A new era beckons for UAVs at sea

Nick Childs

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A revolution is underway in the deployment of uninhabited aerial vehicles from ships at sea. It is enabling new and more adaptive approaches to maritime air power for navies with traditional aircraft carrier and opening the door to shipborne aviation for more naval forces.

The past year saw a raft of developments that signal a looming transformation in the employment of uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs) from ships at sea. The changes include the potential introduction of a new class of vessel, the ‘UAV carrier’, and other efforts that would expand the distribution of maritime air power around major fleets and among more navies in a way not seen for decades.

Turkiye, in April 2023, commissioned what it declared to be the world’s first UAV carrier, the TCG Anadolu. The United Kingdom embarked on trials in September and November to bring UAVs performing a range of missions onto its carriers. And the Portuguese Navy, in November, awarded a contract to Dutch shipbuilder Damen for an ocean research and maritime support ship that could be a precursor to a new class of aviation-capable warships dedicated to UAV operations.

Sea change

Navies have pressed UAVs into service in relatively limited ways, mainly for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) purposes. The United States Navy, for instance, operates the MQ-4C Triton high-altitude long-endurance UAV, but from land. UAVs operated from ships have tended to be more tactical. The Iranian-backed Ansarullah (Houthi) movement in Yemen has demonstrated the utility of UAVs in the maritime domain in a different way, grabbing headlines with the employment of one-way attack UAVs (and various types of anti-ship missiles) against shipping in and around the Red Sea.

More advanced uses of UAVs deployed from ships have been slower to develop, but that is changing. From 2026, the US Navy plans to operate Boeing MQ-25 Stingray UAVs from its fleet of aircraft carriers for inflight refuelling. That is just the start of its plans to incorporate UAVs and autonomous air systems into its carriers to restore the reach, lethality and mass of its air wings, and to help reinforce the survivability of the carriers themselves.

The US Navy is also exploring the concept of a ‘Lightning carrier’ – deploying increased numbers of Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II short take-off and vertical landing combat aircraft from its large-deck amphibious ships. It seems inevitable that this will increase interest in the employment of UAVs to provide supporting capabilities for these platforms to enhance their utility further.

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Turkiye’s trailblazing efforts around a UAV carrier demonstrate how widespread the changes in the maritime domain are, even if Istanbul’s hand was somewhat forced after Washington blocked its further participation in the F-35 programme in response to its purchase of Russian S-400 air-defence systems. That left the Turkish armed forces looking for a new role for the Anadolu, which is now being paraded as a platform for a maritime version of the Bakyar Bayraktar TB2 UAV and the Kizilelma low-observable combat UAV that is still under development.

Spain and Australia, with almost identical ships to the Anadolu, will undoubtedly closely watch Turkiye’s progress. Brazil, Egypt and South Korea also operate large-deck amphibious ships, and other parties are surely interested.

The UK has been looking at UAVs to augment the air wing embarked on its aircraft carriers, in part because the Royal Navy will lack sufficient F-35Bs for the foreseeable future. As the navy explores its options, it has used one of its two carriers, HMS Prince of Wales, as a testbed. In separate trials in 2023, the ship embarked first the experimental W Autonomous System UAV to explore potential at-sea resupply and then the General Atomics Mojave UAV, a version of the MQ-1C Gray Eagle.

The Royal Navy, under its Future Maritime Aviation Force vision, is eyeing a family of UAVs and similar systems to undertake roles from strike and ISR to cargo carrying in support of its carriers and the rest of its fleet. The notion will likely be attractive to other F-35B operators, namely Japan and Italy, and more widely.

But balancing capability ambitions against cost and a desire for affordable and effective numbers of systems will be critical considerations. For the UK’s carriers in particular, but potentially for other navies with their platforms as well, this includes whether to incorporate at least limited catapult and arrester gear to accommodate higher-performance UAVs. This would add expense and complexity to the vessels, even if not on the scale of such equipment needed to launch aircraft on traditional flat-top carriers.

UAV carrier proliferationOther carrier operators, such as France, India and Russia, are obvious candidates for shipborne UAV developments. China is already exploring concepts of UAV carriers or mother ships.

The scale of the potential revolution is better exemplified, though, by developments beyond the established maritime air power fraternity. Iran, with a history of introducing asymmetric warfare concepts, has been adapting several former merchant ships as UAV carriers in different ways and with increasingly ambitious modifications. The Portuguese Navy’s planned Multi-Purpose Vessel, at just 107 metres in length with a design dominated by a large flight deck and other facilities for UAV and helicopter operations, could be one of the first of a new breed of such bespoke platforms for shipborne UAV operations.

In isolation, the utility of these platforms may be limited in a combat situation. But for non-carrier navies, they could open the door to fielding an air wing. For navies already sporting carriers, they could provide a useful complement by providing, for example, a task group with additional ISR or supporting anti-submarine warfare missions. While maritime UAVs may be key to the future of many navies, to some extent, they also represent a revival of the concepts popular during the Second World War, such as the escort carrier, which then supported the US Navy’s main fleet carriers, or the merchant aircraft carriers, known as MAC ships, that were converted from merchant vessels into small, rudimentary carriers for convoy escort duties.