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Small Craft, Big Impact: Ukraine’s Naval War and the Rise of New-Tech Warships

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By David Kirichenko

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 shocked the international order. What surprised the world even more was Ukraine’s ability to resist. While many in the West believed Ukraine would only hold out for a few weeks, the war has now entered its fourth year. Ukraine has relied on agility and innovation – especially in its use of drones and battlefield technology – to fend off Russian forces. This technological edge has extended beyond land warfare to the sea.

Over the past few years, Ukraine’s growing use of naval drones has pushed both sides to rapidly adapt, accelerating the race for countermeasures and maritime innovation. NATO would do well to study Ukraine’s approach as it prepares for the future of warfare at sea. Rear Admiral James Parkin, the Royal Navy’s director of development, notes that in 28 maritime battles, the larger fleet won all but three. Parkin believed that larger fleets win, but Ukraine has changed that paradigm, for now. The future of naval warfare is here and Ukraine is demonstrating what the future looks like.

Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s former commander-in-chief and current ambassador to the U.K., stated, “I have repeated many times that the nature of modern warfare has changed and continues to change.” Zaluzhnyi added, “The nature of modern warfare is far from what NATO is now operating.”

Ukraine’s Naval Lessons

At the outset of the war, Ukraine’s navy was virtually nonexistent, having lost most of its fleet when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Its only major warship, the frigate Hetman Sahaidachny, was scuttled by Ukrainian forces in February 2022 to prevent its capture. Yet through asymmetric tactics – naval drones, coastal missile strikes, and aerial attacks – Ukraine has transformed the Black Sea battlefield, forcing Russia into retreat and reclaiming strategic control of key waters around Ukraine’s coast.

Serhii Kuzan, chair of the think tank Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center and a former adviser to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, explained that even before the full-scale invasion, Ukraine understood it could not match Russia in conventional naval strength.1 As a result, it adopted an asymmetric strategy focused on coastal missile systems, small vessels, and air support. After 2022, sea drones were added to this concept and have since become the navy’s primary strike weapon at sea. These unmanned systems emerged out of necessity, filling the gap left by the absence of a traditional fleet.

Ukraine is now rebuilding its navy around a fleet of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), making sea drones central to its maritime strategy. When Russia attempted to blockade Ukrainian shipping, Kyiv responded swiftly with sea drone strikes. Even after the Russian Navy retreated from occupied Crimea to the safety of its mainland ports, Ukrainian USVs continued to harass and damage its fleet.

Following the sea drone offensive in 2023, Former US Navy Admiral James George Stavridis noted, “We’re at a juncture in military evolution akin to the game-changers like Agincourt or Pearl Harbor. Expensive manned surface warships now face existential threats from affordable drones.” The Ukrainians issued a warning in August 2023 that “There are no more safe waters or peaceful harbors for you in the Black and Azov Seas.” The Russians eventually learned to heed that warning and hid from Ukraine’s sea drones. According to Roy Gardiner, an open source weapons researcher and former Canadian Armed Forces officer, “These asymmetric victories have forced the relocation of the Russian Fleet to the eastern Black Sea, and broke the blockade to reopen the vital grain export routes.”

Ukraine’s drones have even achieved the unprecedented. By January 2025, modified Magura V5 sea drones armed with heat-seeking missiles shot down two Russian Mi-8 helicopters and damaged a third off the coast of Crimea – marking the first time a naval drone successfully downed enemy aircraft. In May 2025, Ukraine stunned the world by using sea drones equipped with AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles, each worth about $300,000 to shoot down two Russian fighter jets, each worth $50 million. The Ukrainian sea drones themselves are worth only several hundred thousand dollars. HI Sutton, a naval warfare expert wrote, “The success of Ukraine’s uncrewed surface drones (USVs) cannot be overstated. They are rewriting the rules of naval warfare.”

A Magura V5 maritime drone. (Photo by Daniyar Sarsenov/Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine)

Ukrainian forces are increasingly adapting these drones for multi-role capabilities, equipping them with missile launchers and advanced payloads. Ukraine has effectively turned its USVs into robotic drone carriers capable of launching explosive FPV drones at Russian coastal targets. One of Ukraine’s latest sea drones, can launch up to four quadcopter First-Person View (FPV) drones and may carry naval mines, enabling complex multi-phase attacks. Ukrainian intelligence recently announced that their sea drones have been upgraded to carry over a ton of explosives and can now operate across distances exceeding 1,000 kilometers (about 621 miles), significantly expanding their strike range and lethality across the Black Sea. “We completely blocked the Russian Black Sea fleet in the water area near the port of Novorossiysk,” said Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s defense intelligence (HUR). He added that said the Russian fleet can no longer come out to the open waters.

