Drones as Deterrence

The War of 2026 scenario and various wargames paint a dire picture of the way a violent struggle for Taiwan would likely unfold. While much is unclear, this fight will likely incur terrible costs in blood and treasure. Therefore, the only way to win the fight for Taiwan is to deter it from ever happening. Nuclear deterrence is insufficient, but unmanned systems could disrupt the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) plans for Taiwan reunification and deter the Chinese Communist Party from ever issuing the order. Though U.S. military unmanned systems have not yet demonstrated the capability to meaningfully shape a battle for Taiwan, progress has been made with the Replicator Initiative, a “big bet” aimed at purchasing unmanned systems while galvanizing the U.S. industrial base. The Navy and Marine Corps must organize to receive, test, proliferate, and reveal unmanned systems if Replicator is to become deterrence. 

Deterrence: What Kind and What Means

Nuclear deterrence, as Navy Commander Daniel Post wrote in a 2023 Proceedings article, requires that adversaries are vulnerable to punishment, uncertain of their ability to control escalation, wary of the exceptional character of nuclear weapons, and rational actors and have been communicated the consequences of their undesirable actions sufficiently. Today, the problem lies with the second condition. Malign actors have grown accustomed to gray zone warfare within a U.S.-dominated security environment and believe they can control escalation. Commander Post himself concedes that “nuclear deterrence operations are capable of deterring activities only at the higher end of the spectrum of conflict,” meaning that nuclear deterrence deters only nuclear war.

If nuclear deterrence is not the answer, retired U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis offers an alternative concept of theater deterrence, defined as a localized set of capabilities that constitute “sufficient combat power within a particular geographic theater” that halt the enemy’s intent to conduct hostile operations. Theater deterrence causes an enemy to question whether his or her particular action will achieve the ends he or she thinks it will. Theater deterrence is specific, localized, and precise.

Employment of emerging technologies as a deterrence vector is not a new idea. In a 1988 Proceedings article, Navy Commander Robert Shields Jr. pointed out that technological development was outpacing the military acquisition system and battlefield relevance. Following Stavridis’ theory of theater deterrence, increasingly sophisticated weapons should be developed to outflank a particular adversary capability and moved into the theater prior to the start of hostilities.

Antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) is, in essence, the PLA’s technological and organizational answer to the capabilities that enabled U.S. Navy sea control in 1996, when the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group last sailed through the Taiwan Strait. A2/AD is China’s theater deterrence. To undermine Chinese A2/AD capabilities, the United States must be capable of reestablishing local sea control and extend theater deterrence through 2026. Admiral Stavridis would advocate coalition building, improved technology, and paradigm-shifting tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). Unmanned systems lie at the intersection of those three ingredients.

Pros and Cons of Drones

Retired Navy Captain Sam Tangredi would likely agree that nuclear deterrence will not be enough to deter war with China but that emerging technologies with associated TTPs will. The thesis of his prize-winning 2024 Proceedings essay, “Replicate Ordnance, Not Cheap Drones,” is that drones are not the correct technology. He has two main arguments against unmanned systems. 

First, China “is the very source of many of the cheap components needed for low-cost ‘replication,’” is a sound concern. The supply chain for drone components today is vulnerable to exploitation. However, the Pentagon’s Replicator initiative, headed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, has two goals. One is to create an inventory of multisized, multidomain, attritable and non-attritable unmanned systems. The other is to galvanize the U.S.-based defense industrial base. 

Tangredi’s other argument is that, although UAS and USVs have created tactical advantages in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, “They have not had strategic effect.” This is incorrect. Using drones such as the Magura v5—domestically produced small USVs—Ukraine has functionally imposed sea denial on the vastly superior Black Sea Fleet with little navy to speak of. Open-source reporting notes that the Russian Navy is increasingly unwilling to send Kalibr-capable surface combatants out of Sevastopol. Black Sea Fleet stagnancy in Sevastopal has created opportunities for more traditional targeting and further Russian losses. Though the Black Sea and the Taiwan Strait have important differences, unmanned systems have been a game-changing technology in every war in which they have played a part. Tangredi’s alternative—mass-producing existing munitions to bolster magazine depth in preparation for major conflict—is also essential. Both must be done.

What Drones Could Do

Within the 2026 scenario framework, Retired Captain Scott Tait and Commander Anthony LaPova, U.S. Navy, describe a two-phased approach to gaining sea control after initial PLAN aggression: rollback and shifting from defense to offense. Their description of rollback from east to west, presumably all the way back to Mainland China, is ambiguous: “Rollback would require a large number of ships and weapons and support from other Navy warfare communities, the joint force, and allies, all with well-practiced, robust, and resilient command and control (C2) and interoperability on a scale not seen at sea since the 1945 Battle of Okinawa.” However, even with perfect C2 and interoperability, such a rollback without unmanned systems will likely cost thousands of U.S. sailors their lives. 

