Lethal Sea Drones Strike For Real And Rehearsal

Phil
Pennington Reporter

New Zealand’s main military
partners are weaponising sea drones and using them in actual
attacks – video
has captured the moment three uncrewed boats hit a naval
pier in Iran on Monday in what was the United States’
first-ever attack using sea drones.

The New Zealand
Defence Force (NZDF) meantime has been testing drones to
spot vessels off Fiji and the Coromandel coast, and its
drone spending in Budget 2026 and upcoming experiments with
new sea drones are focused on surveillance not
combat.

Yet it says it wants to “fully exploit” all
types of drones.Critics say it should not even be trying to
get in step with the lethal push as that would only spread
weaponised sea drones into the Pacific.

The push
includes Australia last year moving to put $2 billion into a
fleet of Ghost Shark armed underwater drones, and in recent
weeks announcing
a new project to weaponise subsea drones to patrol seafloor
data cables – the first “signature” project of AUKUS Pillar
Two involving also the US and UK. New Zealand has considered
joining Pillar Two for several years but not done
so.

Increasingly navies globally are switching
spending from manned to unmanned weapon systems on the
surface or undersea, though it is intensely debated just how
much drones can do versus regular ships.

Follow the
money

Canberra has boasted
it is “leading the world in terms of autonomous underwater
military capabilities”.

One of the NZDF’s top
priorities is to show by next year it is able to fight
alongside Australia in a near-future conflict across
multiple domains (sea, air, land, space, cyber). Its top
priority is to become more combat-ready and lethal – yet
internal documents say its depleted workforce is a big
barrier to that.

While Budgets 2025 and 2026 put the
bulk of maritime taxpayer funding into keeping ships afloat
and renewing the fleet in years ahead, NZDF has pledged
“significant” new investments in lethality and uncrewed
systems without disclosing just how much.

Its science
section is known to be working with the Australians on the
emerging tech, and the Ministry of Defence recently told MPs
while it was not buying any fully autonomous weapons systems
that did not preclude human-guided ones.

Asked about
this, the ministry told RNZ, “New Zealand has and will
continue to purchase and operate non-lethal systems (eg
drones for the purposes of intelligence, surveillance or
reconnaissance) and is considering procuring lethal but
non-autonomous systems (such as strike drones under human
control) in the future.”

NZDF recently signed up for
some sea drones described as “combat-proven” by local
manufacturer Syos – its SM300 drones are used by Britain’s
navy in straits around Greenland – and it has also been
looking at integrating drones with a firing control system.
These are still being fitted out by Syos.

NZDF said it
would use them to explore how the tech could support
maritime awareness, surveillance and support
activities.

Ukraine which has scored huge wins over
the Russian conventional navy using sea drones, has offered
to join New Zealand in a dronemaking joint venture, but
the government has not taken it up on that.

NZDF told
RNZ on Friday the focus was on putting missiles on ships,
planes or vehicles.

“Future refreshes will consider
expanding strike capability to other assets,” it said when
asked how lethal sea drones fit in.

Pacific historian
and AUT law school lecturer Dr Marco de Jong said this was
going the wrong way.

“Rather than buying into a
spiralling arms race that we lack the industrial base to
win, creating a regional non-proliferation regime would help
to insulate New Zealand, and disincentivise major powers
from deploying their military assets to our near region,”
said de Jong on Friday.

Rehearsals for
sinkings

The NZDF’s only known exposure to lethal sea
drones is at recent US-led exercises.

The NZDF had 70
troops at exercise Balikatan in May where US-Filipino
special forces sank an old ship using sea drones. It had an
observer at NATO’s Dynamic Messenger 2025 exercise that used
Magura V7 drones like those that have hobbled Russia’s Black
Sea fleet in its war on Ukraine, to simulate the sinking of
an alliance frigate. And the navy currently has 280
personnel at the world’s largest maritime exercise,
RIMPAC.

RIMPAC is running live-firing
against a moving target from a missile launcher on a sea
drone, as well as the largest delivery ever of parts by
autonomous drones to 3D manufacturing plants aboard
ships.

“This is exactly why I joined the Navy,”
22-year-old able electronic technician Serenity Olive was
quoted in navy
PR speaking of RIMPAC.

Other wargames
overseas – by desktop – have modelled how a “hedge” of sea
drones could conduct distant anti-submarine warfare,
offensive counter-air operations and anti-surface warfare to
prevent threats from approaching Australia.

Another
modelled an attack by China on Japan as part of a Taiwan
invasion where Japanese sea drones struck at and distracted
Chinese ships.

“Their use alongside more traditional
weapons such as missiles meant the Japanese military still
had more than half of its navy and aircraft several weeks
into the conflict despite China’s much larger force,” said a
commentary
in Bloomberg.

China’s ‘swarm’

China is
conducting its own sea drone exercises.

In March the
People’s Liberation Army was reported for the first time to
have tested a “swarm” of sea drones off Guangdong – a video
shows three small crewless boats said to share “collective
intelligence”.

The US is doubling down on drones as a
whole, sea drones among them.

Last
month the US set up a new Robotic and Autonomous Systems
Combatant Command and a new drone-buying office with a
budget over $90 billion to counter what President Donald
Trump said was “millions” of drones being produced by
adversaries each year. Uncrewed sea drones make up a quarter
of its programmes.

The Trump directive behind all this
is titled ‘Unleashing American Drone Dominance’ and states,

“Drones
and autonomous systems are the most consequential
battlefield innovation of this generation. The [Department
of War] must move at the speed this moment
demands.”

Sizing things up

Against Iran, small
lethal sea drones were used by the US on Monday against what
it said were military targets. However, civilian
infrastructure is not exempt from the threat.

Ukraine
this week used navy drones to hit scores of vessels
including tankers in the Sea of Azov aiming, it said,
to disable not sink them, to disrupt Russia’s oil exports
and supply lines.

Not all sea drones that support
warfighting are lethal themselves – the US Navy recently
signed on seven companies including one that makes a
transport sea drone, the Marauder, over 40m
long.

Surveillance or survey can be another
dual-purpose use. The Bluebottle drones the NZDF used last
year to survey off Fiji in part achieved “proof of utility
of uncrewed systems for Maritime Domain Awareness within the
Pacific region” through “layered surveillance, over a
prolonged period”, a defence document said.

The two
Bluebottles observed almost 250 vessels in 41 days at sea
each.

Rules not drones

De Jong said proponents
of lethal sea drones will say that New Zealand has a large
Exclusive Economic Zone in the ocean and relies on seaborne
trade so must enhance its naval capabilities to keep
pace.

But “the pressing interest is in establishing
rules”, he said, and the foundation for that was in the
country’s coastal state rights under the United Nations
Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

The choice
was rules, not weapons.

“No Pacific Islands country
currently operates lethal autonomous sea drones, nor would
they seek to.”

The rules-based approach was behind the
South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone that became the Treaty of
Rarotonga that outlaws nuclear weapons in the South Pacific
and removed the region for Cold War geopolitical contests,
he said.

He also cited the September 2025 Ocean
of Peace Declaration of the Pacific Islands Forum that
called on all states to promote “responsible use of
technology and innovation”.

“The instrument exists and
there is a window of opportunity here.”

Defence
Minister Chris Penk told RNZ on Wednesday NZDF had to be
able to support Pacific neighbours and “contribute to
upholding the existing international rules-based
order”.

“New Zealand has long been supportive of a
Pacific-led response to regional security issues and it is
with that in mind we are exploring joining the recently
announced Fiji-Australia Ocean of Peace alliance – which is
a logical extension to what we already
do.”

© Scoop Media