“The cost of USVs such as Magura V5 and Sea Baby is about $250,000, which is inexpensive relative to their significant tactical and strategic success,” said Gardiner. “With naval targets gone from the western Black Sea, some Ukrainian USVs have transitioned to FPV carriers and launched successful attacks on multiple radars and air defense systems in Crimea.”

According to Kuzan, sea drones have emerged as one of Ukraine’s most effective tools against the Russian fleet. Ukrainian unmanned systems have struck Russian ships and boats 21 times, with 10 vessels confirmed destroyed and several others severely damaged. As a result, Russian naval forces have lost the initiative at sea and are now largely confined to operating near the ports of Sevastopol in occupied Crimea and Novorossiysk on the Russian mainland. Kuzan highlighted that these drone strikes have also enabled Ukraine to reopen the grain corridor despite Russia’s withdrawal from the agreement, effectively restoring maritime trade.

Despite Ukraine’s impressive string of successes at sea, Russia has begun mounting a more effective defense. According to Ukrainian Navy Commander Oleksiy Neizhpapa, Moscow has built a multi-layered system around key locations like Sevastopol Bay, including long-, medium-, and short-range detection zones designed to identify and destroy incoming sea drones. “In the past, we could easily enter Sevastopol Bay with our drones,” Neizhpapa said.

“Now it’s not so simple because the enemy has established a tiered defense system.” In response, Ukraine is working to upgrade its unmanned systems with more advanced weaponry and modular designs that can adapt to rapidly evolving threats. Russia has adapted but by bringing out its ships into the open sea, meaning that the success rate of Ukraine’s sea drones has also dropped. According to Gardiner, “Naval vessels have been equipped with thermal vision systems to better combat Ukrainian USV nighttime attacks.” 

The naval drone war is also becoming more symmetric: Russian forces are beginning to deploy their own sea drones. “They are gearing up for it,” Neizhpapa warned, “so we are preparing not only to deploy drones against the enemy but also to defend against them.” 

Gregory Falco, an autonomous systems and cybersecurity expert at Cornell University, commented on the design balance between sophistication and scale. According to Falco,

“The sea is a highly dynamic environment so it has been a more difficult domain to design robust and reliable systems for. Given Ukraine’s people-constrained navy, they have relied on unmanned systems which Ukraine has adeptly made cost efficiently and therefore largely disposable. The sophistication of this technology right now is less important than its scale and cost. Scale for drones is what will help win wars.”

The war in the Black Sea shows how asymmetric innovation can shift the balance of power. Despite having no traditional fleet, Ukraine has dealt major blows to a superior naval force using low-cost, adaptable technology. Dmitry Gorenburg, a researcher with the Center for Naval Analyses, remarked that,

“Russia has been forced to erect barriers for harbor protection, which have been relatively effective. But Ukraine showed that it could still damage Russian ships at sea. In the future, the cost asymmetry between cheap drones and expensive ships will mean that even a low success rate will prove highly damaging to naval forces, including Russia. The advantage of having a powerful navy will thus be somewhat decreased.”

However, Kuzan stresses that drones alone cannot provide full control over maritime space. A balanced navy remains essential. Looking ahead, Ukraine’s future fleet will likely combine Ada-class corvettes, missile boats, and coastal defense systems, with sea drones continuing to serve as the main offensive force.

Adaptability and Technology

Moreover, both China and Russia “are surging ahead in the realm of small drones, while the United States moves at a relatively glacial pace,” the Modern War Institute at West Point noted in a March 2024 report. Deborah Fairlamb, founding partner of Ukraine-focused venture capital firm Green Flag Ventures said, “I still believe that the West really does not understand how much warfare has changed.” Fairlamb pointed out the rapid technological advancements on the battlefield, increased mass production, and the decreasing cost of effective weaponry – such as $500 drones that can take out a $5m tank, a $30m radar system.”

Now, the U.S. Navy is embracing unmanned systems with urgency, spurred by lessons from Ukraine’s naval drone success and asymmetrical threats like the Houthis in the Red Sea. Ukraine is already working closely with artificial intelligence (AI) and is rapidly reshaping modern warfare, particularly through machine vision in drones and ground platforms, allowing for autonomous targeting. Ukraine is at the forefront of this transformation, with over 90 percent of AI military technologies coming from domestic developers, including swarming drone systems.

​​Ukraine is placing innovation at the heart of its defense strategy, leveraging homegrown technologies to stay ahead on the battlefield. Mykhailo Fedorov, the country’s minister of digital transformation, emphasized this approach in a speech at the The NATO-Ukraine Defense Innovators Forum:

“In Ukraine, we fight with innovations made in Ukraine. It is a constant work, a continuous R&D process, solving logistical problems with components and looking for solutions five steps ahead. Ukraine is already the best R&D center for any innovation. Today we get a technology for testing, and tomorrow we will scale it hundreds of times.”

