Maritime Maneuvers

FORUM Staff

Ukraine, in its fight against Russia’s illegal invasion, is showcasing a military asset that could benefit Taiwan.

To maintain a Free and Open Indo-Pacific and to deter the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military from invading the self-governed island, experts say Taiwan should track Ukraine’s use of uncrewed surface vessels (USV), called sea or maritime drones, and the damage they have inflicted on the Russian Navy in the Black Sea since 2022. Ukraine has used its Magura V5 USVs for reconnaissance and as attack drones — boats laden with explosives designed to detonate on impact.

“I think that’s something that they [Taiwan] should look at,” Curry Wright, science and technology advisor to the commander of the United States Department of Defense Security Assistance Group – Ukraine, said at the Pacific Operational Science & Technology conference in Hawaii in March 2024.

Taiwan military leaders already have taken note. Taiwan’s National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology began developing two USV prototypes in 2023 and the Taiwan Army ordered more than 200 of the craft. Mass production begins in 2026, the Taipei Times newspaper reported.

The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) escalating coercion targeting Taiwan — gray-zone tactics that include sending fighter planes near the island and ships to patrol the surrounding waters — has raised concerns of a possible CCP invasion. The PRC claims the island as its territory and threatens to annex it.

Taiwan’s strategy calls for using armed USVs to deter or counter People’s Liberation Army (PLA) warships and landing craft. The Taiwan Navy could use the drones to carry out raids against invading forces, potentially extending their range by releasing the sea drones from naval vessels, the Taipei Times reported.

Sea drones have been used for more than a century. Germany used remote-controlled vessels in the English Channel in World War I but found them unreliable.

Since then, sea drones have been used for scientific research, search and rescue operations, surveillance and patrols. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 put a spotlight on military use of the drones, which are difficult to detect because of their low radar signature.

Ukraine said its naval drones first struck a Russian ship in October 2022 off the coast of occupied Crimea. In February 2024, Ukraine said it sank two Russian warships using USVs and in early March announced that its drones sank the Russian Black Sea fleet patrol ship Sergey Kotov.

Drone Armada

Kyiv’s futuristic-looking Magura V5 sea drone is 5.5 meters long, weighing up to 1,000 kilograms with a 200-kilogram payload and a 60-hour battery life, according to The Associated Press. Ukraine also has a 6-meter-long Sea Baby drone. The USVs “have emerged as an efficient asymmetric means to degrade Russia’s ability to exercise uninterrupted navigation in the Black Sea,” researcher Ahmad Ibrahim wrote in a July 2023 essay published by the Centre for Strategic and Contemporary Research, a Pakistan-based think tank.

Maritime drone attacks have played out elsewhere. In October 2023, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen began launching missile attacks against commercial shipping vessels and U.S. Navy ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Months later, the U.S. said the rebels had operated, for the first time, an uncrewed underwater vehicle in Houthi-controlled waters in the Red Sea near Yemen.

Although drones are consequential warfighting tools, they are not magic bullets that win wars, according to a March 2023 article in the journal Defense & Security Analysis. “Drones have had important impacts in some conflicts and are here to stay for political, if not military and social-psychological reasons,” wrote Sarah Kreps, a professor of government at Cornell University in New York, and U.S. Army Lt. Col. Paul Lushenko.

A January 2023 essay by Rand Corp. engineer Scott Savitz examined the potential for Taiwan to defend itself against a CCP invasion by launching up to thousands of USVs, armed with explosives, against a PLA naval fleet. The vessels could be launched from piers along Taiwan’s west coast and offshore islands. With each drone estimated at $250,000, Taiwan could buy 1,000 for the equivalent of about 1% of its annual defense spending, according to the article published in the RealClearDefense newsletter.

A drone armada alone couldn’t defeat the PLA, wrote Savitz, also a professor at the Pardee Rand Graduate School in California. By elevating the risk to an invasion force, however, an array of inexpensive USVs could menace PLA naval assets enough to deter an attack.