The Coming (Invisible) War of the UUVs?

In my post earlier this week, I talked about how the neutralization or destruction of unmanned scouts during crises might not be terribly escalatory.

Following that post, a colleague pointed out to me some important and subtle differences between how anti-scouting unfolds at and above the surface versus how it unfolds underwater. The beauty of undersea operations is, of course, that their effects are almost always plausibly deniable. This is the case today with submarines, and is sure to be the case with underwater unmanned vehicles.

Nevertheless, while a submarine that fails to come home cannot be covered up, the same will not be true with respect to their future unmanned brethren. Indeed, the fact that unmanned underwater operations will generally not be publicly disclosed means that even if a country employing these vehicles realizes that one or more were lost due to hostile action during a crisis, it is extremely unlikely that its leaders would be willing to escalate outside the unmanned underwater realm. Nor would it be easy for the victim to make a strong (and publicly-releasable) case attributing the loss of an Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) to a hostile act by a specific actor.

Much like history’s many invisible peacetime ‘wars’ between countries’ intelligence agencies, it seems quite likely that there will be an continuous invisible peacetime conflict in which countries boldly employ UUVs within their opponents’ territorial seas. As detailed in works such as Blind Man’s Bluff, we saw a preview of this to some extent with respect to how special-purpose submarines were used during the Cold War. UUVs will only increase these kinds of operations’ breadth, audacity, and maybe even frequency. An even greater change will be the introduction of parallel efforts to neutralize, capture, or destroy opponents’ UUVs that enter one’s own seas. UUV proliferation might lead to the creation of ‘undersea defense identification zones’ and surveillance sensor networks that support them, with countries publicly asserting the right to interdict others’ UUVs that enter these zones. Ironically, the very creation of these networks will only encourage countries to use UUVs to map, probe, closely inspect, and even meddle with the networks’ sensor arrays and communications paths during peacetime.

All the same, countries could enforce—or trespass within—these zones with minimal escalatory risk. The greatest strategic risk would be the public and diplomatic embarrassment resulting from the capture and open display of a UUV whose nationality was clearly marked or otherwise unmistakable. Perhaps, then, the most critical defensive capability installed in a UUV will be its ability to recognize it has been discovered, break back out into international waters, and break contact with its hunters. It certainly won’t hurt to design unmarked UUVs with difficult-to-attribute technical origins for use in the most audacious of missions, either.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.