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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)

Culture

Upgrading the Mindset: Modernizing Sea Service Culture for Trust in Artificial Intelligence

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By Scott A. Humr

Winning on the future battlefield will undoubtedly require an organizational culture that promotes human trust in artificial intelligent systems. Research within and outside of the US military has already shown that organizational culture has an impact on technology acceptance, let alone, trust. However, Dawn Meyerriecks, Deputy Director for CIA technology development, remarked in a November 2020 report by the Congressional Research Service that senior leaders may be unwilling, “to accept AI-generated analysis.” The Deputy Director goes on to state that, “the defense establishment’s risk-averse culture may pose greater challenges to future competitiveness than the pace of adversary technology development.” More emphatically, Dr. Adam Grant, a Wharton professor and well-known author, called the Department of Defense’s culture, “a threat to national security.” In light of those remarks, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General David H. Berger, stated at a gathering of the National Defense Industrial Association that, “The same way a squad leader trusts his or her Marine, they have to trust his or her machine.” The points of view in the aforementioned quotes raise an important question: Do Service cultures influence how its military personnel trust AI systems?

While much has been written about the need for explainable AI (XAI) and need for increasing trust between the operator and AI tools, the research literature is sparse on how military organizational culture influences the trust personnel place in AI imbued technologies. If culture holds sway over how service personnel may employ AI within a military context, culture then becomes an antecedent for developing trust and subsequent use of AI technologies. As the Marine Corps’s latest publication on competing states, “culture will have an impact on many aspects of competition, including decision making and how information is perceived.” If true, military personnel will view information provided by AI agents through the lens of their Service cultures as well.

Our naval culture must appropriately adapt to the changing realities of the new Cognitive Age. The Sea Services must therefore evolve their Service cultures to promote the types of behaviors and attitudes that fully leverage the benefits of these advanced applications. To compete effectively with AI technologies over the next decade, the Sea Services must first understand their organizational cultures, implement necessary cultural changes, and promote double-loop learning to support beneficial cultural adaptations.

Technology and Culture Nexus

Understanding the latest AI applications and naval culture requires an environment where experienced personnel and technologies are brought together through experimentation to better understand trust in AI systems. Fortunately, the Sea Service’s preeminent education and research institution, the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), provides the perfect link between experienced educators and students who come together to advance future naval concepts. The large population of experienced mid-grade naval service officers at NPS provides an ideal place to help understand Sea Service culture while exploring the benefits and limitations of AI systems.

Not surprisingly, NPS student research has investigated trust in AI, technology acceptance, and culture. Previous NPS research has explored trust through interactive Machine Learning (iML) in virtual environments for understanding Navy cultural and individual barriers to technology adoption. These and other studies have brought important insights on the intersection of people and technologies.

One important aspect of this intersection is culture and how it is measured. For instance, the Competing Values Framework (CVF) has helped researchers understand organizational culture. Paired with additional survey instruments such as E-Trust or the Technology Acceptance Models (TAM), researchers can better understand if particular cultures trust technologies more than other types. CVF is measured across six different organizational dimensions that are summarized by structure and focus. The structure axis ranges from control to flexibility, while focus axis ranges from people to organization, see figure 1.

Figure 1 – The Competing Values Framework – culture, leadership, value from Cameron, Kim S., Robert E. Quinn, Jeff DeGraff, and Anjan V. Thakor. Competing Values Leadership, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014.

Most organizational cultures contain some measure of each of the four characteristics of the CVF. The adhocracy quadrant of the CVF, for instance, is characterized by innovation, flexibility, and increased speed of solutions. To this point, an NPS student researcher found that Marine Corps organizational culture was characterized as mostly hierarchical. The same researcher found that this particular group of Marine officers also preferred the Marine Corps move from a hierarchical culture towards an adhocracy culture. While the population in the study was by no means representative of the entire Marine Corps, it does generate useful insights for forming initial hypotheses and the need for additional research which explores whether hierarchical cultures impede trust in AI technologies. While closing this gap is important for assessing how a culture may need to adapt, actually changing deeply rooted cultures requires significant introspection and the willingness to change.

The ABCs: Adaptations for a Beneficial Culture

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” quipped the revered management guru, Peter Drucker—and for good reason. Strategies that seek to adopt new technologies which may replace or augment human capabilities, must also address culture. Cultural adaptations that require significant changes to behaviors and other deeply entrenched processes will not come easy. Modifications to culture require significant leadership and participation at all levels. Fortunately, organizational theorists have provided ways for understanding culture. One well-known organizational theorist, Edgar Schein, provides a framework for assessing organizational culture. Specifically, culture can be viewed at three different levels which consist of artifacts, espoused values, and underlying assumptions.