Ukraine’s defense tech sector is accelerating rapidly under the pressure of war, driving battlefield innovation in drones, robotics, AI, electronic warfare, and demining systems. Platforms like the government-backed Brave1 fast-track promising technologies – by providing funding, testing, and streamlined certification, bypassing the slow procurement systems common in the West. “I always tell our American and other international partners: if your drone hasn’t been tested in Ukraine, it’s still just a toy,” said Oleksandra Ustinova, a Ukrainian member of parliament.

Economics of War

Modern warfare is now a battle of economics and scale, where the key metric is no longer troop numbers, but the cost and quantity of systems deployed. Cheap, one-way drones costing under $1,000 have become central to the fighting in Ukraine and elsewhere, capable of destroying far more expensive targets. As Christian Brose noted in The Kill Chain, U.S. military dominance has long relied on costly platforms like tanks, stealth fighters, and aircraft carriers. First-person view drones invert that model, using cheap, smart, networked machines to challenge the traditional military-industrial complex. As the U.S. continues to rely on high-cost systems, adversaries like China, Russia, and even non-state actors are leveraging mass-produced, inexpensive drones and missiles to inflict outsized damage at a fraction of the cost.

Andy Yakulis, a former Army special operations commander, highlighted how expensive the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier is at $13 billion, with other platforms, “such as the F-35, costing between $80m to $100m per aircraft. While the U.S. was building such systems, China has been focused on cheaper systems that, in mass, can destroy these large systems.” Yakulis further pointed out that in the Red Sea, the U.S. Navy has been using two $1 million missiles to shoot down Houthi drones that cost just $40,000 each. That means the cost of the drone is only about two percent of the price of the missiles needed to destroy it.

“Our adversaries use $10,000 one-way drones that we shoot down with $2 million missiles,” said Army Gen. Bryan P. Fenton. “That cost benefit curve is upside down.” The Houthis in under two months were also able to shoot down $200 million worth of U.S. drones in the Yemen conflict.

Taiwan is Taking Note

Taiwan has also recently unveiled its first uncrewed surface vessel (USV), the Endeavor Manta, developed specifically for naval defense in the Taiwan Strait. Built by CSBC Corporation, the vessel is designed for swarm operations, can carry light torpedoes and a warhead for kamikaze-style strikes, and includes autonomous navigation, AI target recognition, and anti-hijacking features. Inspired by Ukraine’s use of naval drones, the Manta is part of Taiwan’s broader strategy to counter Chinese military superiority through low-cost, asymmetric warfare, joining a growing global trend of using drones as force multipliers in modern conflicts. Alessio Patalano, Professor of War and Strategy at King’s College, London, noted that relying on weapons that are cheaper and easier to acquire will be critical to helping Taiwan defend itself against a potential Chinese invasion.

The Endeavor Manta USV during the launch event held in the port of Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan. (Photo via Taiwan Ministry of National Defense)

Rather than attempting to match China’s drone production, Hunter Keeley of the U.S. Marine Corps suggested Taiwan should adopt Ukraine’s targeted approach: deploying naval drones and missiles in focused, intelligence-led strikes near expected landing zones. A limited, layered Hellscape – centered on drones, jammers, and mobile sensors – could significantly disrupt PLA amphibious operations and buy Taiwan critical time in the opening stages of a conflict.

According to Kuzan, “Taiwan already benefits from U.S. support and has its own advanced defense industry, which is testing both surface and underwater maritime drones. For example, Taiwan’s Smart Dragon underwater drone is reportedly armed with torpedo systems.” He believes that incorporating torpedoes into Ukrainian sea drones could be the next step in their development. Kuzan remarked that, “If the opportunity and necessity arise, Ukraine could potentially sell or exchange its military technologies with Taiwan. This would be mutually beneficial, allowing both countries to enhance their capabilities.”

China and Russia Prepare

Russia is also taking notes. While it has significantly lagged behind Ukraine in naval drone warfare, it is now preparing for the future at sea. At the Army-2024 defense show, Russia unveiled the Murena-300S, a new naval drone resembling Ukraine’s successful sea drones. With a 500 km range, the fast and compact USV is built for coastal missions such as reconnaissance, mine-laying, and strike operations, possibly with a large explosive payload. The Murena appears to feature a Starlink antenna, suggesting Russia is seeking to match Ukraine’s real-time drone control capabilities.

The Russians have learned hard lessons from Ukraine’s asymmetric warfare and are now applying those insights more rapidly. Russia is creating unmanned systems regiments within its Navy that will integrate aerial, ground, and maritime drones to carry out reconnaissance and strike missions across all fleets. These new units, equipped with systems like Orlans, Lancets, FPVs, and USVs, are expected to form the backbone of the Navy’s unmanned component, with deployments planned across the European, Pacific, Caspian, and Dnieper naval forces.

