Drones and AI are rewriting the rulebook on naval warfare - with uncertain consequences

They have an inconspicu‐ ous designation but the Ukrainian intelligence offi‐ cers who belong to Group 13 have developed a formi‐ dable, far-reaching reputa‐ tion.

Named after their leader within Ukraine's defence in‐ telligence agency - a man who goes by the nom de guerre Call Sign 13 - this unit of maritime drone operators has destroyed or damaged more than half a dozen Russ‐ ian warships.

In a recent interview with CBC News at an undisclosed location along Ukraine's southern coast, Call Sign 13 wore a mask and sunglasses to conceal his appearance. He spoke about how naval warfare is being reshaped by events in the Black Sea.

"I am protecting my coun‐ try and I know that if I will not kill them, they will kill me," he said.

What we're seeing in Ukraine may end up revolu‐ tionizing naval warfare, say top American and Canadian military leaders. At least one military historian, mean‐ while, sees it as more of an evolution than a revolution.

At the very least, they say, it has the potential to upend geopolitical assumptions about naval power - including the belief that nations with large, well-established navies can operate with impunity near the coastlines of smaller countries.

The transformation of naval warfare by drones, dri‐ ven in part by artificial intelli‐ gence, is happening at breathtaking speed. The wa‐ ters off North America will likely soon be patrolled by re‐ motely operated boats and submersibles whose surveil‐ lance of the coastline will be coordinated by AI tech‐ nology. It's already happened under U.S. leadership in the Middle East.

Who's afraid of the Black Sea fleet?

What impresses militaries, defence planners and lead‐ ers around the world is how Ukraine - a country with vir‐ tually no navy - has used re‐ lentless drone boat and mis‐ sile attacks to drive much of the Russian Black Sea fleet away from occupied Crimea, delivering an important hu‐ miliation to Moscow.

The motivation behind Ukraine's naval drone pro‐ gram, said Call Sign 13, was more pragmatic than strate‐ gic: many of the Russian war‐ ships that were targeted ei‐ ther had the ability to con‐ duct amphibious assaults or had launched cruise missiles that rained misery down on Ukrainian cities.

Group 13 plays a highseas game of cat and mouse in reverse, launching small, remotely operated speed boats, known as Magura V5s, packed with over 200 kilo‐ grams of explosives.

These highly manoeu‐ vrable craft zip over the waves at more than 80 kilo‐ metres an hour and hunt frigates and landing ships more than 10 times their size.

Once they find their prey, the operators drive the boats straight into the targets.

"I feel relieved and [I am] quite tired after [we] hit the target," Call Sign 13 told CBC News through an interpreter.

Operators spend their missions hovering over suit‐ case-sized control boxes for hours. The missions are filled with tension and demand ab‐ solute concentration, be‐ cause operators have to react quickly in a constantly shifting environment.

"You need to remember this, my target, it's moving and it is a ship in the open sea. So you need to react very quickly," said Call Sign 13.

WATCH: How drones and AI are reshaping naval war‐ fare

The unit's toughest mis‐ sion to date, he said, was sinking the Russian patrol ship Sergey Kotov near the Kerch Strait off Crimea on March 4, 2024.

It was a modern warship, reportedly commissioned in May 2022. It had been dam‐ aged, but not destroyed, in September 2023.

Group 13's attack on the Sergey Kotov involved a swarm of maritime drones. The attack was recorded by Russian sailors on a nearby ship; the video was obtained and shared online by Ukrain‐ ian officials.

When the Sergey Kotov sank, struck in the stern by a maritime drone, there was a collective sigh of relief among the Group 13 opera‐ tors.

"We are now changing the rules of fighting in Ukraine," said Call Sign 13. "We show that having a large fleet is not equivalent to power. Ukraine, which does not actually have its own navy, has completely displaced the navy of the Russian Federation."

The withdrawal of at least 10 Russian ships from Sev‐ astopol to Novorossiysk "par‐ alyzed" Moscow's Black Sea operations, he said - and made prime targets of the members of Ukraine's mar‐ itime intelligence group.

"The Russian Federation has a lot of missiles, rockets and different types of weapons and they even use them to hit small groups of people" like the maritime drone unit, Call Sign 13 said.

The members of Group 13 are immensely proud of their accomplishments. Knowing there's a Russian missile with their name on it just proves to them that they're having an impact.

"We are showing that the huge fleet of Russia is not an advantage and not that great," said Call Sign 13.

Task Force 59 and the future of war at sea

The Canadian government's new defence policy, released last month, acknowledged that high-volume, low-cost drones are changing the face of warfare in Ukraine and the Red Sea, and committed to preparing the country for such a future.

