After Ukraine, Iran war further supercharges marine drone revolution

By Peter Apps

SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND, April 2 (Reuters) - Inside a hangar on an industrial estate near a motorway and a port, sleek glass fibre hulls shaped like oversized canoes spray-painted naval grey await the fitting of nearby packaged engines and other high-tech systems.

From Ukraine, similar unmanned attack boats – most initially built by Ukraine special forces and security services specifically for that task – have largely driven the Russian Black Sea Fleet out of nearby waters.

If war widens in the Middle East from the current face-off between Israel and the U.S. on one hand and Iran on the other, some of these newer British boats might go into action.

Such craft are increasingly seen as the future of naval warfare, alongside a host of other “dirty, dull and dangerous” offshore roles such as search and rescue.

VENTURE CAPITAL DELIVERS FAST, NIMBLE FIRMS

The manufacturing facility in a discreet location belongs to the fast-growing British defence firm Kraken, which this year signed a deal to supply a first tranche of 20 small attack boats for Britain’s Royal Navy as well as further deals for U.S. Special Operations Command and the wider U.S. Navy.

Fuelled by venture capital, similar firms are springing up around the world, delivering not just autonomous attack craft – seen as critical in stopping any Chinese invasion of Taiwan or winning any NATO fight with Russia in the Baltic – but also a host of other uncrewed systems.

The Kraken team, like others across the sector, say that recent headlines about the success of drone attacks in the Gulf help provide a sense of mission – a feeling that Western democracies must both be prepared to fight and find ways to minimise their casualties if they are to stop wars from happening.

Kraken now offers a range of drones, with the 8.5-metre Scout Medium currently arguably the most popular and easiest to mass-produce – but it will not say if any of its craft have so far seen action in the Middle East or the Black Sea.

The U.S. military says it has deployed similar vessels, including, specifically, the Global Autonomous Reconnaissance Craft (GARC) from the Maryland firm BlackSea in recent operations near the Gulf.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. Middle East operations, has been trialling such unmanned vessels for much of the current decade. European nations have honed their own technology and skills with NATO’s Task Force X-Baltic, not least in tracking Russian and other vessels they suspect might interfere with underwater cables and other infrastructure.

Whether operated entirely autonomously or by a helmsman based elsewhere connected via Starlink or similar satellite communication system, such vessels can carry a range of weapons and other payloads, including surveillance cameras, machineguns or enough on-board explosive to sink a large ship. Iran appears to have used at least two such vessels in its attacks on commercial vessels, a sign of just how fast naval warfare is now changing.

DRONES CAN OPERATE WITH OR WITHOUT HUMAN CONTROL

Heavy jamming in both Ukraine and the Gulf has led to a constant battle to keep remote human-piloted systems operational - and put the focus on building autonomous ones that can dispense with a communication link.

But this is a substantially more challenging task; Reuters and other media outlets reported several problems in tests last year with efforts to make such craft operate without human control - although insiders say this is hardly a surprise, particularly in contested waters like the Black Sea or the Baltic.

At time of writing, UK media reported that the British Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel Lyme Bay, an amphibious supply ship, was due to load a cargo of drones for potential mine clearance in the Gulf - but only once the conflict concludes and the environment for such craft becomes less hostile.

If that mission goes ahead, it will be seen as a sign both of how few working warships remain in Britain’s cash-strapped navy and of how technology is changing.

For now, no one expects vessels such as those built by Kraken to replace traditional warships entirely; Trump’s “armada” including aircraft carriers and marine assault vessels has been a reminder of the potent combat power of such a force, even if U.S. commanders have kept such vessels far from the battle zone to minimise their risk.

The speed with which a firm like Kraken can turn out newer, cheaper vessels, however, is dramatic, as is the scale of its ambition. Kraken says it can deliver as many as 500 remote-controlled vessels in the current year and twice that in 2027, in part through deals with shipyards in places including Germany and the Pacific rim.

Speaking from his office full of models from his previous lives in Formula One racing and high-performance offshore powerboats, Kraken founder Mal Crease outlines how he has used his experience to build what he hopes will be a dominant maritime offshore systems manufacturer.

Learning lessons from Ukraine has been part of that process, as has been working out how to mass-produce such boats in a much less conflict-ridden setting.

“Obviously there are challenges to delivering and building a quality scalable product in a conflict zone,” he said.

MODULAR CONSTRUCTION THAT CAN BE SCALED UP FAST

What the Kraken team are able to do now, he says, is build a growing range of vessels from increasingly mass-producible modular components, then put them together rapidly by hand “like a supercar”.

The beauty of that system, he says, is that it can be scaled up fast. Particularly in Britain, huge questions remain about the future shape of military spending. A long-promised Defence Investment Plan remains unpublished, with UK media reporting for months on differences between the prime minister and the Treasury over how much money is needed - and available.

Whatever happens in London, the wider picture is increasingly apparent. And while most firms will go out of their way to promise their national governments that some technology remains “sovereign” and restricted to their country, they are also striking deals to build abroad.

The firms being born are very different from established “defence primes” such as America’s Lockheed Martin, Britain’s BAE Systems or the Italian giant Leonardo, all renowned for the long lead times and enormous cost overruns of giant multibillion-dollar weapons systems.

Newer firms like Britain’s Kraken and Cambridge Aerospace, the U.S.-based attack drone company Neros or Germany’s similarly-focused Helsing are often small and founded in the last two years or so. They are much less established even than the only slightly older “defence tech” giants such as Palantir and Anduril, both growing U.S. players in analysis and targeting.

While newer firms that focus entirely on artificial intelligence and analysis might arguably be at risk of being outpaced by publicly available AI products, those who build actual weapons systems – particularly rapidly and cheaply – increasingly believe they can find buyers.

Watching Kraken’s locally hired staff work on their uncrewed speedboats as new components line up by the doorways brings the realisation that such scenes have been rare in peacetime Britain since the late 1930s and the last desperate years before the start of World War Two. For now, the scale is far smaller, but that might swiftly change.

Many of the former military personnel who now work at these companies are spending considerable time alongside clients in a range of countries including Ukraine - which is buying as well as manufacturing. In some cases, they are finding their own countries looking unprepared.

Reports since the start of the U.S. campaign against Iran suggest more expensive missiles such as the Tomahawk cruise missile and Patriot air defence projectiles are running very short. Drone providers talk of being able to deliver hundreds of thousands or even millions of individual systems every year.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, no nation has appeared to understand that new reality as fast as Ukraine. Last week, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy toured the Middle East offering expertise in drone attack and defence systems to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Western nations out of the firing line have been slower to respond, but they may not have much time - and some firms on their soil are already moving fast regardless.