At the same time, Russia is steadily advancing toward the development of AI-enabled autonomous drone swarms. It is investing heavily in AI research, both domestically and through partnerships with countries like Iran and China. Russia is focusing its efforts on leveraging cheap, scalable drone technology to overwhelm adversaries. This can be applied to the battle at sea as well. If the U.S. aims to deploy large expensive ships across the Asia-Pacific, we could see our adversaries working together to deploy cheap drones to destroy the ships.

China has also unveiled the Feiyi drone earlier this year, the world’s first known aerial and underwater drone capable of launching from a submarine, transitioning between air and sea multiple times, and returning to its original platform.

Preparing NATO for the Future

In a February 2025 interview, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey laid out bold ideas for revitalizing the U.S. defense industry and countering China’s growing military threat. He argued that the U.S. should shift from “world police” to “world’s gun store,” prioritizing mass production of weapons over elite, slow-to-build systems. Citing China’s massive manufacturing capacity and militarized civilian infrastructure, Luckey warned that Beijing is preparing for full-scale war, including repurposing commercial ships and producing cruise missiles far faster than the U.S.

Warfare is rapidly evolving into a battle of algorithms and adaptability. If the West clings to its old-school model of building massive, slow-to-deploy systems, it risks a harsh wake-up call – where billion-dollar warships are struck down by sea drones costing a fraction of that. In this new era, speed, scale, and software will determine who dominates the battlefield. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, it was unprepared for how quickly warfare would evolve, and how drones would come to dominate the skies.

Now Ukraine has amassed a massive war-time video dataset, over 2 million hours of drone footage through its OCHI system, which collects and analyzes feeds from 15,000 frontline drone crews. This data is being used to train AI for battlefield applications such as target recognition, weapon effectiveness analysis, and autonomous drone tactics.

Kuzan believes that Ukraine is already working on building AI technologies for its sea drones as well. “Notably, during the successful maritime drone attack on December 31, 2024, which resulted in the destruction of Russian helicopters, many researchers speculated that AI was used to enhance target identification and missile guidance,” said Kuzan.

NATO should work closely with Ukraine on the development of these models to prepare its own autonomous sea drones to deploy them in future conflicts. The UK-built Kraken3, inspired by Ukraine’s battlefield innovations, was recently unveiled, showcasing AI-powered swarming capabilities, kamikaze drone launches, and GPS-free navigation, reflecting how Ukrainian success is already influencing NATO procurement.

NATO itself has begun expanding its unmanned maritime capabilities, recently demonstrating autonomous surface vessels in the Baltic Sea through Task Force X, an initiative designed to deter sabotage and fill surveillance gaps. But these sea drones are focused on addressing the threat of Russian sabotage. More practical drones are needed to help disable enemy warships, such as in the event of a Chinese blockade of Taiwan. Expensive systems will no longer do the job. Cheap and scalable solutions are what is needed for NATO. Some in the U.S. are already thinking about how naval warfare is being transformed. For example, the U.S.-based Anduril has unveiled the Seabed Sentry – a network of AI-powered mobile undersea sensor nodes designed for persistent monitoring and undersea kill chains.

Lithuania is leading by example as it is moving toward shared sea drone production with Ukraine under a “1+1” model, where one Magura-class sea drone would be retained for Lithuania’s defense and the other delivered to Ukraine. “Whether you want to believe it or not, whether you have or are about to sign contracts for tanks and helicopters for the next 10 years, the nature of military power has already changed,” said Zaluzhnyi.

Today, Ukraine’s sea drones control a significant extent of the Black Sea. In a future conflict over the Arctic or the Asia-Pacific, we can expect an even greater surge – a true sea of drones. As Ukraine’s navy chief put it, “After the war we will certainly write a textbook and we’ll send it to all the NATO military academies.”

David Kirichenko is an Associate Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. His work on warfare has been featured in the Atlantic Council, Center for European Policy Analysis, and the Modern Warfare Institute, among many others. He can be found on X/Twitter @DVKirichenko.

References

1. This article draws on interviews conducted by the author from the period of March-April 2025.

Featured Image: A Ukrainian military counterintelligence brigadier general walks on a new Sea Baby “Avdiivka” naval drone, during its presentation by the Ukrainian security service, in the Kyiv region, on March 5, 2024. (Photo by Evgenniy Maloletka/AP)

Podcast

Sea Control 574: Diplomacy for Better Stand-in Force Access in Japan with Daniel Hough

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By Brian Kerg

Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Hough joins the podcast to discuss his article, “Diplomacy for Better Stand-In Force Access in Japan.” Lieutenant Colonel Hough is a combat engineer officer serving as an operational planner in the III MEF G-357 Future Operations Branch in Okinawa, Japan. He deployed as a combat engineer officer in support of Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom and as an engineer advisor in support of Operation Inherent Resolve.

