Guard’s insufficiency crisis is not a separate problem from the persistence argument. It is what a persistent requirement looks like when it is chronically underfunded. Persistence cannot be surged. It must be built, crewed, and sustained years ahead of need, which is precisely what decades of episodic funding failed to do. The Coast Guard has a force structure optimized for maritime security operations. But it has historically lacked sufficient capacity to achieve a decisive operational tipping point against non-military threats. The Coast Guard’s own fleet mix analysis concluded that its planned fleet would provide only 61 percent of the cutters required to fully execute statutory missions.17 Acting Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard Kevin Lunday stated in April 2025, “When a National Security Cutter pulls into port, we do a controlled parts exchange, which is a fancy term for cannibalizing our readiness. No ship gets underway without stripping another for parts. You can only cannibalize your readiness for so long in that downward death spiral and that’s where we’re at.”18 Three major cutters had been laid up because the service lacked sufficient enlisted personnel to crew them. In the following month, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem bluntly stated in Force Design 2028 that the service, “can no longer reliably protect the American people and our Homeland,” is “less ready than at any time since the end of World War II,” and is “fragile, in crisis, and on a path to failure without sustained investment.”19

Congress and the President heard the Coast Guard’s distress call. In July 2025 the reconciliation act provided the Coast Guard a one-time appropriation of $24.6 billion.20 This was its largest single investment in the service’s history. This act funded 17 new icebreakers, 21 new cutters, over 40 helicopters, and six C-130J aircraft through fiscal year 2029. Next came the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2025 which authorized end strength growth to 60,000 personnel by fiscal year 2028.21 These investments were precedent-setting and halted the Coast Guard’s immediate decline. But ships take years to build, and trained, experienced personnel cannot be generated overnight. The Offshore Patrol Cutter program remains years late and billions over budget.22 The capability gap documented in 2025 will not close before the end of this decade, and the command architecture deficiencies that money alone cannot fix will remain unresolved.23

The Coast Guard’s major cutter recapitalization programs illustrate the scale of the problem. The Offshore Patrol Cutter program, the service’s highest acquisition priority, replaces aging 210-foot and 270-foot medium-endurance cutters. It remains years behind schedule and billions over budget following shipyard failures, production delays, and contract restructuring. The Polar Security Cutter program has experienced similar delays. Those delays are slowing the recapitalization of the nation’s aging icebreaker fleet at the very moment Arctic competition within the Homeland Seas is intensifying.24 These acquisition difficulties are not merely procurement problems. They directly constrain the Coast Guard’s ability to generate the persistent maritime presence the National Security Strategy now demands across the U.S. Homeland Seas.

Impediment 2: Command and Control Gap

No single commander owns the Western Hemisphere maritime security mission continuously across the spectrum spanning routine operations, crisis response, deterrence operations, and kinetic escalation. The United States does not possess a unified operational maritime security command architecture for the Western Hemisphere. Instead, maritime security, deterrence, interdiction, homeland defense, detection and monitoring, and kinetic strike operations are divided among multiple commands. Authorities overlap, geographic boundaries are inconsistent, and operational relationships shift as missions escalate. Coast Guard Atlantic Area, Pacific Area, and subordinate regional commands, formerly the district commands, maintain the only continuous maritime security operational presence across the U.S. Homeland Seas. But they are not joint maritime commanders, and their operational boundaries do not align with Navy fleet geography. Navy Second Fleet, Third Fleet, Fourth Fleet, Fleet Forces Command, and Naval Forces Northern Command have homeland defense and deterrence responsibilities, but none maintains continuous responsibility for the full maritime security mission.

As operations escalate, command relationships shift again. Southern Spear exposed the consequences of that fragmentation. The Department of Defense established Joint Task Force Southern Spear as a parallel headquarters to direct kinetic strike operations against cartel maritime targets rather than assigning the mission to an existing command. That decision was an implicit admission. No existing organization possessed the authority, operational scope, or unity of command required to execute the full Western Hemisphere maritime security mission from routine maritime security operations through theater-level deterrence and kinetic action.

Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATF-S) illustrates both the effectiveness and limits of the current architecture.25 Built principally for detection and monitoring under 10 U.S.C. §124, it integrates intelligence, coordinates surveillance, tracks targets, and cues interdiction opportunities across multiple agencies and partner nations. What it was never designed to do is command permanently assigned maritime forces, conduct sustained maritime operations, or maintain continuous operational responsibility for the broader maritime security mission. Coast Guard cutters conducting counter-drug patrols generally remain under Atlantic Area, Pacific Area, and subordinate district command relationships rather than being assigned under JIATF-S operational control. The problem, therefore, is not JIATF-S itself. The problem is a larger maritime security architecture that relies upon coordination among multiple headquarters rather than continuous operational command accountability.

The Navy’s increasing emphasis on “coordinated deterrence” within the Homeland Seas reflects the operational reality. Maritime security, deterrence, intelligence integration, and interdiction activities are now deeply interconnected across multiple commands and agencies.26 That framing, however, implicitly acknowledges the fragmentation the current architecture produces. Southern Spear demonstrated that coordination mechanisms, however well-intentioned, remain insufficient substitutes for continuous operational command accountability when missions escalate from routine interdiction into theater-level deterrence and kinetic action.

Impediment 3: Coast Guard Kinetic Limitations

The Coast Guard remains highly effective in interdiction, boarding, and law-enforcement operations at sea and the use of disabling fires. But it does not possess the organic capability to conduct independent lethal kinetic strikes against maritime surface targets.27 Its aviation assets are designed for surveillance, pursuit, and disabling fire, not deliberate target destruction. Likewise, major cutters are not configured to integrate within joint kill chains involving MQ-9 Reapers, AC-130J gunships, or other theater strike assets employed for destructive kinetic effects. Southern Spear demonstrated that once operations escalated from maritime interdiction into deliberate lethal strikes against narco-terrorist vessels, the Coast Guard could not independently execute lethal strike operations.

More fundamentally, Coast Guard force structure, training pipelines, legal authorities, and operational culture are oriented toward maritime security, law enforcement, and maritime governance rather than sustained offensive strike operations. This approach allows the Coast Guard to “capture and interrogate cartel members, collect evidence, and prepare case packages for criminal prosecution.”28 When operations require destructive kinetic effects, escalation dominance, or politically sensitive lethal force employment, those capabilities reside within the Department of Defense. The establishment of Joint Task Force Southern Spear under a three-star joint commander to oversee kinetic strike operations against cartel maritime targets reflected the operational and institutional sensitivity surrounding those missions. This is a limitation of the Coast Guard’s design, not a shortfall to be corrected. It is the reason the command architecture must be able to draw Navy strike authority on demand, the requirement taken up in Recommendation 3.

