According to reports, on June 8, a US AH-64 "Apache" military lift was shot down by an Iranian drone near the Hormuz Strait and fell into the sea. Later, the 59th U.S. Navy contingent remotely operated the "pirate" unmanned vessel to rescue the two fallen pilots. This is the first time in the history of war that an Apache has been shot down by a drone, and the first time an unmanned boat has carried out a combat rescue mission.

One fell, one rescued, two "firsts," and unmanned forces displayed their skills in both "killing" and "rescuing," highlighting the many changes that sea combat is undergoing. At present, from the Black Sea to the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf, unmanned maritime forces, with their distributed, unmanning and intelligent features, are increasing in weight in real warfare. Many countries are increasing their layout, pushing it to be deeply embedded in the overall warfare system.

Deployment accelerates, position looms

The rapid development of unmanned combat forces at sea is not simply equipment replacement, but the product of the convergence of multiple factors such as strategic needs and technological advancement. At present, from the construction of strategic theory to the verification of operational use, from the iteration of technological equipment to the adjustment of organizational planning, unmanned maritime combat forces have entered a critical stage of transition from test verification to large-scale deployment.

The reversal of the strategic pattern has promoted the evolution of naval warfare forces towards distributed and unmanned. At present, regional conflicts have broken out at multiple points and some key sea lanes are under threat. Under the combined pressure of inadequate size and increased missions, traditional manned fleets have struggled to meet diverse needs such as continued presence and rapid response. Against this backdrop, unmanned forces, with their low cost and large numbers, can just fill the gap. Not only can it extend the defense depth through forward deployment, but it can also better preserve high-value platforms in high-risk environments.

The traction of operational effectiveness has established the status of unmanned forces at sea as an "important variable." From the continued squeeze on Russia's Black Sea fleet by Ukrainian suicide drones, to attacks by the Houthis combining drones with drones. The operational experience has shown that the miniaturized, low-cost, highly maneuverable unmanned equipment can efficiently carry out reconnaissance and surveillance, precision strike and tactical containment tasks, and also constitutes a certain amount of repression of the freedom of movement of traditional ships.

Technological breakthroughs remove obstacles to scale deployment. Thanks to the military transformation of mature civilian technologies, the R & D cycle and procurement cost of unmanned maritime equipment has been greatly reduced, making "low-cost, consumable" from a concept to a reality. The modular open architecture enables the decoupling of the hardware platform and the mission load, and the same ship's baseline rapid switching load can cover multiple types of tasks.Türkiye's newly launched YAKTU UAV and Sinarit UAV both adopt standardized interfaces to support rapid switching of multi-task modules; The United States ROMULUS series unmanned boat adopts modular design and supports AI cluster control function.

The adjustment of the institutional structure provides institutional guarantees for the generation of force. The pace of establishment of U.S. naval related forces is accelerating. In early 2026, the U.S. Navy established the first three unmanned teams with combat as the core mission, and listed the Indo-Pacific theater as a priority deployment area. In response to operational needs, Russia established an inter-departmental technical committee of the Ministry of Defence to be responsible for the development of unmanned systems at sea. Its navy established an unmanned systems operations center, officially incorporating unmanned combat forces into the formed sequence. The UK also announced an acceleration of the construction of a mixed manned / unmanned fleet, promoting the "inclusion of unmanned ships in the manned fleet configuration."

Paths vary. Problems remain unsolved.

At present, countries' unmanned forces at sea are developing into fast lanes. However, its evolutionary path has a number of disruptions due to differences in strategic objectives, geographical environment and technological base.

The United States pursues global maritime dominance, positioning unmanned maritime systems as a "bespoke offset force" in the context of great power competition. The intention is to extend the fleet's perception and control boundaries by constructing a distributed unmanned warfare system covering air, sea and submarine, and reduce the forward survival risk of high-value manned platforms. Driven by this strategy, its Seahawk unmanned vessels have begun to be integrated into aircraft carrier strike groups this year, taking on high-risk tasks such as forward reconnaissance, long-range anti-submarine and vigilance.