Download Sea Control 574: Diplomacy for Better Stand-in Force Access in Japan with Daniel Hough

Links

1. “Diplomacy for Better Stand-In Force Access in Japan,” by Daniel Hough, Proceedings, September 2024.

Brian Kerg is Co-Host of the Sea Control podcast. Contact the podcast team at Seacontrol@cimsec.org.

This episode was edited and produced by William McQuiston. 

Podcast

Sea Control 573: The Great North Challenges the Mediterranean with Federico Petroni

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By Alexia Bouallagui

Sea Control presents the first in a special series by cohost Alexia Bouallagui on Italian maritime security research. On this episode Alexia is joined by Federico Petroni to discuss Arctic geopolitics. Federico Petroni is a geopolitical analyst at Limes, the Italian review of geopolitics, and coordinator of the school of Limes.

This podcast is offered in both Italian and English. Skip to 26:21 for the English version.

Download Sea Control 573: The Great North Challenges the Mediterranean with Federico Petroni


Links

1. Artics fevers, Limes, Feb 2019 https://www.limesonline.com/rivista/la-febbre-dell-artico-14632937.

2. Artico: attacco al Mediterraneo? Da Taiwan a Gibilterra – Le Giornate del Mare 2024 a Roma, Limes, November 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXRDmb2EsHA.

Italian

La Battaglia per l’Artico: Il Grande Nord sfida il Mediterraneo – Nuova Guerra Fredda o Terra di
Nessuno?

Federico Petroni si unisce al programma per discutere di geopolitica artica. Federico Petroni è un analista geopolitico di Limes, la rivista italiana di geopolitica, e coordinatore della Scuola di Limes. Questo episodio è stato montato e prodotto da Alexia Bouallagui. È il primo episodio di una serie pensata per approfondire la ricerca sulla sicurezza marittima italiana.

Links:

1. La febbre dell’Artico, Limes, febbraio 2019
https://www.limesonline.com/rivista/la-febbre-dell-artico-14632937/.

2. Artico: attacco al Mediterraneo? Da Taiwan a Gibilterra – Le Giornate del Mare 2024 a Roma, Limes, November 2024,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXRDmb2EsHA.

Alexia Bouallagui is co-host of the Sea Control podcast, and edited and produced this episode.

Wargaming

Every Commander a Wargamer: Reforming Wargaming Education for the Fleet

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By Jeff Appleget and Jeff Kline

Introduction

In the decade since Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work began his 2014 initiative to reinvigorate wargaming, there has been a decided uptick in the number of wargames being conducted for DoD. However, the quality and relevancy of DoD wargaming has not been uniform.

One of the primary causes for this lack of consistency is the dearth of wargaming capacity residing within DoD. Many combatant commands turn to the private sector and pay premium rates to have wargames conducted for them. Other DoD organizations conduct wargames using a pick-up team extracted from their staff that has little or no knowledge of wargaming. Wargaming is a skill that every Commander or Lieutenant Colonel should possess. However, there has been no DoD focus on educating uniformed personnel who can initiate, design, develop, conduct, and analyze wargames for their services.

This article highlights the Navy’s current wargaming education capability at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and makes recommendations for the Fleet to create a pipeline of naval officer wargamers to enhance the professionalism, preparedness, and knowledge of the servicemembers and organizations of the naval services.

Background

The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) has been wargaming almost since its establishment in 1909. As with any military education, wargaming’s state of the art has evolved and advanced since that time. NPS’s sister institution, the Naval War College (NWC), contributed greatly to the U.S. Navy’s success in World War II through the focused Plan Orange series of wargames conducted from 1919-1940.

The use of wargaming waned as the 1960s ushered in the computer era and proponents of “Systems Analysis” advanced the idea that “computerized wargames” (what is known today as combat simulations) could replace commanders gathered around charts and maps and working through the risk calculus and the consequences of employing their forces against a thinking, malevolent adversary. In the 1970s and 80s, DoD created a Modeling and Simulation (M&S) enterprise that allowed combat simulations to dominate the analysis that underpinned the DoD’s acquisition process.

This analysis capability led to the massive U.S. Armed Forces build up that contributed greatly to the break-up of the Soviet bloc in the late 1980s. The Abrams tank, the Aegis cruiser, and the A-10 Warthog all benefited from systems analysts using combat simulations to quantify the goodness these weapon systems would bring to U.S. forces in a NATO-Warsaw Pact fight. In 1991, Operation Desert Storm gave U.S. forces one more chance to fight a ground-focused kinetic war before the U.S. plunged into nearly two decades of counterinsurgency and irregular warfare conflicts, warfare that was really a poor fit to analyze using our kinetic-focused combat simulations.