The Schein Model provides another important level of analysis for investigating the military organizational culture. In the Schein model, artifacts within militaries would include elements such as dress, formations, doctrine, and other visible attributes. Espoused values are the vision statements, slogans, and codified core values of an organization. Underlying assumptions are the unconscious and unspoken beliefs and thoughts that undergird the culture. Implementing cultural change without addressing underlying assumptions is the equivalent to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Therefore, what underlying cultural assumptions could prevent the Sea Services from effectively trusting AI applications?

One of the oldest and most ubiquitous underlying assumptions of how militaries function is the hierarchy. While hierarchy does have beneficial functions for militaries, it may overly inhibit how personnel embrace new technologies and decisions recommended by AI systems. Information, intelligence, and orders within the militaries largely flow along well-defined lines of communication and nodes through the hierarchy. In one meta-analytic review on culture and innovation, researchers found that hierarchical cultures, as defined by CVF, tightly control information distribution. Organizational researchers Christopher McDermott and Gregory Stock stated, “An organization whose culture is characterized by flexibility and spontaneity will most likely be able to deal with uncertainty better than one characterized by control and stability.” While hierarchical structures can help reduce ambiguity and promote stability, they can also be detrimental to innovation. NPS student researchers in 2018, not surprisingly, found that the hierarchical culture in one Navy command had a restraining effect on innovation and technology adoption.

CVF defined adhocracy cultures on the other hand are characterized by innovation and higher tolerances for risk taking. For instance, AI applications could also upend well-defined Military Decision Making Processes (MDMP). MDMP is a classical manifestation of codified processes that supports underlying cultural assumptions on how major decisions are planned and executed. The Sea Services should therefore reevaluate and update its underlying assumptions on decision making processes to better incorporate insights from AI.

In fact, exploring and promoting other forms of organizational design could help empower its personnel to innovate and leverage AI systems more effectively. The late, famous systems thinking researcher, Donella Meadows, aptly stated, “The original purpose of a hierarchy is always to help its originating subsystems do their jobs better.” Therefore, recognizing the benefits, and more importantly the limits of hierarchy, will help leaders properly shape Sea Service culture to appropriately develop trustworthy AI systems. Ensuring change goes beyond a temporary fix, however, requires continually updating the organization’s underlying assumptions. This takes double-loop learning.

Double-loop Learning

Double-loop learning is by no means a new concept. First conceptualized by Chris Argyris and Donald Schön in 1974, double-loop learning is the process of updating one’s underlying assumptions. While many organizations can often survive through regular use of single-loop learning, they will not thrive. Unquestioned organizational wisdom can perpetuate poor solutions. Such cookie-cutter solutions often fail to adequately address new problems and are discovered to no longer work. Rather than question the supporting underlying assumptions, organizations will instead double-down on tried-and-true methods only to fail again, thus neglecting deeper introspection.

Such failures should instead provide pause to allow uninhibited, candid feedback to surface from the deck-plate all the way up the chain of command. This feedback, however, is often rare and typically muted, thus becoming ineffectual to the people who need to hear it the most. Such problems are further exacerbated by endemic personnel rotation policies combined with feedback delays that rarely hold the original decision makers accountable for their actions (or inactions).

Implementation and trust of AI systems will take double-loop learning to change the underlying cultural assumptions which inhibit progress. Yet, this can be accomplished in several ways which go against the normative behaviors of entrenched cultures. Generals, Admirals, and Senior Executive Service (SES) leaders should create their own focus groups of diverse junior officers, enlisted personnel, and civilians to solicit unfiltered feedback on programs, technologies, and most importantly, organizational culture inhibitors which hold back AI adoption and trust. Membership and units could be anonymized in order to shield junior personnel from reprisals while promoting the unfiltered candor senior leadership needs to hear in order to change the underlying cultural assumptions. Moreover, direct feedback from the operators using AI technologies would also avoid the layers of bureaucracy which can slow the speed of criticisms back to leadership.

Why is this time different?