Most of Europe is on a path of relatively modest size. Among them, the British Navy has established the principle of "unmanned platforms first and manned platforms supplemented by manned platform" and focused on developing unmanned helicopters and underwater surveillance networks to cope with the reality of the shrinking fleet size and strengthen anti-submarine and undersea infrastructure protection capabilities in the North Atlantic. France is focused on the unmanned of its carrier aircraft and plans to make drones more than 60 percent of its aircraft carrier aviation power. Germany develops large unmanned surface ships as "floating missile warehouses" for F-127 frigates.In addition, Türkiye proposed the concept of multi-domain aircraft carrier, and its self-designed MUGEM aircraft carrier will have the ability to deploy and recover unmanned surface boats and unmanned underwater vehicles in addition to taking off and landing manned aircraft.

There is also a more subversive path, which occurs in regions where geopolitical conflicts are frequent. The geographical nature of the Black Sea and the Strait of Hormuz has spawned a model of unmanned maritime warfare between Ukraine and Iran, known as non-adversaries. Since 2022, Ukraine has continued to use unmanned vessels such as the Magura V5 and the Sea Infant to conduct high-frequency short-range raids, subsequently sinking several Russian warships and achieving the first effective strike of unmanned craft against air targets.

Iran, for its part, relies on the narrow chokepoint of the Strait of Hormuz to build an offshore regional rejection system with clusters of drones and unmanned vessels at its core. In this year's U.S.-Israeli conflict, Iran used a "mosquito fleet" of a large number of miniature speedboats, relying on the natural stealthiness of Persian Gulf islands and caves, which can launch missiles and drones, form a "bee" raid, and put a tangle of pressure on U.S ships.

The development paths are diverging, but the problems are convergence. At the technical level, the power reliability of large unmanned vessels, autonomous collision avoidance and decision-making capabilities in complex sea conditions are still not completely solved. In the 2025 U.S. military test, the unmanned vessels repeatedly crashed ships, exposing defects in control systems and communication links. Underwater communication is also a long-term bottleneck, and remote coordination of very large unmanned submarines is currently difficult to actually land. In addition, the rules of engagement and legal accountability of autonomous systems have lagged significantly behind technological development, and the problems posed by "technology running ahead of the system" have become increasingly acute.

Deep coupling, one unit interconnection

Looking ahead, as unmanned forces at sea become more deeply embedded in operations, naval warfare confrontations will evolve further towards distributed, unmanned, and cross-domain integration.

The low-cost, hard-to-trace unmanned boats and drones have made the conflict situation in the "grey zone" worse. On the one hand, great powers can continue to consume their adversaries at a more manageable cost, and the threshold for attack is lowered. On the other hand, cost asymmetries allowed small and medium-sized States and non-State actors to have certain regional deterrence and maritime checks and balances, breaking the traditional fleet-era rule of "the strong remain strong." The pattern of maritime deterrence has changed as both the powerful and the weak are restructuring their maritime warfare systems to find more cost-effective means of confrontation.

The more profound change is the shift in the center of gravity of the confrontation. The highest point of maritime competition is expanding from "the right to control information" to "the right of control intelligence." The strength and weakness of intelligent algorithms not only directly determines the co-ordination efficiency of unmanned forces and the speed of tactical decision-making, but also compresses the closing time of the target strike link from the minute to the second, becoming a key variable of battlefield victory. In addition, the path of operational effectiveness generation will also change from single warfare aircraft confrontation to the integration of forces in air, sea, shore and other domains.

The shift of the focus of the confrontation will inevitably force the adjustment of the operational arrangements. In the future, maritime formations will form a new type of formation "with manned platforms as command nodes and distributed unmanned clusters as front-line tentacles." Large manned platforms still play the role of "brain" and "chess player" in building the depth of maritime defense and achieving whole-area situation control. There will be a clear division of labour between manned and unmanned platforms: large manned platforms are responsible for situation control and power mobilization across the board. The unmanned system, on the other hand, undertakes high-risk tasks such as rapid raids and forward warning, continuing the winning logic of "fast while slow."

The traditional "platform juggernaut" will give way to the "distributed system hangover." The chain of killers will move from a linear transmission of manned platforms to a network of unmanned nodes, leaving adversaries in a situation where attacks are ubiquitous and defences cannot begin. The British exploration of the concept of "Atlantic forts," and the Ukrainian achievement of a practical battle with unmanned submarines combined with surface unmanned boats, They all send a clear signal: in future naval warfare, unmanned boats, unmannedly submarines and drones will be deeply coupled to form a trans-domain warfare system, and realize the extension of the naval war mode. (Looking ahead to a new era)