V. Implications

Implication 1: Why a More Suitable Maritime Presence in the Western Hemisphere Starts with the U.S. Coast Guard

Since the end of the Cold War, Russian nuclear-powered submarines have deployed into the Caribbean and off the U.S. East Coast. Combined Chinese-Russian surface action groups have operated near Alaska and within the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone.29 Chinese naval vessels have repeatedly transited near the Aleutian Islands, while Russian intelligence collection ships have operated near Hawaii and critical U.S. undersea infrastructure.30 These operations are strategically significant and require credible Navy deterrence and response capability. Yet they remain episodic rather than continuous. They appear periodically as demonstrations of military power, strategic signaling, intelligence collection, or geopolitical coercion rather than as a permanent daily maritime presence challenge.

The operational response to many of these incidents also revealed a broader institutional reality. In numerous cases, the first American surface asset to detect, monitor, shadow, or respond to Russian and Chinese naval activity near U.S. waters was not a Navy ship but a Coast Guard cutter. Coast Guard cutters such as Kimball (WMSL-756), Stratton (WMSL-752), and Healy (WAGB-20) routinely encountered and monitored foreign naval vessels. They did so because the Coast Guard already maintains the persistent day-to-day maritime presence across the U.S. Homeland Seas.31 The Navy retains the indispensable role for deterrence, escalation dominance, and high-end warfighting against military threats. But the persistence requirement in the Western Hemisphere is fundamentally different. Beyond episodic Russian and Chinese naval deployments, the United States still confronts constant maritime security threats on a daily basis. These threats involve narcotics trafficking, illegal migration, sanctions evasion, illegal fishing, criminal organizations, and sovereignty enforcement. The Navy responds episodically to military threats. The Coast Guard operates continuously against persistent maritime security threats. That enduring operational reality is why the National Security Strategy’s call for a more suitable maritime presence in the Western Hemisphere must start with the U.S. Coast Guard.

Implication 2: Persistent Maritime Security Is the Wrong Mission for High-End Naval Combatants

As discussed above, the Navy portion for a more suitable presence is episodic rather than persistent. It does not generate a continuous daily warfighting presence requirement across the Homeland Seas. The persistent operational requirement in the Western Hemisphere is maritime security against narcotics trafficking, illegal migration, sanctions evasion, illegal fishing, criminal organizations, and sovereignty violations. That requirement exists every day regardless of whether Russian or Chinese naval forces are operating nearby.

Caudle’s May 2026 posture testimony before the House Armed Services Committee reinforced this distinction. He emphasized the Navy’s contribution through domain awareness, coordinated deterrence, advanced surveillance, and maritime interdiction support.32 The operational activities he described — detection, monitoring, and interdiction augmentation — are enabling and supporting functions appropriate to the Navy’s episodic role. They are not an argument for continuous fleet-centric naval presence across the Homeland Seas. Caudle’s own framing of Homeland Defense operations implicitly recognizes that the Western Hemisphere mission is fundamentally a persistent maritime security campaign requiring selective naval augmentation rather than permanent high-end naval concentration.

The Navy’s force structure is not the economical or sustainable instrument for that persistent maritime security mission. Carrier strike groups, amphibious ready groups, cruisers, and destroyers can conduct maritime security operations effectively, but they were designed principally for deterrence and high-end warfighting against state adversaries. Using them for routine maritime security patrols imposes substantial operational and opportunity cost while degrading readiness for the high-end missions only the Navy can perform. The Ford Carrier Strike Group departed for operations against Iran before the counter-narcotics mission was complete. The maritime security requirement outlasted the availability of the Navy forces assigned to execute it.33 Persistent maritime security is not a surge requirement. It is a standing operational requirement, one that high-end naval combatants are too scarce and too expensive to sustain indefinitely.

The Navy also lacks the legal authorities the mission requires. In a recent year 59 percent of Coast Guard drug interdictions relied on bilateral agreements that Navy crews cannot invoke and Navy ships cannot execute.34 That limitation is one of legal authority, not capability. The power to board, search, seize, and arrest on the high seas belongs to the Coast Guard by statute (14 U.S.C. § 89). The Posse Comitatus Act bars Department of Defense personnel from exercising it. When a Navy warship conducts a counter-narcotics boarding, it does so only because a Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment is embarked for that purpose (10 U.S.C. § 279). The boarding proceeds under Coast Guard authority and command. Navy personnel may take part only in support, and only under that command. The arrangement proves rather than refutes the point. The Navy can surveil, track, intercept, and escort, but it cannot independently execute the law-enforcement core of the maritime security mission. To board, search, seize, and arrest, it must embark Coast Guard personnel and operate under Coast Guard authority.

The Navy’s institutional culture and force-structure history reinforce the same conclusion. As Admiral Michael Mullen, the CNO, stated in 2006, “Your Navy remains first and foremost a warfighting, seagoing service.”35 That orientation is correct and necessary, but it is precisely why the persistent maritime security mission should not compete for the Navy’s scarce high-end capacity. Furthermore, that institutional orientation has repeatedly transformed lower-end maritime security platforms into increasingly expensive fleet combatants optimized for warfighting missions. The Littoral Combat Ship proved operationally constrained and insufficiently survivable. The Constellation-class frigate evolved toward a smaller version of a Burke-class destroyer. It steadily lost the affordability and operational simplicity that originally justified the program. Secretary of the Navy John Phelan canceled the Constellation-class frigate and decided to base the Navy’s replacement frigate on the Coast Guard’s Legend-class hull. That choice reflected a broader institutional reality. The Navy will prioritize warfighting capability over persistent maritime security optimization, because warfighting is its core institutional purpose.36 The Western Hemisphere’s enduring maritime security requirement therefore starts with the Coast Guard, while the Navy remains the indispensable but episodic instrument for deterrence and combat operations against military threats.

Cancian and Park in their report concluded that Coast Guard cutters are better suited, much cheaper while “Navy destroyers have systems and capabilities for a great power conflict … are useless for counter-drug operations.”37 They produced Table 1 to compare the Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class destroyer with the Coast Guard’s National Security Cutter and proposed Offshore Patrol Cutter. The table graphically shows this mismatch.

Table 1: Comparison of a Destroyer and Coast Guard Cutters

Used with permission: Mark F. Cancian and Chris H. Park, “Going to War with the Cartels: The Military Implications,” 8 September 2025, Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The comparison shows that the Coast Guard’s cutters deliver greater persistence and lower operating cost while giving up only capabilities unnecessary for most maritime security missions.

Implication 3: Coordination Is Not Command

The Western Hemisphere maritime security mission distributes responsibility across multiple commands, but accountability is not centralized anywhere. No single commander owns the mission continuously across routine maritime security operations, crisis response, deterrence operations, and kinetic escalation. Instead, the United States relies upon a system of overlapping service authorities, interagency coordination mechanisms, shifting operational relationships, and temporary task forces that function adequately during routine interdiction operations but become increasingly fragmented as missions expand in scale, complexity, or violence.

