Spin-off from USV ‘arms race’ driven by wars in Ukraine and Iran
 The wars in Ukraine and Iran have not only reshaped geopolitics but also accelerated a technological revolution at sea. At the recent Sea Air and Space exhibition in Maryland, Janus Marine and Defense unveiled its third annual Janus Review, a sweeping assessment of the Uncrewed Surface Vessel (USV) sector.
The findings are stark: a rapidly escalating arms race in autonomous naval systems, supercharged by battlefield realities and US Department of War investment. Jack Dougherty, Janus’s CEO, framed the moment bluntly—drones at sea are no longer experimental novelties but frontline assets, forcing the US Navy to abandon its slow procurement habits in favour of speed and scale.
The report highlights China’s recalibration toward larger, more capable USVs with extended endurance and payload capacity, a leap beyond current US deployments. NATO, meanwhile, is steadily integrating unmanned systems into its Baltic taskforce, refining command and control through initiatives like Task Force X and multinational exercises such as REPMUS.
Singapore has already crossed the threshold from trial to routine, conducting autonomous patrols of its territorial waters. The global picture is one of rapid adoption, where experimentation has given way to operational reality.
Jeff Miller, Janus’s head of international business development and editor of this year’s review, underscored the transformative impact of Ukraine. “The Ukraine War has effectively rewritten the USV rulebook,” he said, noting that small, low-cost drones have sunk warships worth hundreds of millions.
The Black Sea has become the most intensive proving ground for autonomous maritime systems, with lessons reverberating from Washington to Paris to Oslo. The Magura V7’s destruction of two Russian Su-30 fighters last May marked a historic first: jet aircraft downed by a naval drone. For Miller, this was the moment the US Navy’s unmanned programme shifted from cautious experimentation into what “feels unmistakably like a production era.”
Evidence of that shift is mounting. In December, the Navy awarded Saronic a US$392 million contract to push its Corsair vessel from prototype to production in under a year, alongside a $300 million shipyard expansion in Louisiana. Janus calls this the Navy’s “template for future success.” Defence giants are also moving aggressively. Lockheed Martin has invested $50 million in Saildrone to weaponise its Surveyor platform. Yet Dougherty warns of looming consolidation: “We have 100 Henry Fords in the US building uncrewed vessels in a market that will ultimately support less than 10–15 production programmes.”
The next two years will decide which companies can deliver reliable hardware, proven autonomy software, and production infrastructure capable of keeping vessels operational for 30 days without human intervention. Those who cannot will need a different business plan.
Beyond defence, the commercial USV market is maturing fast. Mr Dougherty points to offshore energy as a sector already transformed by multi-year contracts and service-oriented models. Purpose-built commercial USVs are displacing crewed operations at scale, with supervised autonomy delivering tangible value today.
Full autonomy in complex environments remains a near-term horizon rather than present reality, constrained less by hardware than by regulatory frameworks and the interpretive judgement required for navigation in difficult scenarios. The question is no longer whether the technology works, but how quickly regulatory, technical, and organisational barriers will fall.
Still, the Janus Review is clear-eyed about challenges. America’s shipbuilding workforce crisis threatens scaling, with the industry struggling to attract skilled labour. Supply chain disruptions continue to bite, as components face the same bottlenecks that have plagued electronics manufacturing since 2020.
A lack of physical standardisation—mounting dimensions, power interfaces, data protocols—remains a drag on interoperability and fleet expansion. Cybersecurity looms as a unique vulnerability for unmanned systems, demanding design approaches that confront rather than sidestep the risks.
Taken together, the review paints a picture of an industry at an inflection point. Wars in Ukraine and Iran have accelerated adoption, forcing navies and companies alike to move faster than ever before.
The US Navy is now in a production era, China is pushing endurance and payload boundaries, NATO is embedding USVs into multinational operations, and commercial sectors are proving the business case. Yet the arms race is not just about who builds the most drones - it is about who can sustain them, integrate them, and protect them in a contested environment. The next 24 months will decide which firms emerge as leaders and which fade into consolidation. What is certain is that the age of the USV has arrived, not as a distant promise but as a present reality reshaping both war and commerce. |
