What Are the Most Urgently Needed Maritime Drones for the Russian Navy?

Author: Alexander Timoshin

Russia has established an institution aimed at coordinating the creation of drone systems for the navy. Although research and development were carried out during the Soviet era, why are these devices now critically important, and what types of drones does the Russian Navy urgently need?

Russia has formed a Technical Committee for the Development of Maritime Drone Systems, which will be responsible for applying drone technology to naval operations. Today, it is impossible to ignore the importance of autonomous combat equipment for the navy, and the scale of related work is enormous.

The Origins of Soviet Maritime Drone Systems

During the early stages of the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet Union made its first attempts to apply autonomous systems in combat. At that time, the Black Sea Fleet used radio-controlled speedboats loaded with explosives, controlled by special radio-equipped MBР-2 aircraft. However, due to technological limitations at the time, this attempt was not successful.

Afterward, applications of autonomous systems in the Soviet Union were mainly limited to radio-controlled lifeboats dropped from aircraft, as well as the first generation of extremely incomplete mine-hunting unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). Additionally, the Soviet Navy used radio-controlled target drones for training anti-aircraft gunners on ships.

This situation was somewhat contradictory. On one hand, the Soviet Union had greater and more urgent needs for maritime drones; on the other hand, it possessed all the necessary technology.

For example, before World War II, the Soviet Union had already experimented with launching seaplanes from warships. By 1962, a reliable system for radio-controlling anti-ship cruise missiles from warships had been successfully developed. On 58-type missile cruisers, some of the missiles could be controlled via radio channels instead of relying solely on autonomous guidance, greatly improving the reliability of missile guidance. Combining missile autonomous guidance head technology, radio control technology, information display technology on warships, and the retired carrier-based catapult aircraft technology from naval equipment could have allowed the Soviet Navy to possess drones in the early 1960s, thereby solving the problem of indicating targets for missile weapon systems when firing at distant, unobservable targets.

In reality, this issue was resolved through manned aircraft such as the Tu-95РЦ reconnaissance plane and the Ka-25Ц helicopter integrated into the naval reconnaissance and target indication "success" system. In actual warfare, this inevitably led to significant losses among air units.

Of course, at the time, things were not viewed this way, and attitudes toward losses were different. However, it must be acknowledged that both applying drones to naval operations and establishing corresponding coordinating institutions should have started during the Soviet period. Perhaps they could have been initiated in the 1990s, but the disaster of the collapse of the Soviet Union prevented the navy from achieving comprehensive development.

Thus, organized relevant work only began in 2025. It is necessary to briefly explain what tasks this new institution faces.

The Necessity of the Technical Committee

The uniqueness of the navy lies in the fact that, organizationally speaking, it is the most complex branch of the armed forces. For example, the navy has its own aviation, including land-based (referred to as "bases" in naval terminology) fighters and carrier-based fighters (used for takeoffs from aircraft carriers). There is also attack aviation, referred to as "ground-attack aviation" in naval terminology (do not confuse this with "ordinary" ground-attack aviation, which is a different concept in the navy). In other words, the navy fights in the air like the air force.

The navy has coastal defense forces and marine corps. In other words, the navy also fights on land, and the marine corps primarily undertake extremely complex actions — landing on land from the sea and repelling enemies in the attacked area.

The navy has surface warships and submarines, including multipurpose submarines (responsible for searching for and destroying enemies) and strategic submarines (remaining hidden before launching ballistic missiles).

The navy has its own special forces, which differ from ordinary special forces in that naval special forces must not only be capable of conducting combat operations on land and landing from the air but also be able to fight underwater and land from the sea. Finally, the navy has its own unique space reconnaissance means, which are not used by other branches of the military.

In this organizational complexity, the main combat equipment of the navy is warships. The construction cycle of warships is long — requiring several years — while their service life can last decades. Therefore, on the one hand, mistakes cannot be made in designing warships; on the other hand, if certain factors were not considered ten years ago, solutions must be found within the next twenty years.

This complexity necessarily affects the types of autonomous combat systems required by the navy. For example, underwater reconnaissance requires unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), and the UUVs needed for submarines and surface warships should be different. Mine-hunting UUVs belong to a separate category within this system. In some cases, UUVs similar to warships, based at naval bases and capable of conducting underwater combat to a certain extent, may be manufactured — the United States and China are currently actively researching this type of UUV. Unmanned UUVs capable of secretly transporting nuclear warheads pose a significant threat.

Unmanned fast boats (BEC) are used on the water. Nowadays, when people hear this term, they immediately think of Ukraine's suicide unmanned fast boats. However, unmanned fast boats for other purposes are more interesting and effective.

For example, they can serve as carriers for towing hydrophone stations to search for mines or as carriers for towing acoustic sources to illuminate water bodies, significantly increasing the efficiency of surface warships in detecting enemy submarines when used together. Alternatively, reconnaissance unmanned fast boats can use various reconnaissance equipment, or they can simply tow inflatable corner reflectors to mislead the enemy about the current position of our vessels.

Finally, drones (UAVs) play a crucial role in the navy, just as they do in other branches of the military. And again, this reflects the uniqueness of the navy. For instance, small first-person view (FPV) drones are very useful for protecting warships from suicide unmanned fast boat attacks, but they must be capable of flying in strong winds, icing, and damp conditions. Large UAVs capable of performing reconnaissance missions for combat ship formations must have the ability to take off from and return to these ships.

Meanwhile, completely different types of UAVs are needed for strike aviation taking off from the coast. For the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier (when it eventually returns to service), a third type of UAV is needed, capable of landing on deck and moving at speeds that allow it to coordinate with fighter jets.

The marine corps require the same drones as the army in combat but also need the ability to use them from ships. After landing, marines also need various types of unmanned vehicles for different purposes — carriers for machine guns and automatic grenade launchers to coordinate with infantry; reconnaissance vehicles, transport vehicles for delivering ammunition to the front lines and evacuating wounded soldiers from there.

This diversity of tasks and operating conditions requires the maximum mobilization of all engineering and industrial capabilities. Since these capabilities are scattered across different enterprises and design bureaus, a coordinating body is needed — an "intellectual hub" in application terms — that can balance industrial capabilities with military needs. The technical committee is precisely such an institution.

What Are the Most Urgently Needed Maritime Drone Systems for the Russian Navy?

A few suggestions can be made — the technical committee should first focus on these areas. First, the situation with first-person view (FPV) drones. Tests of these systems against small surface targets have shown that they are very effective against suicide unmanned fast boats. For example, border guards have already begun deploying FPV drone-equipped detachments in their combat ship fleets.

Second, mine-hunting unmanned underwater vehicles. Currently, the threat posed by mines has reached an extremely serious level. Even on modern 12700-type "Alexander Shabalin" class minehunters, there is no complete set of unmanned underwater vehicles for countering mines. Third, fully functional unmanned fast boats capable of carrying various payloads (primarily reconnaissance payloads). Lastly, drones capable of providing reconnaissance support for the use of shipborne missile systems against surface targets.

In other areas, best wishes to this new institution — it is necessary for both the navy and the entire country. The Russian Navy urgently needs to equip itself with drone systems as soon as possible.

Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7499364285429088809/

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