Southern Spear exposed the operational consequences of that architecture. Once operations expanded beyond detection, monitoring, and law enforcement interdiction into theater-level deterrence and kinetic strike operations, existing command relationships proved insufficient. The Department of Defense established Joint Task Force Southern Spear as a parallel headquarters rather than assigning the mission to an existing standing command. That decision revealed three related deficiencies in the current architecture.

The first is assignment. Western Hemisphere maritime security is a continuous responsibility, but no document assigns it continuously to any commander. The Unified Command Plan distributes elements of the mission across geographic and functional commands without making any one commander accountable for the whole. A mission treated as a finite operation will require a new headquarters each time it escalates, and that headquarters will begin its work without the relationships, the authorities, and the practiced habits of a command that has owned the mission all along.

The second is authority. A task force established for a defined operation receives the authorities required for, but limited to, the operation, based on the way the mission is stated. Western Hemisphere maritime security requires statutory law enforcement authority on any given day, and that authority resides in the Coast Guard rather than in a joint task force assembled for a campaign of finite duration.

The third is command relationships. The task organization relied on support relationships among headquarters that retained their own priorities and their own chains of command, an arrangement adequate for coordinating routine interdiction but insufficient for operations that combine law enforcement, deterrence, and kinetic strike. Those operations require tactical control or operational control over assigned forces, exercised by a commander accountable for the outcome.

Together these three deficiencies reveal the requirement for a continuously accountable operational maritime command structure capable of integrating maritime security, deterrence, and kinetic operations across the full spectrum of competition, crisis, and conflict.

Maritime security in the Western Hemisphere is not an episodic contingency mission but a continuous operational requirement spanning all four U.S. Homeland Seas. Those threats evolve from routine law enforcement problems into strategic security challenges with little warning. A command architecture built primarily around coordination rather than continuous operational accountability risks fragmentation precisely when unity of command becomes most important.

VI. Recommendations

Recommendation 1: Sustain the Investment in Coast Guard Maritime Security Capacity

This first recommendation is not a call to spend more. It is a call to fund persistence the way persistence must be funded, as a permanent and predictable commitment rather than a one-time rescue. A persistent mission financed by episodic appropriations will always decay between crises. The $24.6 billion reconciliation appropriation signed in July 2025 and the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2025 represent the most significant investment in the service’s history. They are a long overdue recognition that decades of chronic underfunding had driven the Coast Guard to the lowest point of readiness since World War II. The investment is substantial and has altered the Coast Guard’s trajectory. But one-time mandatory spending is not a sustained shipbuilding program. Shipyards cannot expand production capacity, train skilled workforces, or invest in facilities on the basis of a single appropriation. The Coast Guard’s Offshore Patrol Cutter program is already years late and billions over budget. That delay reflects the stop-and-start funding history that reconciliation money alone does not correct.

In 2026 the Coast Guard (and the Navy) need a modern version of the famous Vinson-Trammell Act of 1934. That act built the Navy that won the Second World War and accomplished a lot more. The Act was built on three profound shipbuilding policies that would prevent today’s Coast Guard and Navy from lurching from one shipbuilding crisis to another.38 First, the United States must build and maintain a fleet of modern cutters and combatants sustained through a continuous replacement schedule that prevents block obsolescence. Second, sufficient replacement programs must be financed from year to year to maintain continuous force generation and lower costs through repetitive construction. Third, the sequencing establishes maritime security and warfighting requirements first, and affordability is considered only afterward. If the budget does not support the requirements, then the selected means for the mission must change. This does not mean these three policies alone define the Coast Guard and Navy’s force structures. Naval War College professor Anand Toprani has noted that “political and budgetary realities played an equal role as strategic imperatives in shaping the size of the U.S. Navy.”39 In his research, Toprani concluded that “resource constraints are never absent from decisions about the size and composition of the military even in wartime.”40 The intent of these three policies is to ensure in the final analysis that if the budget does not support the strategy, then either the means or the ends must change. The abandonment of these three shipbuilding policies after the Cold War produced the slow-motion crisis whose full consequences Southern Spear made visible. Restoring them requires Congress to treat the Coast Guard and the Navy recapitalization not as a supplemental emergency measure but as a permanent annual commitment embedded in their base budget.

Congress should therefore sustain and expand the Fiscal Year 2027 budget request’s $2.1 billion increase for the Coast Guard as a floor, not a ceiling.41 The Offshore Patrol Cutter program, Polar Security Cutter program, and Arctic Security Cutter program, along with the cutter workforce and aviation fleet, should be funded at levels sufficient to sustain persistent maritime security operations across the U.S. Homeland Seas on a continuous basis. The objective is not merely to address the current crisis through a single appropriation, but to prevent the recurrence of similar readiness and recapitalization failures in the future.

Recommendation 2: Reserve High-End Naval Combatants for Warfighting and Deterrence

Persistent maritime security in the Western Hemisphere should not be sustained primarily with high-end naval combatants optimized for major warfighting against state adversaries. Carrier strike groups, amphibious ready groups, cruisers, and destroyers can execute maritime security missions. But Southern Spear demonstrated the substantial strategic and operational costs of using scarce fleet combatants for a mission that is continuous rather than episodic. Every high-end naval combatant assigned to routine maritime security patrols in the Caribbean or Eastern Pacific is one less asset available for deterrence and warfighting missions elsewhere.

The Navy should therefore remain the force employed episodically for deterrence and combat operations against military threats in the Western Hemisphere, while the Coast Guard provides the persistent maritime security presence against non-military threats. Navy forces should support Coast Guard-led maritime security operations when military capability, escalation management, or destructive kinetic force is required, not substitute routinely for the continuous maritime presence mission itself.

The Navy’s force structure experience over the past two decades reinforces the same lesson. As Implication 2 described, the Navy’s own force-structure history with the Littoral Combat Ship, the Constellation-class frigate, and ultimately a future frigate based on the Coast Guard’s Legend-class hull shows how persistently the service converts affordable presence platforms into expensive combatants.

But Southern Spear demonstrated that no Navy force structure solution should be expected to absorb a mission better matched to the Coast Guard. None of this diminishes the Navy’s role in the Western Hemisphere, but, instead clarifies it. The Navy remains the indispensable instrument for deterrence, escalation dominance, and combat against military threats that no other service can perform. This is an argument about the mission assigned to each service, and the persistent mission is not the Navy’s.

Recommendation 3: Establish Continuous Maritime Command Accountability

The United States requires a standing maritime security command structure with continuous accountability across the U.S. Homeland Seas rather than fragmented coordination among multiple headquarters. The current architecture distributes maritime security, deterrence, interdiction, homeland defense, detection and monitoring, and kinetic strike operations across overlapping commands with shifting authorities and inconsistent geographic boundaries. That structure can coordinate routine operations adequately, but Southern Spear demonstrated that it becomes increasingly fragmented as missions escalate from law enforcement interdiction into theater-level deterrence and kinetic operations.