2014 saw a U.S. Department of Defense wargaming renaissance as Deputy Secretary of Defense Work championed a reinvigoration of wargaming throughout the services. As a result, senior leaders finally began to understand that wargames and combat simulations were two completely different tools that, when used properly together, could provide the foundation for robust analysis of new concepts, platforms and technologies. The use of these and other tools in a campaign of analysis provided organizations the means to do both qualitative and quantitative analysis to inform a spectrum of decisions to better position the U.S. DoD for an uncertain future against two growing powers that employ both kinetic forces and non-kinetic hybrid threats. The challenge is building and maintaining a DoD-wide wargaming capability to conduct such analyses.

Bringing the Fleet to NPS Wargaming Education

The NPS Operations Research Department was leaning forward and in 2009 began its own wargaming renaissance, positioning NPS to better advantage not only the Fleet, but the other DoD services and U.S. allies and partners. 

Focus on the Fleet

To accomplish this, the Wargaming Applications course was re-focused on applying the craft of wargaming to address existing and future Fleet challenges. Teams of junior to mid-grade officers provide direct support to real world sponsors by designing, developing, conducting, and analyzing wargames that focus current or future challenges of the Fleet, our sister services, allies, and partners. The wargaming course culminates with officer-conducted, Fleet-sponsored wargames during “wargaming week,” normally the last week of the academic quarter. NPS warrior-scholars come from all branches of DoD, and many of our partners and allies. Wargames are conducted at the Unclassified, CUI, Secret, and Top Secret/SCI levels.

Wargaming week occurs at NPS in early June (5-10 wargames) and early December (1-3 wargames). Outside attendees are welcome to attend wargaming week given that they have the proper security clearances. Since 2009, NPS officer teams have designed and conducted over 100 wargames, helping the Fleet underpin flagship concepts such as Distributed Maritime Operations, Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations and Stand-In-Forces, and assessing a spectrum of Contested Logistics issues for OPNAV N4.

Joint and coalition wargames are also conducted for Fleet partners, such as examining the impact of emerging maritime capabilities and technologies for the Taiwan CNO, examining interoperability challenges for the U.S. Marine Corps Forces – Pacific (MARFORPAC) and the Australian Defence Force (ADF), and assessing the impact of emerging technologies for the Defense Advanced Research Program Agency (DARPA), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), and the Office of the Secretary of Defense – Strategic Capabilities Office (OSD-SCO).

Modernizing Wargaming

Combining the recent operational experience that our warrior-scholars bring to NPS with a seasoned faculty that conducts cutting-edge research for the Fleet provides NPS a competitive advantage in innovation over other DoD schools, FFRDCs, and civilian universities. As wargaming entered the second half of the 20th century, the surge in the DoD modeling and simulation (M&S) enterprise served to push wargaming to the side because senior military and civilian leaders didn’t understand that simulations could not supplant wargaming. Today the urge to again ‘computerize’ wargaming is re-emerging, necessitating another round of wargaming education to ensure we align both wargaming and our M&S enterprise to provide best advantage to DoD in the future.

The adjudication of wargames can leverage M&S if done in a deliberate and thoughtful manner, ensuring the M&S chosen to integrate into wargames is ‘fit for purpose.’ We have been researching the integration of M&S into wargames since 2009. To facilitate this research, warrior-scholars and faculty from our Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation (MOVES) Institute have been integrated into the wargaming course and have tested many M&S tools in NPS wargames including Command PE (Professional Edition), a commercially available simulation; MAST (Modeling and Simulation Toolkit), a U.S. Navy owned agent-based simulation, as well as other M&S tools widely available or created by NPS warrior-scholars. Preliminary research results indicate that the purchase of a ‘one-size-fits-all” uber wargaming software platform is, in most cases, ill-advised.

Bringing NPS Wargaming Education to the Fleet

Mobile Education Team (MET)

In 2011, NPS conducted its first five-day Mobile Education Team (MET) wargaming workshop for the Royal Canadian Air Force in Trenton, Ontario. Since then, we have conducted over 50 MET workshops across four continents. The wargaming workshop is designed to stand up an organic wargaming capability in an organization by creating wargaming apprentices from 16-20 of the organization’s personnel. The teaching philosophy, learn by doing, is exactly the same as the NPS resident wargaming course. Course participants are formed into teams. The teams then design, develop, conduct and analyze a wargame for their organization in the span of 5 days.

NPS has conducted these workshops for U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa (NAVEUR-AF), Sixth Fleet, U.S. Army Europe and Africa (USAREUR-AF) U.S. Naval Forces-Korea, Commander, Pacific Fleet, U.S. Marine Corps Forces-Pacific, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, Marine Corps Combat Development Command, U.S. Strategic Command, U.S. Central Command, U.S. Africa Command, Taiwan Armed Forces, Indonesian Navy, Australian Defence Force, NATO Joint Warfare Center, NATO Special Operations Forces, as well as many others.

