Q-Boats - The Marine Drones.

On September 21st an odd piece of flotsam washed up on the outskirts of Sevastopol.
It was about 5.5m long and the consensus was that it was a USV (uncrewed surface vessel, essentially a drone boat), possibly on a reconnaissance mission, that had been put together by the ingenious boffins who are to Ukraine what Q branch is to James Bond.

On October 29th. 2022, reality bit. A fleet of the things, accompanied by similarly robotic air cover, attacked Sevastopol’s naval base, the home port of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

According to the Ukrainians, and backed up by video footage apparently shot from
cameras on board one of the drones, they scored direct hits on Admiral Makarov, the
fleet’s flagship, and two other vessels, damaging all three.

That was followed on November 18th, 2022, by a big explosion at a Russian oil terminal in Novorossiysk, also reported to have been the work of the same type of naval drones.

“For many it [these attacks] marks the start of a new age in naval warfare,” wrote
H.I. Sutton, an author, blogger and naval analyst who has studied footage of the Ukrainian drone boat. That could be bad news not only for Russia, but for anyone who
does business, naval or civilian, at sea. For its part, Ukraine announced on November
11th that it plans to build 100 of the vessels, paid for, it hopes, by crowdfunding.

Until Ukraine’s attack on the Black Sea fleet, strapping bombs to remote controlled
boats had mostly been the preserve of irregular forces. Iran did test some in 2017, against a Saudi Arabian tanker. But things really got going when the Houthi
movement, a group of rebels against Yemen’s Saudi supported government, began,
with apparent Iranian support, to use uncrewed speedboats stuffed with explosives.
Also in 2017, one of these hit Al Madinah, a Saudi Arabian frigate, in the Gulf.
The explosion killed two sailors.

Since then, according to data compiled by Harvard Haugstvedt of Oslo University’s Centre for Research on Extremism, the group has launched more than 20 further attacks on commercial ships and shore facilities.

Palestinian drones are also going underwater. In 2021 Israel’s navy destroyed what
it described as a bombcarrying submersible drone minutes after its launch into the
Mediterranean by members of Hamas. According to Israel, Hamas has been honing
the technology for years. Each vessel, it claims, can carry about 30kg of explosive.

In coming years, America’s navy plans to spend billions of dollars developing a colourful array of USVs, some of which may be as long as a superyacht and capable of carrying long-range missiles and other weapons.

China has sought to keep pace, with numerous programmes that mirror America’s efforts. One of these—a heavily armed vessel called the JARI—has made regular appearances at weapons shows across the world, complete with mockup guns and
torpedoes. That suggests China is interested in exporting the technology as well as
using it itself.

In Israel, meanwhile, Rafael, a governmen armaments company, has spent years perfecting a speedy USV called the Protector. In 2017 it decked one out with Spike antitank missiles and later demonstrated it in a NATO livefire exercise. And EDGE, a stateowned Emirati conglomerate, is collaborating with IAI, another Israeli firm, to build a similar vessel.

Britain has been developing such capabilities through its Navy-X project. Greece, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea and Turkey have also been rolling out armed USVs.

None of the Ukrainian boat’s underlying technologies would be out of reach for a small military power or a reasonably competent nonstate group. According to an analysis of available images, its engine appears to be from a SeaDoo jet ski. Its camera looks like a device that cyclists might strap to their helmets (it has a larger one, mounted amidships). And its satellite receiver bears a strong resemblance to the Starlink terminals supplied by SpaceX.

In its fundraising materials, Ukraine claims that each boat costs a mere $250000.
A single antiship missile, by comparison, can cost millions. The boat’s cargo bay can carry 200kg of high explosive to a ship’s waterline where—unlike a hole punched higher up in a hull by a missile or aerial drone — it will cause the vessel hit to ship water and possibly sink.

Commercial shipping is at particular risk.
Some ships do sail with armed guards, but their small calibre weapons would be hard put to stop a reinforced drone boat whipping across the waves.

Not having a crew gives USVs other advantages. With no need for a cabin, they can be built for stealth. The Ukrainian boat rises only a few centimetres above the water’s surface, making it almost invisible to radar and cameras—but, unlike a submarine drone, still able to keep in radio contact with its controllers. (Radio waves cannot penetrate water.)
This does not mean a follow-up could not dive completely underwater, for example in order to evade detection on a final attack run, like a German U-boat. The Hamas subs, which are guided on the surface by GPS, might already operate on a similar principle.

How, then, do you stop a USV?
The immediate response has been to rejig existing weapons. A couple of years ago Thales, a French armaments firm, thus reconfigured its supersonic Martlet missile to hit small fastmoving surface vessels. The result will be fitted to British frigates in 2024.

America’s navy also recently put the finishing touches to what it calls a “Surface Warfare Mission Package”, consisting of two 30mm guns, two inflatable boats and a helicopter. This, it says, is specifically geared toward picking off small fast-moving boats, both crewed and uncrewed.

A popular technique for bringing down aerial drones is to jam their radio links
with highintensity electromagnetic chatter, or to wrest control of the craft itself
through a technique known as “spoofing”. This might work for USVs, too.

Another proposal, albeit so far imaginary, is to fight drone with drone. In June, 2022, Britain’s defence ministry awarded an urgent contract to BAE Systems, another armaments company, for an aerial-reconnaissance drone to deploy aboard frigates “to counter unmanned surface vessels”.

Armed forces will also look for answers in unusual places. First-World-war-style indicator nets for ensnaring submersible and semi-submersible craft could see a return
to service.

Early detection will thus be crucial, though this could be hard in congested areas, such as ports or busy shipping lanes.

Also, these measures assume drone boats will come as single spies. More likely,
they will arrive as battalions. It’s pretty hard to stop one hostile incoming target, and every additional target you add to that makes the problem much more complicated.

All the more so if a flotilla’s boats can collaborate without reference to human beings. This is not a distant prospect. Aselsan, a Turkish armsmaker, recently unveiled the Albatross-S, a speedy USV which, it says, can operate in crowds that share information about targets and objectives.

Meanwhile, engineers at China’s College of Weaponry Engineering in Wuhan are building “hunting algorithms” intended to enable swarms of USVs to chase down a multitude of targets, in the manner of a pod of killer whales pursuing a bob of seals.