The future maritime security command and control architecture for the Western Hemisphere should draw upon the relevant lessons demonstrated by the Cold War Maritime Defense Zones and Joint Interagency Task Force South.42 Those lessons show that continuous maritime security operations require enduring joint command relationships operating under unified operational accountability. Joint Interagency Task Force South already integrates intelligence, surveillance, detection and monitoring, interdiction coordination, interagency participation, and multinational cooperation under Coast Guard leadership. Southern Spear demonstrated that the next requirement is to extend those principles beyond detection and monitoring into a standing maritime security command structure. That structure would integrate maritime security operations, deterrence support, and escalation management across the Homeland Seas. The objective is not to create another temporary task force or additional coordinating headquarters. It is to establish continuous operational accountability for a mission that now spans a spectrum of routine maritime security operations, crisis response, deterrence activities, and kinetic escalation.

Several designs could deliver that accountability: a strengthened JIATF-S elevated to a standing operational command; a Western Hemisphere maritime component commander; reestablished Maritime Defense Zones adapted to current geography; or a dual-hatted Navy–Coast Guard commander. This commentary does not prescribe a final structure, but the controlling principle should narrow the field. Because the mission is persistent and law-enforcement-centric for all but episodic intervals, the standing command should be Coast Guard-led, with Navy forces placed under its tactical control or operational control when military capability or escalation management is required. How that command aligns with existing combatant commands, numbered fleets, and Coast Guard Areas is a joint force-management question. But the alignment should follow the persistence of the mission rather than the convenience of existing fleet geography.

This recommendation deliberately reverses a long-standing assumption that U.S. maritime commands in the Western Hemisphere should be Navy-led.  The Coast Guard must lead this command for reasons that already exist in fact rather than aspiration. It alone holds the statutory law enforcement authority that the Western Hemisphere mission requires every day. It already maintains the only continuous operational presence across the Homeland Seas through its Atlantic Area, Pacific Area, and regional commands. It operates the nation’s only icebreakers, which means polar maritime dominance runs through the Coast Guard and no other service. And through the National Fleet Policy, signed in 1998, the Coast Guard and Navy have spent decades deliberately building common command, control, and communications systems. They built those systems precisely so that their forces can integrate when the mission demands it. The supported-supporting relationship recommended here does not invent a new partnership. It merely proposes to formalize one the Coast Guard and Navy have practiced for a generation, and it assigns the lead to the service that already owns the persistent mission, the authorities, and the continuous presence the mission requires.

VII. Conclusion

The 2025 National Security Strategy calls for a more suitable Coast Guard and Navy presence in the Western Hemisphere. The 2026 National Defense Strategy states plainly that the U.S. military’s foremost priority is to defend the homeland. That priority includes defending America’s interests throughout the Western Hemisphere. Together they establish a clear strategic direction to build the maritime forces and command structure capable of executing this mission permanently rather than improvising it episodically.

The Southern Spear campaign tested the existing architecture and found it wanting. The operation disrupted cartel maritime networks and demonstrated the value of integrated maritime, intelligence, and kinetic operations. It also exposed the costs of relying upon high-end naval combatants for missions requiring persistent maritime security presence, law enforcement authorities, regional partnerships, and long-duration operational endurance.

The campaign reinforced a broader institutional reality visible throughout American maritime history. The Navy is optimized for deterrence, warfighting, and preparation for major conflict against state adversaries. The Coast Guard is optimized for persistent maritime presence across the U.S. Homeland Seas. It achieves that presence through a combination of military authority, law enforcement authority, partner engagement, and sustained offshore operations. Southern Spear demonstrated that the mission requires each service to perform the role it was institutionally designed to execute.

When Coast Guard boarding teams enforce sanctions against Russian and Venezuelan oil tankers in the Eastern Atlantic, they are not merely conducting inspections but executing American strategic policy. When Coast Guard icebreakers operate in the Arctic, they are not merely breaking ice but asserting U.S. sovereignty against Russian and Chinese expansion. When Coast Guard cutters enforce fishing laws across the 4.38 million square miles of the U.S. exclusive economic zone, they are not merely protecting fish stocks but defending sovereign American resources against foreign poaching fleets operating inside the Homeland Seas. When Coast Guard cutters conduct naval diplomacy throughout the Caribbean, they are not merely training counterparts but strengthening U.S. influence and regional partnerships in ways no high-end Navy destroyer can replicate. This is what a more suitable maritime presence looks like. This is why it starts with the Coast Guard.

Restoring America’s maritime dominance requires resourcing the Coast Guard as America’s persistent maritime security instrument, preserving the Navy’s high-end warfighting capacity for global deterrence, and organizing both services within a permanent maritime security architecture suited to the operational realities of the Western Hemisphere. Achieving that objective requires removing the structural and operational impediments Southern Spear exposed.

Bruce Stubbs had assignments on the staffs of the secretary of the Navy and the chief of naval operations from 2009 to 2022 as a member of the U.S. Senior Executive Service. He was a former director of Strategy and Strategic Concepts in the N3N5 and N7 directorates. As a career U.S. Coast Guard officer, he had a posting as the assistant commandant for capability in Headquarters, served on the staff of the National Security Council, taught at the Naval War College, commanded a major cutter, and served a combat tour with the U.S. Navy in Vietnam during the 1972 Easter Offensive.

Notes

1. President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 14269, “Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance,” 9 April 2025.

2. U.S. Department of State, National Security Strategy of the United States of America, White House, 4 December 2025.

3. U.S. Department of Defense, 2026 National Defense Strategy, Washington, D.C., 23 January 2026.

4. Sam LaGrone, “Russian Nuclear Sub, Frigate with Long Range Land Attack Missiles Operating Off East Coast,” USNI News, 11 June 2024.  

5. The definition of homeland defense is: “The military protection of United States sovereignty and territory against external threats and aggression or, as directed by the President, other threats.” Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, DoD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, The Joint Staff, June 2025, page 78. The definition of deterrence provided by: GEN David H. Berger, USMC; ADM Michael M. Gilday, USN; and ADM Karl L. Schultz, USCG, Naval Doctrine Publication 1: Naval Warfare (NDP-1), April 2020.

6. The definition of homeland security is: “A concerted national effort to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States and to reduce our vulnerability to terrorism, major disasters, and other emergencies.” Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, DoD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, The Joint Staff, June 2025, page 78. The definition of maritime security provided by: GEN David H. Berger, USMC; ADM Michael M. Gilday, USN; and ADM Karl L. Schultz, USCG, Naval Doctrine Publication 1: Naval Warfare (NDP-1), April 2020.

7. Hung Cao, Acting Secretary of the Navy, Statement on the Department of the Navy Posture Before the House Armed Services Committee, 14 May 2026.

8. Diana Roy, “The U.S. Military Campaign Targeting Venezuela and Nicolás Maduro: What to Know,” Council on Foreign Relations, 3 January 2026.

9. Admiral Daryl L. Caudle, U.S. Navy, Chief of Naval Operations, Statement on the Posture of the United States Navy Before the House Armed Services Committee, 14 May 2026.