As organizations stand up and matured their wargaming capabilities, we began to field requests for advanced wargaming workshops. Our long-time partnership with the ADF resulted in a special three-week course that combined both basic and advanced workshops. The first two weeks are an extended basic analytic workshop that provides more exposure to a variety of wargames while still embracing the series of practical exercises that results in wargames being conducted by participants at the end of the two-week workshop. The third week is an advanced course that focuses on topics selected by the sponsor and tailored to participants who have completed the basic course in previous years and completed at least a year of practical wargaming experience. Common advanced course topics include wargaming facilitation, building the wargame’s foundation by the decomposition of a sponsor’s key issues and case studies of wargames that embrace innovation and unique models, methods and tools.

As NPS began our second decade of MET workshops, we were asked by organizations who had experienced our basic wargaming workshops to create a wargaming practitioner course consisting of three modules delivered over the course of 18-24 months at the sponsor’s home station by the NPS wargaming MET. After attending an NPS MET 5-day basic wargaming module and passing the wargaming apprentice certification exam (earning 4 Continuing Education Units (CEUs)), the wargaming apprentices are assigned to work on wargames for their organization and conduct self-study activities to prepare for the wargaming journeyman module.

The wargaming journeyman module is delivered by the NPS wargaming MET team, and upon the completion of the wargaming journeyman certification exam students earn an additional 4 CEUs. These wargaming journeymen again work on wargames for their organization and conduct self-study activities to prepare for the third and final module, the wargaming practitioner module. Upon completion of this module, students are then certified as wargame practitioners and 4 additional CEUs. Two EUCOM organizations, NAVEUR-AF and USAREUR-AF, have begun the process of creating wargaming practitioners in their organizations.

Northwest Pacific Wargame (NWPAC)

In 2024, the Naval Postgraduate School conducted its first Chief of Naval Operations (CNO)-directed wargame. The Northwest Pacific wargame had been conducted for over 35 years by the Naval War College. In recent years, the venue was moved from Newport, RI to Japan. The wargame is sponsored by the Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The U.S. Seventh Fleet and the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force are the two primary organizations that provide the players, augmented by other joint and combined players. The transition from NWC to NPS required a new paradigm because of the different staffing models each organization has.

While the NWC relies on a wargaming faculty of over 30 personnel with a support organization, NPS combines staff, faculty and NPS students to form the core of the wargaming team. NPS has leveraged several different Operations Research (OR) curriculum courses (Wargaming Applications, Spreadsheet Modeling, Introduction to Joint Combat Models, Case Studies in OR) to have NPS warrior-scholars prototype and test M&S adjudication models, conduct post-game analysis, and most importantly, build the nucleus of the wargaming execution team to deploy to Japan to conduct the wargame.

Keeping Wargaming in the Fleet

As Robert Rubel pointed out in his excellent CIMSEC article “Restore Wargaming Focus to the Naval War College,” the Navy needs to produce a “critical mass of officers with intensive wargaming experience.” There are several challenges that must be negotiated to create the requisite pipeline to achieve this critical mass.

Creating the critical mass

While both the NPS resident and MET courses and workshops do provide the Fleet, DoD, and our allies and partners officers who have designed, developed, conducted, and analyzed wargames for real-world sponsors, the numbers of officers with this unique skillset needs to increase ten-fold to begin to build that critical mass of wargamers in the Fleet that Robert Rubel calls for.

But how many uniformed wargamers does DoD need? As a minimum, every combat arms Lieutenant Colonel and unrestricted line officer Commander should be a wargamer. Every officer with an Operations Research designation should be a wargamer. Every military strategist should be a wargamer. Every flag officer should be a wargamer. We should stop thinking of wargaming as something someone else does for DoD and start accepting responsibility for wargaming to keep the Fleet ready for tomorrow’s fight as well as helping us to shape the force so that we are prepared for an uncertain future.

We should be conducting analytic wargames to better inform future force structures and technologies. We should be conducting educational wargames to allow us to better understand current threats and operational environments. We should be conducting experiential wargames to keep our battle staffs familiar with their wartime roles and to be prepared to adapt plans in the face of an aggressive and unpredictable enemy.

This argues for wargaming to be inserted into JPME. And let us be clear about creating wargamers. Even the huge NWC success with Plan Orange from 1919-1940 didn’t create wargamers—the participants were players in those wargames. The Plan Orange wargames were designed and conducted by the NWC faculty.

Having the skillset needed to design and conduct wargames cannot be learned by simply being a player in a wargame. The book The Craft of Wargaming is a reference for any DoD officer tasked with leading a wargaming effort. It is based on our 11-week resident course and used for our MET engagements.