Arguably, the naval services have past records of adapting to shifts in technology and pursuing innovations needed to help win future wars. Innovators of their day such as Admiral William Sims developing advanced naval gunnery techniques and the Marine Corps developing and improving amphibious landing capabilities in the long shadow of the Gallipoli campaign reinforce current Service cultural histories. However, many technologies of the last century were evolutionary improvements to what was already accepted technologies and tactics. AI is fundamentally different and is akin to how electricity changed many aspects of society and could fundamentally disrupt how we approach war.

In the early 20th century, the change from steam to electricity did not immediately change manufacturing processes, nor significantly improve productivity. Inefficient processes and machines driven by steam or systems of belts were never reconfigured once they were individually equipped with electric motors. Thus, many benefits of electricity were not realized for some time. Similarly, Sea Service culture will need to make a step change to fully take advantage of AI technologies. If not, the Services will likely experience a “productivity paradox” where large investments in AI do not fully deliver the efficiencies promised. 

Today’s militaries are sociotechnical systems and underlying assumptions are its cultural operating system. Attempting to plug AI application into a culture that is not adapted to use it, nor trusts it, is the equivalent of trying to install an Android application on a Windows operating system. In other words, it will not work, or at best, not work as intended. We must, therefore, investigate how naval service cultures may need to appropriately adapt if we want to fully embrace the many advantages these technologies may provide.

Conclusion

In a 2017 report from Chatham House titled, “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Warfare,” Professor Missy Cummings stated, “There are many reasons for the lack of success in bringing these technologies to maturity, including cost and unforeseen technical issues, but equally problematic are organizational and cultural barriers.” Echoing this point, the former Director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), Marine Lieutenant General Michael Groen, stated “culture” is the obstacle, not the technology, for developing the Joint All-Domain, Command and Control (JADC2) system, which is supported by AI. Yet, AI/ML technologies have the potential to provide a cognitive-edge that can potentially increase the speed, quality, and effectiveness of decision-making. Trusting the outputs of AI will undoubtedly require significant changes to certain aspects of our collective naval cultures. The Sea Services must take stock of their organizational cultures and apply the necessary cultural adaptations, while fostering double-loop learning in order to promote trust in AI systems.

Today, the Naval Services have a rare opportunity to reap the benefits of a double-loop learning. Through the COVID-19 pandemic, the Sea Services have shown that they can adapt responsively and effectively to dynamic circumstances while fulfilling their assigned missions. The Services have developed more efficient means to leverage technology to allow greater flexibility across the force through remote work and education. If, however, the Services return to the status quo after the pandemic, they will have failed to update many of its outdated underlying assumptions by changing the Service culture.

If we cannot change the culture in light of the last three years, it portends poor prospects for promoting trust in AI for the future. Therefore, we cannot squander these moments. Let it not be said of this generation of Sailors and Marines that we misused this valuable opportunity to make a step-change in our culture for a better approach to future warfighting.

Scott Humr is an active-duty Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Marine Corps. He is currently a PhD candidate at the Naval Postgraduate School as part of the Commandant’s PhD-Technical Program. His research interests include trust in AI, sociotechnical systems, and decision-making in human-machine teams. 

Featured Image: An F-35C Lightning aircraft, assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 125, prepares to launch from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush (CVN 77) during flight operations. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Brandon Roberson)

Future Tech

For America and Japan, Peace and Security Through Technology, Pt. 2

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By Capt. Tuan N. Pham, USN

Part one of this two-part series calls for a bilateral technology roadmap to field and sustain a lethal, resilient, and rapidly adapting technology-enabled Joint Force (Multi-Domain Defense Force) that can seamlessly conduct high-end maritime operations in the Indo-Pacific.

Part two underscores the imperatives to do so, and provides geostrategic context by framing the growing technology competition within the region through the lens of Great Power Competition (GPC) in the 21st century. China, Russia, America, and Japan are intertwined in GPC, with all four nations fully committed to national security innovation for competitive advantages.

China – Seeking Global Technological Dominance (Technological Revisionism)

China has embarked on a whole-of-nation effort to achieve civil-military development and integration of emerging technologies, seeking to become a Science and Technology (S&T) superpower with a strong economy, a powerful military, and a harmonious society – able to fight and win global conflicts across every domain of strategic competition (economic, political, ideological, and military). Using national tools – government, industry, and academia – to promote domestic technological innovation and access foreign technology, Beijing hopes to leapfrog the United States and the other industrialized nations in technological prowess en route to global preeminence and the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation. China invests heavily in advanced dual-use technologies, hoping that they will improve the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) capabilities and increase its capacities to achieve battlefield dominance across contested and interconnected warfighting domains.

The Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) strategy’s ultimate goal is the “gradual build-up of China’s unified military-civil system of strategies and strategic capabilities.” The strategy is not an addition to China’s other national strategic priorities, but rather a “supporting strategy whose parts integrate into China’s system of national strategies to form a broad national strategic system” that advances the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) overarching security and development goals and realizes its strategic aspirations (Chinese Dream). General Secretary of the CCP Xi Jinping described the MCF strategy as a “major policy decision designed to balance security and development, and is a major measure in response to complex security threats and a means of gaining strategic advantages.”

As the name suggests, the strategy seeks to synchronize and integrate civil and military operations, activities, and investments. The civil aspects encompass the economic and social systems that relate to national security as well as the contested domains and competitive technologies such as maritime, space, cyberspace, autonomy, and artificial intelligence (AI) that are intricately linked to the development and sustainment of “New Type Combat Capabilities.” The military aspects cover every aspect of national security to include the PLA and enabling national defense technologies and infrastructures. The MCF strategy gives the PLA unfettered access into civil entities developing and acquiring advanced technologies, to include state-owned and private firms, universities, and research programs such as the Thousand Talents Program. All in all, the strategy’s core goals are the optimization of national resource allocation, generation of combat readiness, and manifestation of economic prosperity.

The drive for technological dominance is not a new policy. The fixation with advanced technology dates back to the founding of the country and the founder Mao Zedong. Mao envisioned the “socialist world’s overwhelming superiority in S&T and came to see technological strength as central to economic, ideological, and geopolitical power for China” – a view that CCP leaders still hold today. Xi characterized the national pursuit of technology as “ganchao” (catch up and surpass). The strategic objective is one of the CCP’s most defining and enduring goals, and provides an essential policy framework to understand “China’s ambition to become a technological superpower, bringing together the legacies of Marxism, Maoism, and the relentless drive toward modernization [realization of the Chinese Dream] by the CCP.”    

Xi embraced “ganchao” and made it his own. In January of 2013, shortly after assuming power, Xi laid out his vision for China’s future through the lens of national rejuvenation and reinvigorated national efforts to “catch up and surpass,” reinforcing the legacy linkage of technological advancements to the ideology and identity of the CCP. Four years later, at the 19th National Congress of the CCP, Xi reaffirmed the strategic roadmap for the Chinese Dream. Xi moved China forward from Mao’s revolutionary legacy and Deng’s iconic policy dictum – “observe calmly, secure our position, cope with affairs calmly, hide our capacities and bide our time, be good at maintaining a low profile, and never claim leadership” – and heralded a new era in Chinese national development. To Xi, technological innovation, by all means, is necessary to surpass the West, and technological dominance is the path to realize global preeminence by 2049.             

Beijing’s Made in China 2025 and Internet Plus policies are two key components of China’s strategic plan to achieve technological dominance by the end of the decade and global preeminence by 2049. The former aims to push the economy towards higher value-added manufacturing and services through digital technology and automation. It is a blueprint to upgrade the manufacturing capabilities of Chinese industries into a more technology-intensive dynamo. The latter aims to capitalize on China’s massive online consumer market by building up the country’s domestic mobile Internet, cloud computing, big data, and Internet of Things (IoT) sectors. It is a roadmap to integrate information technology with the key industries of manufacturing, commerce, banking, and agriculture. Both policies have been characterized as an innovation mercantilism that leverages the power of the state to “alter competitive dynamics in global markets from industries core to economic competitiveness.” 

In the maritime domain, Xi called for accelerating innovation in marine technologies to increase capacity and improve naval development capability, fostering the development of domestic marine industries in support of both PLA modernization and reform efforts and national civilian projects like the Made in China 2025 and Digital Belt and Road Initiative. He promoted marine connectivity and practical collaboration to develop “blue partnerships” among like-minded maritime nations under the One Belt and One Road framework at last year’s China Marine Economy Expo.

Russia – Rebuilding Technology Base for National Greatness (Technological Revanchism)

In 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin presciently declared that “whoever becomes the leader in this sphere [explicitly AI and implicitly technology at large] will become the ruler of the world.” The bold statement summarizes the purpose and intent behind the 2017 Strategy for the Development of an Information Society for 2017–2030, one of Putin’s key policy initiatives to restore Russia to its former glory. The strategy prioritizes areas deemed essential for the successful development of Russian information and communication technologies, specifically:

  • New generation of electronic networks
  • Processing of large volumes of data
  • AI
  • Electronic identification and authentication
  • Cloud computing
  • Post-industrial Internet
  • Robotics
  • Biotechnologies Information security

The strategy also devotes considerable attention to “ideological concerns, including the prioritization of Russian traditional spiritual and cultural values, popularization of Russian culture and science abroad, and proliferation of steady cultural and educational contacts with Russian compatriots living abroad.” The intent relates to the “Russian World” concept that aims to propagate Russian soft power abroad.