10. Diana Roy, “The U.S. Military Campaign Targeting Venezuela and Nicolás Maduro: What to Know,” Council on Foreign Relations, 3 January 2026.

11. Mark F. Cancian and Chris H. Park, “Going to War with the Cartels: The Military Implications,” Critical Questions, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 8 September 2025.

12. Howard Altman, “CV-22B Osprey, MC-130J Commando II Special Ops Aircraft Deploy To Puerto Rico,” The War Zone, 23 December 2025.

13. Heather Mongilio, “U.S. Forces Strike Suspected Narco Boat in the Eastern Pacific,” USNI News, 20 March 2026.

14. Peter W. Singer, “Sinking Speedboats With a Supercarrier: The Lopsided Cost of Operation Southern Spear,” Defense One, 7 December  2025.

15. Cancian and Park, “Going to War with the Cartels: The Military Implications,”8 September 2025.

16. Lee Willett, “CNO: New Surface Ship Classes Reflect US Navy’s New Force Structure and Global Output Needs,” Naval News, 12 March 2026.

17. Heather MacLeod, Director, Homeland Security and Justice, Government Accountability Office, Statement on the Coast Guard: Actions Needed to Address Challenges that Hinder Maritime Security Operations Before the Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security, Committee on Homeland Security, House of Representatives, GAO-26-108901, 3 February 2026.

18. Sam LaGrone, “Reconciliation Bill Calls for $14.6B in Coast Guard Cutters, New Arctic Icebreakers,” USNI News, 29 April 2025. “The supplemental is more than the Fiscal Year 2025 Coast Guard budget request of $13.8 billion and more than 10 times the cutter budget of $1 billion in current budget proposal. The new cutters are part of an overall $22.5 billion supplemental to the Coast Guard’s bottom line that also includes $3 billon for new aircraft and billions more for shoreside infrastructure, according to the bill. If ratified, the Coast Guard has 90 days to submit a proposal with timelines for deliveries.”

19. Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, Force Design 2028, Introduction, Executive Report, Department of Homeland Security, Released 28 May 2025.  

20. U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters, Press Release, “U.S. Coast Guard Receives Historic Investment to Rebuild Under President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill,” 4 July 2025. [Budget Reconciliation Act of 2025 (H.R. 1)].

21. H.R. 4275: 119th Congress: Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2025.

22. Caitlyn Burchett, “Eastern Shipbuilding Halts Work on Coast Guard Cutter Program, Cites Financial Strain and Program Conditions,” USNI News, 18 November 2025. United States Government Accountability Office Report to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, House of Representatives November 2025 Offshore Patrol Cutter Coast Guard Should Gain Key Knowledge Before Buying More Ships GAO-26-107583.

23. United States Government Accountability Office, Report to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, House of Representatives, June 2023, “Coast Guard Acquisitions: Offshore Patrol Cutter Program Needs to Mature Technology and Design,” Revised on August 1, 2023 to reflect shipbuilder’s correct percentage construction completion as of October 2022. Correction is on report page 37. GAO-23-105805

24. Nick Blenkey, “GAO Looks at What’s Gone Wrong With the Coast Guard’s OPC and PSC Programs, MarineLog, 31 July 2023.

25. Joint Interagency Task Force (JIATF) was started on February 22, 1989, under President Ronald Reagan’s administration as part of its anti-drug enforcement policy. Specifically, the U.S. Department of Defense was tasked to establish a joint task force (JTF) to conduct detection and monitoring operations to support law enforcement disruptions of cocaine and marijuana trafficking in the Caribbean, thereby preventing these drugs from reaching the United States. The joint interagency task force model was established in 1994 to strengthen collaborations among federal and international partners. As a result, the task force in Key West – then known as JTF-4 – was renamed JIATF East. JIATF South, which was originally located in Panamá, was merged into JIATF East in Key West in 1999. The name was changed to Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATF-South) in 2003. Its mission, in conjunction with Partner Nations, leverages all-domain capabilities to target, detect and monitor illicit drug trafficking in the air and maritime domains, within the Joint Operating Area, facilitating interdiction and apprehension to reduce the flow of drugs and degrade & dismantle Transnational Criminal Organizations.

26. Caudle, Statement on the Posture of the United States Navy Before the House Armed Services Committee, 14 May 2026.

27. Stephen Smith, “U.S. Coast Guard Offloads $63 Million of Cocaine After Shootout at Sea Sinks Suspected Drug Smuggling Boat and Crew,” CBS News, 7 June 2024.

28. Cancian and Park, “Going to War with the Cartels: The Military Implications,”8 September 2025.

29. Dzirhan Mahadzir, “Russian, Chinese Warships Operated Near Alaska, Say Senators,” USNI News, 6 August 2023.

30. Nathaniel Herz, “Inside the U.S. Coast Guard’s Aleutian Encounter With China’s military — and What It Means,” Northern Journal, 12 July 2024, and Barbara Starr and Oren Liebermann, “US Coast Guard Monitoring Russian Military Vessel Near Hawaii, CNN, 15 January 2022.

31. “Chinese Warships Spotted off Alaska Coast, US Coast Guard Says,” The Guardian, 11 July 2024. “U.S. Coast Guard Watching Uptick in Russian, Chinese Navy Activity Near Alaska, Reuters, 27 September 2024. Rana Foroohar, “10 Days with the US Coast Guard on the New Arctic Front Lines,” Financial Times Magazine, 8 February 2025.    

32. Caudle, Statement on the Posture of the United States Navy Before the House Armed Services Committee, 14 May 2026.

33. Sam LaGrone, “Carrier Ford’s Extension to the Middle East Could Break Recent Deployment Records, USNI News, 13 February 2026.  

34. United States Government Accountability Office, Report to Congressional Requesters, “Coast Guard Actions Needed to Improve Maritime Interdictions,” GAO-26-107440, January 2026.

35. Michael G. Mullen, Admiral, U.S. Navy, Chief of Naval Operations, Opening Statement, Before Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, U.S. Senate, Department of Defense Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2007, 15 March 2006.

36. Sam LaGrone, “Navy Cancels Constellation-class Frigate Program, Considering New Small Surface Combatants, USNI News, 25 November 2025.

37. Cancian and Park, “Going to War with the Cartels: The Military Implications,”8 September 2025.

38. Charles F. Elliott, “The Genesis of the Modern Navy,” USNI Proceedings, Vol. 92/3/757, March 1966.

39. Anand Toprani, “Was the 600-Ship Navy a Chimera? Budgets, Force Structure, and the Political Realities Behind Reagan-Era Naval Strategy,” Journal of Strategic Studies, June 24, 2024, p. 3.

40. Anand Toprani, “Was the 600-Ship Navy a Chimera? Budgets, Force Structure, and the Political Realities Behind Reagan-Era Naval Strategy,” p. 8.

41. Stew Magnuson, “SEA-AIR-SPACE NEWS: Best of Times, Worst of Times for Coast Guard Budget,” National Defense, 22 April 2026.

