Underwater Drone Threats Are Already Here. America Isn't Ready.

In December 2025, an explosion erupted beside a Russian Kilo-class submarine docked inside the heavily defended Novorossiysk Naval Base. Ukraine said one of its underwater drones had penetrated the harbor and struck the submarine, describing the operation as the first successful attack of its kind.

While Russia disputed the extent of the damage, the attack revealed a new reality: a relatively inexpensive underwater system can threaten valuable and sophisticated naval assets, even in supposedly safe locations.

That should prompt an uncomfortable question in the United States: what could a hostile state, proxy organization, or terrorist group accomplish using the same basic approach?

Picture an unremarkable commercial vessel releasing a small underwater vehicle miles from an offshore oil platform, pipeline, or busy port. The vehicle moves beneath the surface, where radar and cameras cannot track it, and approaches its target without attracting attention. Suddenly, an explosion. In an instant, this unexceptional vessel has started a major fire or spill, halted energy production, disrupted shipping, or even caused loss of life. To make matters worse, authorities cannot identify the culprit.

This is not speculation some distant future. The shift to drone autonomy is already underway as military and criminal actors put underwater systems to new uses.

America is racing to field autonomous maritime systems, and for good reason: they will be critical to a variety of future operations. However, maritime drones are not an American monopoly. Criminal networks and foreign regimes have already reached, if not perfected, these same advancements.

These capabilities are becoming easier to acquire. Commercial electronics have become more widely available, manufacturing costs have declined, a host of autonomy software are now open-source, and communications technology is more accessible than ever. The result is that underwater and semi-submersible systems are cheaper and easier to build.

In 2025, the Colombian Navy seized an autonomous semi-submersible believed to be a test platform for future cocaine shipments to the United States or Europe. It carried no drugs when discovered but was reportedly designed to transport approximately 1.5 tons without anyone onboard. The discovery of this alleged drug boat does not represent an isolated case — three years earlier, Spanish police uncovered remotely operated underwater drones built to carry narcotics across the Strait of Gibraltar.

These incidents were early warnings of where maritime trafficking is heading. Uncrewed systems can bypass port inspections, force law enforcement to monitor far more coastline, and leave no crew to apprehend or question. Technologies also rarely remain confined to one mission. A platform designed to carry narcotics today could be adapted by a cartel, proxy group, or terrorist organization for something far more dangerous tomorrow.

The implications extend well beyond drug interdiction. Naval bases, shipyards, ports, offshore energy infrastructure, and subsea cables all depend on knowledge of what is moving beneath the surface. For the national security community and defense industrial base, the undersea component of maritime domain awareness is becoming an operational necessity.

Yet the United States and its allies are not expanding that awareness at the pace these threats are proliferating.

America possesses some of the world’s most sophisticated undersea surveillance systems. But those systems also serve other demanding missions. Keeping a continuous watch around vulnerable ports, naval bases, and offshore infrastructure is a challenge of scale: sustaining coverage across many locations without relying solely on expensive assets that are limited in number.

That leaves potentially consequential activity occurring in places where no one is maintaining a persistent picture.

The United States understands this challenge in the air. As aerial drones have proliferated, government and industry have jointly developed layered defenses: sensors detect potential threats, software helps determine what matters, and specialized systems give defenders ways to respond.

The maritime domain requires the same seriousness, but investment has only poured into specialized systems, not the fundamentals of sensing. Merely possessing an instrument for threat neutralization is insufficient without any way to direct its use. In a sense, this is like giving a Marine bullets, but no gun.

What does maritime domain awareness look like?

Networks of lower-cost, long-duration sensors remain on station across strategically important waters. Over time, establishing patterns of normal activity, identifying meaningful changes, and cuing mobile platforms or human operators when something warrants investigation.

Software makes that model practical. A distributed sensor network generates more information than operators can examine manually. Software filters background noise, correlates detections across multiple sensors, and elevates anomalies for human review. The objective is to help skilled operators find the small number of contacts that may require action, not to automate consequential decisions.

Crewed and autonomous platforms investigate and respond when the sensor network identifies activity that warrants a closer look. Autonomous systems help maintain awareness and gather additional information, while crewed platforms provide human judgment, holding the authority to act if necessary.

To put these networks into operation, defense leaders must decide where to deploy them, how to fund them, and who will respond to their alerts.

First, protect what matters most by establishing persistent coverage around high-risk ports, naval bases, cable corridors, and offshore infrastructure.

Second, buy awareness, not equipment. Fund operational sensing networks and measure them by coverage, time on station, alert speed, and cost. Don’t go back to procuring the one expensive thing that itself becomes a target.

Third, connect detection to response. The Navy, Coast Guard, port authorities, and infrastructure operators need shared data and clear protocols so that every alert has an owner.

The incidents in Ukraine and Colombia have already provided a warning. America needs persistent undersea awareness around its most vulnerable sites before an attack exposes the cost of going without it.

Matej Cernosek is the CEO & Co-Founder of Andrenam .

The author is a maritime infrastructure professional with expertise in dry dock operations, naval engineering, and shipyard capacity development. The views expressed herein are those of the author alone. The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.