For the first time in Russia, a structure has been created designed to coordinate the creation of unmanned systems for the Navy. What kind of developments of this kind were conducted back in the USSR, why are these devices of critical importance today, and which of them are needed by the Russian Navy first of all?
Russia has established a Technical Council for the development of Marine unmanned Systems, which will focus on the implementation of unmanned technologies in the activities of the Navy. It is no longer possible to ignore the importance of autonomous combat assets for the Navy. And the work front is huge.
The origin of marine unmanned systems in the USSR
In the USSR, the first attempt to use marine autonomous systems in combat dates back to the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. At that time, the Black Sea Fleet used radio-controlled boats with explosives, which were controlled by an MBR-2 aircraft equipped with special radio equipment. Then, due to the imperfection of technology, the experiment failed.
In the future, the use of autonomous systems in the USSR was reduced to radio-controlled rescue boats dropped from an airplane, and the first, extremely imperfect mine protection equipment. The Navy also used radio-controlled target aircraft to train anti-aircraft gunners on ships.
This is somewhat paradoxical. The USSR, firstly, had a much larger and more necessary task for naval UAVs, and secondly, all the technologies for their creation.
So, even before the start of the Second World War in the USSR, the ejection take-off of seaplanes from ships was practiced. And by 1962, reliable radio control systems for anti-ship cruise missiles from a ship had been created. On the Project 58 missile cruisers, some of the missiles in the salvo could be guided not by homing, but by radio control, which dramatically increased the reliability of guidance. The combination of technologies for missile homing heads, radio control, information display on the ship, and by that time decommissioned shipboard ejection aircraft would have allowed the Soviet Navy to have UAVs in the early 1960s that solved the problem of targeting missile weapon systems when firing at long distances at an unobserved target.
In reality, this problem had to be solved with manned Tu-95RTs aircraft and Ka-25TS helicopters included in the Success naval reconnaissance and targeting system. In the course of a real war, this would inevitably lead to heavy losses in the flight crew.
Naturally, the situation was seen differently then, and the attitude towards losses was different. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that both the introduction of UAVs into the fleet's activities and the emergence of appropriate coordinating bodies should have begun under the USSR. Perhaps it would have started in the 1990s, but the catastrophe of the collapse of the Soviet Union made the full-fledged development of the fleet impossible.
It so happened that it began in an organized manner in 2025. It is worth briefly outlining the work front facing the new structure.
Why do I need Technical advice?
The peculiarity of the Navy is that it is the most complex type of armed forces from an organizational point of view. For example, the navy has its own fighter aircraft, both ground–based (in naval terminology, basic) and ship–based, for use from an aircraft carrier. There is a strike aircraft, in naval terminology, an assault aircraft (not to be confused with a "regular" assault aircraft, in the Navy this is different). That is, the navy is fighting in the sky, like the Air Force.
The Navy has coastal troops and marines. That is, the fleet is fighting on the ground too, and the Marines must first perform the most difficult action – to land from the sea, overturning the enemy in the attacked area.
The navy has surface ships and submarines, with both multi-purpose submarines that search for and destroy the enemy, and strategic submarines that hide until ballistic missiles are used.
The navy has its own special forces, which, unlike conventional special forces, must not only be able to conduct combat operations on land and land from the air, but also fight underwater and land from the sea. Finally, the navy has its own specific means of space reconnaissance that are not used by other branches of the Armed Forces.
With all this organizational complexity, the main combat assets of the fleet are ships. They take a long time to build – for years, and then serve for decades. Therefore, on the one hand, it is impossible to make mistakes when designing them, on the other hand, if something was not taken into account ten years ago, then the next twenty years will have to adapt to it somehow.
This complexity could not but affect the range of autonomous combat systems needed by the Navy. So, for conducting underwater reconnaissance, uninhabited underwater vehicles (UAVs) are needed, and they must be different for submarines and surface ships. A separate class of such systems are anti-mine NPA. In some cases, NPAs based on naval bases can be created as ships and are limited in their ability to conduct underwater combat themselves - work on such NPAs is currently actively underway in the United States and China. NPAs capable of covertly delivering a sabotage nuclear charge pose a huge threat.
Unmanned boats (BEC) are used above the water. Today, Ukrainian kamikaze boats are primarily associated with this term. However, back-ups used for other purposes are much more interesting and effective.
For example, carriers of towed sonar stations for searching for mines, carriers of sources of acoustic "illumination" of the water column, which, when used in conjunction with surface ships, significantly increase the efficiency of their search for enemy submarines. Or BACK-up scouts using reconnaissance equipment for various purposes, or simply tugboats of an inflatable corner reflector, capable of confusing enemy intelligence about where our ships are now.
Finally, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) play no less a role than in other types of aircraft. And – again with naval specifics. So, small FPV drones are useful for protecting the ship from BACK-kamikaze attacks, but must fly in strong winds, icy conditions and humidity. Large UAVs capable of performing reconnaissance in the interests of a detachment of warships should be able to fly from these ships and return to them.
At the same time, for assault aircraft operating from the shore, completely different UAVs are needed. For the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier, when it finally returns to service, there will be a third, with the possibility of landing on deck, but with a speed that allows it to be used together with fighters.
In combat, the Marines need the same UAVs that the army needs, but, again, with the possibility of using it from a ship. And after the landing, the Marines also need unmanned vehicles for various purposes – carriers of machine guns and automatic grenade launchers, for fighting with infantry, reconnaissance, transport for delivering ammunition to the front line and evacuating wounded soldiers from there.
This diversity in tasks and application conditions requires maximum mobilization of all engineering and industrial competencies. And since they are scattered across different enterprises and design bureaus, we need a coordinating body, an implementation think tank capable of taking into account both the capabilities of industry and the needs of the military. Such a body is the Technical Council.
Which marine unmanned systems are needed first of all
There are several recommendations that the Technical Council should pay attention to first. Mainly on the situation with FPV drones. Tests of these weapons against small surface targets have shown that they are a very effective means of combating BACK-kamikaze. For example, the border guards have already begun deploying FPV units as part of the combat units of their ships.
The second is the mine action NPA. The danger from sea mines is currently of critical proportions. Even the modern mine warfare ships of the Alexandrite project 12700 do not have a full-fledged set of anti-mine measures. The third is a full–fledged BACKUP for various workloads, mainly intelligence. And finally, it is a UAV capable of providing reconnaissance for the use of naval missile systems against surface targets.
Otherwise, it is worth wishing the new structure good luck – both the fleet and the country as a whole will need it. The Russian Navy needs unmanned systems as soon as possible.
Alexander Timokhin