42. James R. Boma, “Troubled Waters Off the Land of the Morning Calm: A Job for the Fleet,” Naval War College Review, Vol. 42 No. 2, 1989.

Featured image: Crew members aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Munro, a 418-foot national security cutter, and its small boat transit the Gulf of Mexico, Feb. 12, 2017. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Seaman Courtney Fussell)

Drones/Unmanned

The Arsenal of Autonomy: Why Taiwan Must Learn from Ukraine’s Drone Defense Before It’s Too Late

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By Joseph Hanacek and Josh Richards

Building the Airborne Asymmetry

In the predawn hours of June 1, 2025, a revolution in warfighting unfolded across Russia’s western airfields. Nearly 3,000 miles from the Ukrainian frontlines, Kyiv launched Operation Spiderweb, a coordinated strike of hundreds of weaponized drones aimed at five Russian air bases.1 The machines were rudimentary: off-the-shelf frames, improvised explosives, and batteries scavenged from consumer supply chains. But their impact was profound. In a single night, Russia lost more than a third of its nuclear-capable bomber fleet and was forced to reassess its employment of aircraft and air defenses. The cost equation was stunning: a few hundred dollars per drone against losses in the hundreds of millions.2

But beyond economics and impact, the operation revealed something deeper: a new standard of warfare. Airpower is no longer the exclusive preserve of modern combat jets and expensive precision-guided munitions. Cheap, expendable drones can now achieve strategic effects once possible only with state-of-the-art weapons and delivery platforms.3

This lesson is not theoretical for Taiwan. Facing the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) overwhelming numerical, technological, and financial superiority, Taipei must ensure that future conflict will not be decided by who has more missiles, aircraft carriers, or advanced fighter squadrons, but rather by who can field, sustain, and adapt vast numbers of unmanned systems. Taiwan has the geography, the talent, and the industrial base to win this race. Whether they can scale up quickly enough is going to depend on how decisively they can pivot to embracing drones as a core element of their national strategy.

Taiwan’s Awakening

Taiwan recognizes the stakes and, notionally, they are heading in the right direction. The government has pledged to procure almost 50,000 drones over the next three years and to scale up to 180,000 units annually by 2028.4 The ambition is bold, but reality lags. Taiwan currently produces only 8,000–10,000 drones annually, far short of its 2028 goal.5 Moreover, there are important distinctions to be made with regards to the type, size and capacity of the drones being built, and the intended roles in which Taiwan plans to employ them. Whether those drones serve predominantly as supporting tools to more conventional weapons, or more directly as weapons themselves, presents a critical question.

Retired General Lee Hsi-ming, former Chief of the General Staff, has been a persistent critic of this imbalance, saying, “We are still spending too much money on conventional projects,” he told Politico. “What Taiwan needs is a large quantity of low-cost attack drones. If you have enough of them, it would be a big headache to China.”6

Legislator Kuan-ting Chen, who heads Taiwan’s Ukraine Parliamentary Friendship Association, has voiced a similar sentiment: “Spending wisely, like Ukraine has done with cheaper drones to counter the first line of attack, is a lesson Taiwan can learn. We are trying to reverse the situation, that they [China] have the quantity we don’t.”7

Both men capture the essence of Taiwan’s dilemma: the island has the technological sophistication and political awareness to recognize the importance of drones, but its defense establishment remains tethered to legacy platforms and procurement habits that undercut speed, scale, and flexibility.

In order to get drone production on track, Taiwan must establish a drone production industry designed around its unique defensive requirements, drawing on hard-learned lessons from the war in Ukraine and strengthened through partnerships with trusted international partners. To succeed, this effort cannot remain a niche initiative—it must be embraced as a pillar of Taiwan’s national strategy and identity, woven into both its defense doctrine and its broader sense of collective resilience.

Why Drones Matter for Taiwan’s Defense

Taiwan lies in the constant shadow of China’s expansionist ambitions. China’s key advantage is in scale. Its navy is the largest in the world, its missile arsenal vast, and its air force is modernizing at speed. Taiwan cannot match the PLA platform for platform, but drones invert the logic of numbers.8

Imagine a PLA amphibious fleet attempting to cross the Strait. Taiwanese sea drones prowl the shallows, striking troop transports. FPV drones dive onto armored vehicles at staging points. Loitering munitions suppress radars, blinding air defenses. Each system is expendable, but together they impose prohibitive costs and slow momentum. Every day gained allows U.S. and allied forces more time to respond.

This is the essence of asymmetric defense: not parity, but denial. Taiwan cannot outbuild the PRC’s navy, but it can make the Strait a drone battlefield, where every ship, runway, and depot is vulnerable to swarming attacks.9

While China is certainly not unaware of the capacity drones have to thwart their military aims, they are potentially quite limited in their ability to negate them. Electromagnetic and Cyber Warfare offer good opportunities to counter drone employment, but those attack vectors can be mitigated by creative system design and operational employment.

And while China is itself capable of fielding enormous numbers of drones, the tyranny of distance and the nature of offensive and amphibious operations work to its disadvantage. To carry a 10-pound payload across the 100+ mile Taiwan strait would generally require a more expensive gas-powered drone of several hundred pounds, and it would be tasked with finding hidden targets while confronted with a fuel constrained timeline and while. exposed to adversary defenses. Meanwhile, a 10-pound payload launched from a hidden position on Taiwan could be carried by a lightweight lithium battery powered drone, and the target it seeks to find will be in the open and likely ill-equipped to target small, agile drones.

Ukraine’s Lessons: The Drone as Ammunition

Ukraine’s experience provides both inspiration and warning. On the positive side, the war has shown that drones can radically shift the battlefield balance. Small FPV drones have struck tanks, artillery, and command posts far behind frontlines.10 Swarms of loitering munitions have overwhelmed air defenses. Civilian “maker” communities have become integral to military innovation, turning hobbyist know-how into combat capability.11

Two observations are critical.

First, losses in Ukraine of UAVs and loitering munitions are high. But so are the returns in terms of disruption. A $200 FPV drone destroyed dozens of times can still deliver asymmetrical impact against expensive infrastructure. Traditional platforms, by contrast, demand high maintenance, long lead times, and are easier to target once their intelligence and flight path are known.

Second, unmanned systems allow for actions in ambiguous zones: surveillance in peacetime or below war-threshold, small strikes, sabotage, counter-aircraft harassment. They erode distance and amplify risk to forward bases, ports, and airfields. For Taiwan, island geography, proximity, and the nature of cross-Strait clashes mean that drones (air, surface, and underwater) promise a force multiplier in deterrence and defense alike.

Electronic warfare has also proven decisive. Russian jamming and GPS spoofing forced Ukraine to innovate rapidly, developing AI-enabled drones capable of navigating and targeting autonomously.12 Taiwan must assume the PLA will employ similar tactics from the outset of any conflict. Its drones must be hardened against interference, with redundant navigation systems, encrypted communications, and fallback autonomy.