To get a better sense of where this technology is going, you have to look at the experiments conducted by the U.S. Fifth Fleet in the Per‐ sian Gulf and the Red Sea over the last three years.

Using commercially avail‐ able dual-use technology, the Americans and their allies have managed to field a small fleet of remote, au‐ tonomous surface and sub‐ surface drones whose con‐ stant data collection is man‐ aged and analyzed by artifici‐ al intelligence.

It's known as Task Force 59.

"In the simplest of terms, just imagine a small vessel, three meters long to 10 me‐ ters long," said U.S. Vice-Ad‐ miral Brad Cooper, who served as fleet commander until February and launched the remote technology ex‐ periments. "And on this plat‐ form, you have radar and have very sophisticated cam‐ eras controlled by satellite."

The platforms provide persistent coverage in ways humans cannot.

"You put one or two of them out there, you link them together," Cooper said. "And artificial intelligence al‐ lows you to map the pattern of life and see what's around them. And when something is different, artificial intelli‐

gence flags that platform and sends it back to a human op‐ erator in a Naval Operations Center."

For much of its existence, the drone task force in the Gulf region has been limited to surveillance. Just recently, it began experiments with sea drones carrying muni‐ tions.

Using AI to collate surveil‐ lance data and tell sailors what to look at is benign enough - but when the tech‐ nology crosses the threshold into target recognition, moral and legal concerns start to come to the surface.

Cooper, who spoke to CBC News last year about Task Force 59, was asked whether he had concerns about introducing artificial in‐ telligence into the system.

"I've had no concerns about it whatsoever," he said. "We have a mature tech‐ nology. It's reliable. And most importantly, we have a hu‐ man being ultimately making decisions."

Not everyone is con‐ vinced. As AI becomes more deeply embedded in military operations - migrating from surveillance to assistance in targeting - voices calling for international regulation are getting louder.

WATCH: Are AI platforms ready for the battlefield?

Branka Marijan of Project Ploughshares said the tech‐ nology behind some of these weapons systems is im‐ mature and error-prone.

"Sometimes I get this question - what keeps you up at night? And I think a lot of people think ... like the Termi‐ nator, you know, killer ro‐ bots," she said. "But it's actu‐ ally this deployment of tech‐ nology that's not ready for these contexts.

"Conflict zones are very complex … And if we deploy technologies that are not ready, we risk sometimes es‐ calating the conflicts in place, and other times really pro‐ longing them."

Canada's new defence policy nods to how AI affects cyberwarfare and disinfor‐ mation, but remains largely silent on how the Canadian military will use it.

The Canadian navy is only at the early stages of adopt‐ ing remote technology. The Department of National De‐ fence recently awarded a $50 million contract for the pur‐ chase of remote underwater mine-hunters but appears to be treading lightly on intro‐ ducing autonomous systems. That's despite the fact that several Canadian technology companies are already on the market with cutting-edge systems.

"I think we're seeing the value of uncrewed and au‐ tonomous vessels," said ViceAdmiral Angus Topshee, commander of the Canadian navy.

Ukraine and the United States have developed and deployed naval drones at a lightning pace by adapting commercially-available tech‐ nology to create relatively cheap and lethal equipment.

Canada moves cautious‐ ly into drone warfare

Topshee said Canada is mov‐ ing toward that technology as well, but will approach it with caution.

"How do you ensure that it's still a human making the decision? I think it's really im‐ portant that we don't have machines that are making decisions as to whether or not to kill someone or not kill someone," said Topshee.

"So how do you create the ability to do that if I don't need to put a sailor at risk? I love the idea of being able to go out there to achieve an ef‐ fect [on a mission] and not put a sailor at risk."

Historian Marc Milner said he's reluctant to describe the emergence of autonomous drones as a turning point in naval warfare - although he acknowledged the speed at which drones are entering the field is "alarming."

He compared the use of remotely operated boats to ram and sink warships to the development of the torpedo in the mid-19th century. The torpedo prompted a whole series of countermeasures to foil such attacks, as did the introduction of ship-killing ballistic missiles in the 1970s.

Milner said the Canadian navy was behind the curve when the missile threat emerged, but with the intro‐ duction of the Halifax-class frigates and modifications to its now-retired destroyers, it eventually caught up.

It will have to do so again, he said.

"It's the weaponization of modern technology which is both alarming and fascinat‐ ing," said Milner. "So often I say to my students ... for every good piece of tech‐ nology that we develop, there's somebody sitting somewhere saying, 'How can I make a bomb?'"