The 2017 Strategy for the Development of an Information Society supplements and complements the greater 2015 National Security Strategy (NSS) that codifies Russia’s strategic interests and national priorities. The strategic document identifies Russian national interests as “strengthening the country’s defense, ensuring political and social stability, raising the living standard, preserving and developing culture, improving the economy, and enhancing Russia’s status as a leading world power.” The strategy reflects a Russia more confident in its ability to defend its sovereignty, resist Western pressure and influence, and realize its great power aspirations.

The Russian military remains essential to Putin’s ambitious and expansive strategic plan to restore Russia to its former Soviet greatness. The incremental modernization of Russia’s military depends on the future viability and sustainability of the Russian defense industry. Moscow funds or subsidizes its defense industry primarily through four state-supported investment approaches that provide insights into current defense priorities and future defense developments: “In certain areas, the Kremlin invested significant resources in recapitalizing key defense corporations indicating its prioritization of the systems they produce and the technologies they develop. In other areas, Russia engaged in enduring support of critical defense corporations demonstrating its long-term commitment to key technologies. Another approach reflects the incorporation of its defense corporations into state-owned enterprises. The last approach is speculative investment in dual-use technologies through means such as venture capital.”

America – Maintaining Global Technology Leadership (Technological Superiority)

The 2017 NSS charges the National Security Enterprise to promote American prosperity by leading in research, technology, invention, and innovation to sustain and expand competitive advantages in today’s strategic environment of GPC. The tasked priority actions include understanding worldwide S&T trends, attracting and retaining inventors and innovators, leveraging private capital and expertise to build and innovate, and rapidly fielding inventions and innovations. The NSS also charges the Department of Defense (DOD) to preserve the peace through strength by renewing military capabilities to retain military overmatch for competitive advantages. Overmatch strengthens diplomacy and shapes the international environment to protect and advance U.S. national interests. To maintain military overmatch, the United States must restore the ability to build innovative defense capabilities, force readiness for major conflict and strategic competition, and size of the force so that it is capable of operating at a sufficient scale and for a duration to win across a range of contingencies and interconnected domains. Lastly, the NSS calls on key allies and partners to modernize, acquire the necessary joint warfighting capabilities, improve force readiness, expand the size of their forces, and affirm the political will to compete and win.     

Within the DOD, the 2018 National Defense Strategy, 2018 National Military Strategy, and Defense Planning Guidance collectively highlight the need for competitive technological innovation in national security to sustain and expand the U.S. military competitive advantages, and direct greater partnerships between the DOD and commercial enterprises to out-innovate global competitors. Nowhere is the need for commercial technological innovation more compelling than in the DOD. The 2019 Digital Modernization Strategy states that “technological innovation is a key element of future readiness and essential to preserving and expanding U.S. military competitive advantage in the face of near-peer competition and asymmetric threats.” The strategy calls for the ability, flexibility, and agility to innovatively and rapidly field technology-enabled warfighting capability to the warfighter faster than potential adversaries. The guiding principles for DOD’s acquisition of commercial technology capabilities underscore that “preserving and expanding our military advantage depends on our ability to deliver technology faster than our adversaries and the agility of our enterprise to adapt our way of fighting to the potential advantages of innovative technology.”   

Within the Department of Navy, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday emphasizes the role of allies and partners in enforcing international maritime norms and operating together as a technology-enabled Joint Force. He declared his intention to bring key U.S. allies and partners along with the U.S. Navy (USN) as it moves into high-end maritime operations at last year’s 12th Regional Sea Power Symposium. He told his contemporaries from more than 30 foreign navies that “today, the very nature of our operating environment requires shared common values and a collective approach to maritime security…and that makes steady, enduring Navy-to-Navy relationships more important than ever”. He concluded his remarks by addressing the fluid technological environment and how emerging disruptive technologies affect the character of naval operations and warfare (warfighting). He underscored tactical cloud computing, AI, and machine learning as technological drivers of change for the USN and by extension allied and partnered navies. 