Important as well is the demonstrated psychological power of drones. Soldiers under constant drone surveillance, aware that an FPV strike could arrive at any moment, lose morale.13 This effect is asymmetric: a cheap drone imposes not just physical loss, but causes psychological costs far greater than its price tag.

Perhaps most important to Taiwan however, are the lessons Ukraine has revealed about the costs of delay. The staggering loss rates of thousands of drones each month means drones must be treated less like weapons platforms and more like ammunition.14 Stockpiles, not prototypes, win wars. Procurement must resemble shell production, with drones flowing off assembly lines in industrial quantities.

Production Bottlenecks: Supply Chain and Assembly

The manufacturing supply chain is Taiwan’s most pressing vulnerability endangering their required levels of drone production. While the island dominates global semiconductor manufacturing, it is less self-sufficient in the lower-margin but equally vital components. Thermal imaging units, GPS modules, secure communications chips, and high-performance magnets are often imported; some are still assembled in mainland China, undermining Taipei’s policy of “China-free” systems.15

Defense Minister Wellington Koo has promised stricter controls, but when Taiwan finds alternatives from trusted partners, costs rise sharply and export controls from Washington add friction.16 While critical to ensuring quality in higher end drones, those stricter controls create certification bottlenecks. Each drone must be verified as compliant with “China-free” requirements, a process that is expensive and slow.17 The problem is expounded by export controls of the United States and its allies which, though aimed at denying advanced technologies to Beijing, sometimes ensnare Taiwan as well, complicating Taiwan’s efforts to acquire subsystems or export finished drones.18

If Taipei can solve the supply chain headaches, the next bottleneck comes in the form of scaling production from 10,000 to 180,000 annually, which will require a massive industrial mobilization. Taiwan’s drone industry is fragmented among small firms, many innovative but undercapitalized. Companies like Thunder Tiger and GEOSAT produce capable systems. Yet without major investment in automation and workforce training, scaling will be impossible.19 New factories must be built, automation introduced, and a workforce trained at scale. The government has allocated $125 million to seed this effort, but the magnitude of the challenge far exceeds the initial outlay.20

Breaking the Supply Bottleneck: Selectivity and Innovative Partnerships

Getting the right components into the hands of Taiwan’s workers will require narrowing production to the most critical drone types and forging innovative partnerships. The first step in overcoming supply bottlenecks is ensuring that the parts being sourced are those most urgently needed. While Taiwan is currently investing in a wide array of drone systems to prepare for near-term conflict, not all of these platforms will deliver equal value on the battlefield. Larger UAVs with longer flight times and greater payload capacity are helpful in peacetime, during grey-zone operations, and in earliest stages of conflict, but their larger logistical and operating footprints make them unlikely to survive against Chinese air force and rocket force attacks. Meanwhile, FPV drones and other similar smaller platforms that Ukraine has been using to great effect for the past several years are far more survivable and materials to build them can be far more easily resourced.

By focusing on producing innovative FPV and other small and easily dispersible drones, Taiwan can reduce the administrative and logistical challenges currently hampering drone production while also ensuring that their main efforts are spent building the drones that will make the largest difference in a fight and thus carry the highest deterrent value against future conflict.

This focused effort also opens the door to closer partnerships with two critical countries. First, the United States, which is already heavily invested in Taiwan’s security and whose credibility in Asia depends on helping partners defend themselves affordably, not just through the deployment of billion-dollar jets and destroyers.21 The United States, which through its Replicator program is in the process of scaling up its own ability to produce large numbers of a wide variety of drones, should focus on partnering with Taiwan in three areas:

Investment and Co-Production. U.S. firms should invest directly in Taiwanese factories, ensuring secure “China-free” supply chains.

Technology Transfer and Training. Sharing software, swarm algorithms, and secure comms protocols.

Procurement Integration. Allowing Taiwan’s drone makers to access U.S. defense supply chains, driving down unit costs through volume.

These areas each constitute a massive degree of coordination, and to achieve it across the entire spectrum of drone system development is nearly impossible. Partnerships focused on micro drones and other niche drone platforms best suited for the defense of Taiwan presents an opportunity to focus U.S. collaboration on where it is most needed. The process of establishing this relationship will then set the groundwork for future collaboration on larger drones more optimized for gray zone operations.

The next key partnership for Taiwan is with Ukraine. Ukraine’s military has pioneered FPV tactics, swarm operations, and decentralized production under fire. Taiwan, by contrast, brings industrial sophistication and financial resources. Together, they could define the next generation of drone warfare.22

A formal partnership, including joint training, doctrinal exchanges, co-development projects, and establishing redundant common supply chains, would accelerate Taiwan’s learning curve while strengthening its political alignment with Europe’s frontline state.23 Symbolically, it would link two democracies facing existential threats from authoritarian giants. Practically, it would provide Taiwan with battle-tested innovations before they are needed.24

Breaking the Capacity Bottleneck: The Cultural Challenge

Scaling up production requires a whole-of-society approach. Taiwan must mobilize its formidable electronics sector, its universities, its active duty and reserve military forces, and even its maker communities. It must treat drones not as boutique projects for ambitious tech startups, but as national industrial essentials every bit as critical as semiconductors.

The most difficult transformation may not be industrial but cultural. Taiwan’s military establishment remains attached to legacy platforms: frigates, submarines, and fighter jets.25 These are not irrelevant, but they are not survivable in a full-fledged war against China and cannot substitute for drones’ deterrent value.

As General Lee insists, Taiwan must rebalance procurement: a small number of advanced drones, complemented by massed, low-cost strike systems. This will require political courage to redirect budgets, military openness to doctrinal change, and societal engagement to harness private innovation.

Taiwanese Active Duty and Reserve forces should be put to work learning to build, program, deploy, and operate new drone systems. Such employment would pay dividends to ensure not only production targets are met, but also that the military forces are familiar with maintaining and employing their equipment in the event they are called up to use it. It would also help ensure that new weapons being developed are compatible with the way that operational units intended to use them.

Civil society should be mobilized, just as it has been in Ukraine. Taiwan’s universities, tech firms, and maker communities can contribute to prototyping, piloting, cottage industry production, and maintenance. Doing so would embed resilience across society, ensuring that even if factories are struck, innovation and production continue. More importantly, success in scaling up via a whole of society approach would send a clear message to China and the world that Taiwan is willing and able to make the sacrifices necessary to defend their freedom.

Conclusion: The Clock Is Ticking

Operation Spiderweb should haunt Taiwan’s strategic imagination. It demonstrated that cheap, expendable drones can neutralize assets once considered untouchable. For Taipei, the message is urgent: the future battlespace will be saturated by unmanned systems, and deterrence will depend on numbers, resilience, and adaptability.

But ambition without follow-through is a liability. Taiwan must move from speeches and declarations toward mass production, component autonomy, doctrinal change, and tightly integrated partnerships, especially with the United States and with Ukraine.