Utilizing the Critical Mass

Wargaming is a craft that requires its practitioners to keep their wargaming certifications current by designing, developing, conducting and analyzing wargames. This requires some thought and likely restructuring by the Fleet. Every Fleet organization that creates plans should have wargamers. Every numbered fleet and every Marine Expeditionary Force should have wargamers. Each of these organizations should be wargaming their plans on a routine basis. One NPS OR graduate stood up a wargaming cell at CENTCOM and quickly concluded that wargaming should be used in most, if not all of the seven planning steps outlined in Joint Pub 5-0. Currently, wargaming is only mandated in step four. Also, any plan that has sat on a shelf for over a year is likely of little value. Plans should be wargamed and updated at least once a year.

To begin to meet this challenge, we propose that every numbered U.S. Navy Fleet and Marine Expeditionary Force designate at least 10 staff officers to become wargamers.

Creating a wargaming capability at the Fleet’s operational command levels

The Navy needs to embed uniformed operations research analysts in each numbered U.S. Navy fleet by coding at least five staff billets with the Navy’s OR subspecialty 3211. In major joint staffs it is common for these analysts to be group together in some Commander’s Advisory or Analytical Group, but for a fleet staff these officers should be distributed to the future operations planning cell, the assessment cell, and the logistics cell, wherever they may reside in the staff’s N-codes. 

When a wargame is called for either in plans’ generation or assessment, these officers will form the core of a “cross code” wargaming team to design, develop, execute, and analyze the wargame for the commander. They will be augmented by other staff members who have gained education and experience in fleet wargaming. The fleet’s challenge is to maintain a critical mass of wargame experience in their uniform staff in the face of constant billet rotation. To do this, wargaming education must be integrated into naval staff preparation courses, or as part of an unrestricted line officer’s regular career pipeline.

Creating a pipeline to educate Fleet wargamers

A second step in integrating wargaming skills to the fleet is for the Navy to embrace higher education by sending URL officers to the NPS OR program. This will provide the seed corn to feed both the numbered fleet OR billets and to increase the number of Navy officers with the requisite wargaming experience. In the early 1990s it was not uncommon for each NPS Operations Research officer cohort to have as many as ten URL officers. That number has dwindled to two or three today. Type Commanders should insist on increasing their educational quotas for Operations Research. These officers bring a host of operationally relevant analytical skills to the fleet staffs and ships: from data analytics, operations assessment, campaign analysis, modeling and simulation, to wargaming.

Tactical Training Groups can also begin to offer a one-week wargaming course either leveraging NPS instructors or creating a core capability to instruct within their own staff. This course should be made a prerequisite for fleet staff assignment, unless an officer has already received wargaming education and been certified as a wargaming practitioner. In turn, officers can receive a new wargamer Additional Qualification Designator (AQD) or Navy Officer Billet Classification (NOBC) code for their Officer Data Card to enhance opportunities for assignment and promotion.

The Naval Staff College at the Naval War College may also begin to integrate wargaming education and practice in their curriculum. Officers involved in these courses would then be available to contribute directly to the Naval War College’s wargaming agenda. 

As these institutional changes occur, individual fleet commanders should designate staff across their codes as the wargaming team and receive the week-long NPS MET wargaming course. To mitigate staff rotation challenges, this MET course can be hosted every year or eighteen months and assigned a real-world fleet issue to wargame as desired by the commander. This proposal will ensure the staff has qualified wargamers and provides a regularly scheduled wargaming course for the commander to leverage in their fleet’s planning cycle.

Conclusion

The Naval Postgraduate School has played a critical role in DoD wargaming education for the past 15 years. Through our NPS resident wargaming course, we have educated over six hundred officers who can design wargames. At the same time, NPS officer teams have conducted over one hundred wargames for DoD, allies and partners. NPS has provided wargaming courses through its Mobile Education Team in both the INDOPACOM and EUCOM areas of responsibilities to over one thousand U.S., allied and partner defense professionals since 2011. NPS has been exploring modernizing wargaming through the judicious integration of models and simulations for well over a decade. As we prepare for the daunting security challenges currently facing the U.S. and its allies and partners, NPS wargamers will be using their skills to ensure we meet those challenges when the time comes.

Dr. Jeff Appleget is a retired Army Colonel who has taught wargaming at NPS since 2009, mentoring over 100 warrior-scholar conducted wargames. He is a co-author of the book The Craft of Wargaming.

Jeff Kline is a retired Navy officer who is currently a Professor of Practice in the Operations Research department. Jeff has taught Joint Campaign Analysis, led the NPS Warfare Innovation Continuum, and coordinated Naval wargaming sponsorship for NPS wargaming for over 20 years.

Featured Image: NPS students participate in analytic wargames they designed to explore solutions for some of DoD’s most pressing national security concerns. (NPS photo by Javier Chagoya)