Tait and LaPova give unmanned systems their due, though, pointing out that “uncrewed systems of all sizes would swarm in the air, on the surface, and undersea. They would provide intelligence and targeting, deceive and overwhelm enemy sensors, attack PLAN ships and submarines, and mine port entrances.” Captain Tangredi similarly points out two tasks for unmanned systems in the face of an invasion: overwhelming PLAN defenses with high numbers of small kinetic drones and providing communication relays for a variety of circuits. 

Retired Navy Admiral Sandy Winnefeld has written many times about the importance of mine warfare, including his War of 2026 scenario piece “Mine Warfare Could be Key.” One of Winnefeld’s recommendations—adding jet propulsion to Quickstrike-Extended Range mine kits (500- and 1000-pound general purpose bombs converted to shallow water mines) for more airdrop options—may be infeasible within the next two years because of sluggishness in the acquisition process. But small USVs with substantial loiter capabilities could achieve several of the effects Winnefeld identifies as decisive. A loitering USV or unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) is not so different from a mine, it turns out.

The only limits to unmanned systems mission concepts are a warfighter’s imagination and ability to iterate. Unmanned systems iterations and operations should be easier to approve than similar ones using manned platforms. Unmanned systems are more expendable than any human and therefore commanders should be more willing to accept risk to systems during experimentation in the United States and operations overseas. There are, however, concerns about adversary recovery of uncrewed systems and their sensitive payloads. Outfitting drones with a kinetic or a software-based antitampering device would be a simple solution.

Perhaps the joint force should attempt an overseas exercise in which multidomain uncrewed systems are employed in a synchronized and layered fashion, giving peer adversaries an idea of the chaos and confusion the United States can create using the capabilities Replicator will lead to. However, there is an important distinction between technological experimentation and exercise. Trying to do both at the same time diminishes the potential outcomes of each. Once the technology is in the hands of sailors and Marines and they have iterated it into an employable capability, overseas exercises would provide an opportunity to demonstrate it for the sake of deterrence.

Regardless of how and when they are revealed to the enemy, rehearsing unmanned systems concepts and executing unmanned systems operations will accelerate the ability to scale unmanned systems for the day deterrence fails. 

Task Organize and Iterate

Unmanned systems concepts become unmanned systems capabilities only once they have been demonstrated in representative environments with representative, and ideally decentralized, C2. The best way for the Sea Services to accelerate its unmanned systems capability is to hand resources and mission-type orders to E-5s and let them run. After all, many of the yet-to-be validated unmanned systems capabilities that could undermine A2/AD and make unmanned systems survivable in degraded communications environments—distributed man-in-the-loop or man-outside-the-loop control and automatic target recognition—require tremendous trust in relatively junior service members.

The Navy has already acknowledged the imperative to task organize against unmanned systems by establishing the Robotics Warfare Specialist rating. These sailors will presumably fill the ranks of Unmanned Surface Vessel Division One (USVDiv-1) and USVDiv-3 in the surface navy and Unmanned Undersea Vessel Squadron One (UUVRon-1) in the submarine force. Once these sailors begin arriving for duty, commanders must think about risk differently and delegate responsibility more aggressively than is customary on a sea-going capital vessel. Naval Special Warfare (NSW) has begun establishing dedicated unmanned systems maneuver elements. There are unmanned systems concepts suited uniquely for special operations forces—particularly those where unmanned systems are controlled from denied areas or uses exquisite payloads—but, for now, unmanned systems afford an opportunity for NSW to dedicate horsepower to a common problem and drive integration with the fleet. 

The Marine Corps (particularly Marine Corps Forces, Pacific) must establish dedicated unmanned systems elements of their own. As Marine Lieutenant Colonel Brian Kerg wrote in 2023, putting III Marine Expeditionary Force in a fighting stance means deciding how it will fight ahead of conflict. In addition to eventual deployments by USVDivs and NSW, the 3d Littoral Combat Regiment and 5th Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company should establish dedicated unmanned systems formations whose task and purpose are experimentation and exercise with unmanned systems in the IndoPaCom theater; prepositioning of hardware, logistics, and sustainment; and proliferation of unmanned systems knowledge among key allies and partners. Major Michael McHugh, U.S. Marine Corps, advocates integrating explosive USVs into littoral combat teams as a fires platform. He is on the right track, but unmanned systems are not yet mature enough to be employed by the same fires elements that will employ High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and Naval Strike Missiles. 

For a long time, unmanned systems was considered a collateral duty. This must change.

The Crisis Has Arrived

The stakes could not be higher for deterring war with China. Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote, “The wise or unwise action of individual men has at certain periods had a great modifying influence upon the growth of sea power.”¹ Relying on any version of the status quo that the Chinese Communist Party has planned against for decades would be unwise. As the Replicator tranches are funded, roll out, and mature, the Sea Services must already be organized to receive systems, test them, break them, develop associated tactics, techniques, and procedures, and deploy them overseas for “reveal” operations. We are on the right track, but we must accelerate. It is time to go big on unmanned systems.