As Defense Ministry spokesman Sun Li-fang put it: “Responding to the present enemy threat … the defense ministry is speeding up research and development and production of various drones. ”26  The question is whether Taiwan can move fast enough, before it is too late.

Joseph Hanacek is a Surface Warfare Officer in the United States Navy. He serves as a Warfare Tactics Instructor at the Surface Advanced Warfighting School detachment of the Naval Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center in San Diego, CA. The views and opinions presented herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of War, the Department of the Navy, or its components.

Josh Richards is the Chief Commercial Officer of Pacific Peering. He serves on UN’s Joint Task Force on SMART Cables as a member of the Steering Committee, and chairs the Business Development Committee. He is a Security Fellow with the Truman National Security Project, a Tech Policy Fellow with the Aspen Institute, and a Senior Fellow with AI2030.

References

1. Kateryna Bondar, “How Ukraine’s Operation ‘Spider’s Web’ Redefines Asymmetric Warfare,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 2, 202 https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-ukraines-spider-web-operation-redefines-asymmetric-warfare

2. The War Zone, Thomas Newdick, “What Ukraine’s Unprecedented Drone Attack Means For Russia’s Bomber Force,” June 2, 2025, https://www.twz.com/air/what-ukraines-unprecedented-drone-attack-means-for-russian-bomber-force

3. Al Jazeera, “In China’s shadow, Taiwan is building a drone army to repel an invasion,” July 31, 2025, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/31/in-chinas-shadow-taiwan-is-building-a-drone-army-to-repel-an-invasion

4. Justin Ling, “Taiwan Is Rushing to Make Its Own Drones Before It’s Too Late,” Wired, June 23, 2025, https://www.wired.com/story/taiwans-rush-to-make-its-own-drones-before-its-too-late/

5. “Drones for Democracy: U.S.-Taiwan Cooperation in Building a Resilient and China-Free UAV Supply Chain,” Research Institute for Democracy, Society, and Emerging Technology (DSET), 2025, https://dset.tw/en/publication-en/36416/

6. Jonathan Eyal and Mark Thompson, interview with Gen. Lee Hsi-ming, Politico, 2025; see also “Taiwan is too slow learning from Ukraine war, ex-top commander says,” Politico Europe, June 2025, https://www.politico.eu/article/taiwan-ukraine-china-leehsi-ming-ex-top-commander-says/

7. Kuan-ting Chen, public remarks at Taiwan-Ukraine Parliamentary Friendship events, 2025; coverage in Euronews and local Taiwan press. See: “Why lessons from drone warfare in Ukraine could be key to defending Taiwan against China,” Euronews, June 2025, https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/06/06/why-lessons-from-drone-warfare-in-ukraine-could-be-key-to-defending-taiwan-against-china

8. On sea drones and littoral denial, see: Marcus Weisgerber, “Unmanned Surface Vessels and Littoral Warfare,” Defense One, 2024–25; and RSIS analyses on Taiwan’s littoral approaches.

9. Policy speeches and parliamentary testimony by Kuan-ting Chen, 2025 public record; see local press coverage: Focus Taiwan, Taipei Times.

10. Stijn Mitzer and Jakub Janovsky, “FPV and Loitering Munitions in Ukraine: Tactics and Effects,” The Soufan Center / IntelBrief, June 2025, https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-2025-june-11/

11. Kateryna Bondar, “How Ukraine Rebuilt Its Military Acquisition System Around Commercial Technology,” CSIS, January 13, 2025 https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-ukraine-rebuilt-its-military-acquisition-system-around-commercial-technology

12. Colin Demarest, “Electronic Warfare in Ukraine Has Lessons for US Weapons, Navigation,” C4ISRNET, May 6, 2024 https://www.c4isrnet.com/electronic-warfare/2024/05/06/electronic-warfare-in-ukraine-has-lessons-for-us-weapons-navigation/

13. The Economist, “The economic lessons from Ukraine’s spectacular drone success,” June 2025. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/06/12/the-economic-lessons-from-ukraines-spectacular-drone-success

14. South China Morning Post, “Treat drones like bullets: Taiwan seeks 50,000 UAVs over two years,” 2025 reporting on procurement plans, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3322406/treat-drones-bullets-taiwan-seeks-50000-new-uavs-over-two-years-boost-defences

15. Chris Buckley and Amy Chang Chien, “Taiwan and U.S. Work to Counter China’s Drone Dominance,” New York Times, September 25, 2024 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/25/world/asia/us-taiwan-drones-china.html

16. Congressional Research Service, “AUKUS Pillar 2: Background and Issues for Congress,” June 20, 2023 https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R47599.html

17. Soumaya Keynes and Chris Miller, “Transcript: Who Is Winning the Chip Wars? With Chris Miller,” Financial Times, August 26, 2024 https://www.ft.com/content/42bde830-ad35-4b3a-b13b-03390aceee25?syn-25a6b1a6=1

18. Justin Ling, “Taiwan Is Rushing to Make Its Own Drones Before It’s Too Late,” Wired, June 23, 2025 https://www.wired.com/story/taiwans-rush-to-make-its-own-drones-before-its-too-late/

19. Peter Dickinson, “Outgunned Ukraine Bets on Drones as Russian Invasion Enters Third Year,” Atlantic Council, February 21, 2024 https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/outgunned-ukraine-bets-on-drones-as-russian-invasion-enters-third-year/

20. DSET, “Drones for Democracy: U.S.-Taiwan Cooperation in Building a Resilient and China-Free UAV Supply Chain,” June 16, 2025 https://dset.tw/en/research/drones-for-democracy-the-strategic-imperative-for-u-s-taiwan-uav-cooperation/

21. James M. Acton, “Optimal Deterrence,” Council on Foreign Relations, June 17, 2025 https://www.cfr.org/reports/optimal-deterrence

22. Congressional Research Service, “AUKUS Pillar 2: Background and Issues for Congress,” June 20, 2023 https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R47599.html

23. DSET source: “Drones for Democracy,” June 16, 2025 https://dset.tw/en/research/drones-for-democracy-the-strategic-imperative-for-u-s-taiwan-uav-cooperation/

24. Kevin Pollpeter, Tsun-Kai Tsai, and April Herlevi, “Taiwan Lessons Learned from the Russia-Ukraine War,” CNA, November 2024 https://www.cna.org/reports/2024/12/Taiwan-Lessons-Learned-from-the-Russia-Ukraine-War.pdf

25. Budgetary discussions and constraints: Taiwan’s defense budget reporting, Ministry of Finance and MOFA releases, 2024–25.

26. Taiwan to Accelerate Military Drone Development, Taking Into Account Lessons from Ukraine War.” The Japan Times, February 7, 2023 https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/02/07/asia-pacific/taiwan-drone-development-ukraine-war/

Featured image: A display at the Taiwan Excellence Drone International Business Opportunities Alliance (TEDIBOA) in Taichung on 9 June 2026. (Wikimedia Commons)

Fostering the Discussion on Securing the Seas.