Admiral Gilday expounded on these points when he promulgated his initial guidance to the Fleet a few months later. The directive, in the form of a fragmentary order (FRAGO), simplified, prioritized, and built on the foundation of “A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority 2.0” issued by his predecessor. The FRAGO directs dedicated efforts across three critical areas – warfighting, warfighters, and the future Navy – and focuses on building alliances and partnerships to broaden and strengthen global maritime awareness, access, capabilities, and capacities. 

The FRAGO aligns well with the Secretary of Navy’s (SECNAV) guidance to mitigate the unpredictability of the future by building and maintaining a “robust constellation of partners and allies to work with us to solve common security challenges which are beyond our ability to predict, or defeat alone.” The SECNAV underscored two key initiatives. First, cooperative international agreements jointly produce, procure, and sustain naval armaments to reduce U.S. and partner costs, improve bilateral interoperability, and forge closer ties between U.S. and partner nation operating forces and acquisition and logistics communities. Second, S&T and data exchange agreements facilitate Research and Development (R&D) and information exchanges with allied or friendly nations, and marshal the technological capabilities of the United States and our key allies and partners to accelerate R&D and fielding of equipment for the common defense.  

The FRAGO also aligns well with the newly released Tri-Service Maritime Strategy (Advantage at Sea, Prevailing with All-Domain Naval Power). The joint strategy focuses on China and Russia and guides the Naval Service (USN, U.S. Marine Corps, and U.S. Coast Guard) for the next decade to prevail across the continuum of competition. The strategy has two main components. First, it articulates the employment of integrated all-domain naval power across the competition continuum. Second, it guides the development of an integrated all-domain naval force.

Japan – Advancing Toward Society 5.0 (Technological Evolution)

Japan takes a broader societal perspective of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). In 2017, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe unveiled Society 5.0, a future society that leverages technology in the key pillars of infrastructure, finance technology, healthcare, logistics, and AI to achieve economic advancement and solve societal problems. The super-smart society (Society 5.0) is the fifth step in the evolution of human development. It follows the information society (Society 4.0), industrial society (Society 3.0), agricultural society (Society 2.0), and hunting and gathering society (Society 1.0). The vision is to liberate people from routine tasks and to meet the needs of every person while not surrendering all control to technology. Society 5.0 boldly creates a social contract and economic model by fully integrating the technological innovations of the 4IR throughout every facet of Japanese society. The dual-use nature of these developing civil technologies also has national security applications and implications. 

Like in the United States, GPC influences Japan’s national security perspectives as outlined in its NSS. The NSS shapes Japanese defense priorities through the lens of enduring regional threats like China, North Korea, and Russia; emerging contested and interconnected domains of space, cyberspace, and the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS); the U.S.-Japan Alliance; and the Free and Open Indo-Pacific. Within the Ministry of Defense (MOD), the National Defense Planning Guidelines for FY2019 and Beyond, Mid-Term Defense Program FY2019-2023, and 2019 R&D Vision call for the development of a Multi-Domain Defense Force (Joint Force) that can conduct seamless and integrated cross-domain operations to preserve the security, prosperity, and independence of Japan. These operations fuse the new domains of space, cyberspace, and the EMS with the traditional domains of maritime, air, and land. The challenge for the MOD is how best to leverage the pervasive technological innovation happenings in the government, private industry, and academia within Japan and collaborate with the U.S. DOD on technological innovation.

Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF), in coordination with the other services, continues to make prudent targeted investments to develop a Multi-Domain Defense Force, strengthen the U.S.-Japan Alliance, take better care of its personnel, and hedge for the future. The FY2019,  FY2020, and FY2021 defense budgets (JMSDF allocation) focus on building capabilities and increasing capacities in command, control, communications, computers, ISR, and targeting (C4ISRT), information warfare, cyberspace network operations and defense, space warfare, undersea warfare, and ballistic missile defense. The JMSDF also makes investments in four enabling organizational areas. Firstly, enhance function in all phases through continuous enhancement of necessary capabilities. Secondly, better develop concepts necessary for defending the country by utilizing the JMSDF capabilities to their full potential. Thirdly, further strengthen cooperation through deepening relationships with other navies with the U.S.-Japan Alliance as its core, and through making full use of joint and comprehensive relationships with various partners. Lastly, improve personnel programs, the foundation of the JMSDF, both in quality and in quantity.

Technology Competition

GPC is alive and well in the Indo-Pacific, particularly in the contested technology domain. Russia, China, America, and Japan are entangled in a competitive technology race for economic prosperity and national security. Although allied Washington and Tokyo are fully committed to national security technological innovation as evidenced by their respective national defense strategies and mutual pursuit of a technology-enabled Joint Force (Multi-Domain Defense Force), the broader DOD (USN) and MOD (JMSDF) must better leverage emerging technologies and developing concomitant warfare concepts (doctrines) to adapt to the new way of fighting. Otherwise, the United States and Japan risk ceding the technology domain and consequently military superiority in the Indo-Pacific to revisionist China and revanchist Russia.

CAPT Pham is a maritime strategist, strategic planner, naval researcher, and China Hand with 20 years of experience in the Indo-Pacific. He completed a research paper with the Office of Naval Research (ONR) at the U.S. Naval War College (USNWC) in 2020. The articles are derived from the aforesaid paper. The views expressed here are personal and do not reflect the positions of the U.S. Government, USN, ONR or USNWC.

Featured Image: SAN DIEGO (Feb. 23, 2017) Cmdr. Mark Stefanik, commanding officer of the littoral combat ship USS Montgomery (LCS 8), discusses the ship’s engineering capabilities with Japan Maritime Self Defense Force Director of Ships and Weapons Division, Capt. Shinichi Imayoshi. (U.S. Navy photo by Fire Controlman 1st Class Nathaniel J. Wells/Released)

Future Tech

Harnessing Tech Innovation from Blockchain to Kill Chain

1 Comment

By Jimmy Drennan

With all of the hype surrounding bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, it can be difficult to sort through the noise and it might seem trendy to ask the question “How can this technology benefit my organization?” After all, a cryptocurrency started as a joke in honor of dog memes recently achieved a $2B valuation. Still, the underlying technological innovation behind Bitcoin, the blockchain, has real, concrete advantages that can impact numerous industries, from banking to logistics.

Applications in maritime operations are no exception. Blockchain is essentially a distributed database that incentivizes network consensus to make it extremely difficult to alter recorded data. Think of it this way: blockchain is like a museum that offers free entry, but heavily secures each exhibit with anti-tamper systems such that they can only be observed, not stolen or defaced. That so-called “immutability property” makes blockchain useful any time data integrity (i.e. preservation of data) is more important than data security (i.e. privacy of data).

Ideas are already being formulated by the Secretary of the Navy’s Innovation Advisory Council on how blockchain can improve additive manufacturing. Perhaps the most intriguing example of how blockchain can assist naval operations lies in ensuring an accurate recognized maritime picture (RMP). In naval warfare, nothing is more important when forming a kill chain than ensuring one has properly identified the target. RMP is even more critical when relying on networks, and the U.S. Navy has invested heavily for decades to become the world’s preeminent networked force. Blockchain has the potential to solve two of the Navy’s biggest problems associated with building RMP: ambiguity and manipulation. In fact, the broader maritime industry can also benefit from the use of blockchain due to inherent security flaws in the widely used automatic identification system (AIS).

What is a Blockchain?

A brief primer on how blockchains work will help to illustrate how they can impact naval operations. A blockchain used to record financial transactions, called “cryptocurrency,” is perhaps the best example to use. It is a distributed ledger that keeps track of every transaction ever conducted. Bitcoin, the original and most well-known cryptocurrency, relies upon a large network of independent users to prevent “double spending.”  Since cryptocurrency is just data, and not something tangible that is traded for goods or services, it would normally be easy for someone to spend it twice and delegitimize the entire system. Bitcoin’s unique process solved the double spending problem by calling upon its network users to work together to verify each transaction. Bitcoin conducts “consensus building” by offering a prize (currently 12.5 bitcoin) to a randomly selected user helping to verify the latest transaction. Once consensus is built and a transaction is verified, a new 12.5 bitcoin is awarded (i.e. mined) and the transaction is recorded to the blockchain. Each subsequent transaction is built upon the last, making it very difficult to retroactively manipulate data on the blockchain. In fact, the only way for a nefarious actor to alter a previous transaction or record an invalid transaction would be to achieve 51 percent of the computing power on the bitcoin network. For reference, today the world’s most powerful supercomputer, China’s Sunway Taihulight, would comprise just 0.6 percent of the bitcoin network’s computing power, which is growing exponentially.

Recognized Maritime Picture

U.S. and coalition navies rely on secure tactical data networks to share information from a variety of sensors to build RMP. Since RMP is built from the input of numerous, widely distributed users in these networks, they are susceptible to errors like “dual tracks” (i.e. a single ship or aircraft being broadcast to the network as two contacts) or faulty navigational data causing a ship to misreport its own course and speed. These errors can lead to ambiguity in RMP that could lead to critical delays in successfully identifying a threat. Tactical data networks are also susceptible to intrusion and manipulation, no matter how secure they are. Like any cybersecurity system designed to keep unauthorized users out, navies constantly strive to make their tactical data networks more secure against ever more determined adversaries.

Blockchain technology can help navies mitigate the problems of ambiguity and manipulation in building RMP. By building tactical data networks on a blockchain foundation, ambiguity will be resolved naturally as “consensus” develops around new tracks and they are distributed throughout the network. Once consensus is built around a track, blockchain’s immutability property makes it very difficult for subsequent users to clutter RMP with errant data on that track. Likewise, an unauthorized user trying to manipulate RMP by infiltrating tactical data networks will be challenged to alter data on established tracks. Even if a cyber attack attempted to insert new false tracks into the network, specialized blockchain features could be developed to override track data that is not corroborated by friendly sensors. A blockchain that utilizes special features and operates on secure networks is an example of a  private blockchain. Going back to the museum example, a private blockchain is like a museum that employs robust anti-tamper systems on the exhibits, but also restricts entry to museum members only. A disadvantage of a private blockchain is the reduction in available computing power, due to limited users, to ensure data integrity. The cost of rebuilding U.S. and coalition navy tactical data networks from the ground up utilizing blockchain will likely be significant; however, the advantages in data integrity by mitigating ambiguity and manipulation are worth analyzing.

Much as U.S. and coalition navies could benefit from private blockchain, the maritime industry at large could benefit from public blockchain to improve its RMP. Worldwide, mariners use AIS – an open network of ship position, course, and speed data – as a primary tool for building RMP. Implemented in the early 2000s, AIS has been critical to improving safety of navigation. Still, AIS has inherent flaws that blockchain could be used to fix. Because it is open source, AIS data can easily be manipulated to make a ship appear in a different location, report false course and speed, or even mimic another ship’s identity. As Glenn Hayes explains in the Maritime Electronics Journal, AIS “is vulnerable to malicious transmissions and runs the risk of being manipulated by individuals seeking to deceive the system.”  Illegal fishing, piracy, and smuggling are just a few of the reasons one might seek to deceive AIS. As use of AIS spreads, potential security issues will only increase. The data manipulation that AIS is susceptible to is exactly the type of vulnerability that blockchain was developed to address. With targeted funding and industry-wide effort, blockchain can provide data integrity to AIS to improve maritime safety and deter illegal activity at sea.

Countering Maritime Smuggling

Another potential application of blockchain in maritime operations could be in supply chain improvements to counter maritime smuggling of drugs, weapons, or any illicit cargo. Lieutenant Junior Grade Henry Bond wrote an insightful article for U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings on the potential for blockchain to protect the DoD supply chain. Lieutenant Bond’s analysis can be expanded to include the global shipping industry. Specifically, smugglers often exploit the inherent difficulties in conducting cargo inspections on container ships by concealing contraband within legitimate cargo in innocuous, unmarked containers. Economic and operational constraints do not often allow for the time it would take to open and inspect hundreds of containers pierside, and physical constraints usually prohibit at-sea inspection. So, to counter maritime smuggling via container ships, navies and law enforcement agencies must focus on deterring the use of containers vice locating illicit cargo in transit. Blockchain portends to act as a potential deterrent by openly and irrevocably recording the status of every container in the supply chain. Essentially, each container could be treated like a “transaction” in the blockchain, so that once it is loaded as part of a legitimate shipment, its status relative to all other nearby containers is “locked down,” making it very difficult to mix in an illegitimate container at a later point. Events like the opening or repositioning of a container could also be recorded as “transactions” to further complicate smugglers’ to conceal illicit cargo.

Ideas like those of Lieutenant Bond or the SECNAV Innovation Board are sound, but they require further development because blockchain is still a nascent technology. DoD, and the maritime industry at large, would do well to assign additional research funding to pursue ideas for applying blockchain in national defense and maritime safety.

Jimmy Drennan is the Vice President of CIMSEC. These views are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect the position of any government agency.

Featured Image: ORLANDO, Fla. (August 12, 2014) Sailors train on a new diesel generator simulator during a project review at Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division in Orlando, Fla. (U.S. Navy photo by Darrell Conley/Released)