India’s AI-powered unmanned fleet is a naval ace up its sleeve
The world’s most powerful military recently entered a modest club — countries operating Unmanned Surface Vessels (USVs), robot ships capable of sailing without a crew. On July 12, a swarm of three USVs from US CENTCOM attacked naval facilities within Iran’s Bandar Abbas port. Footage of the event showed the explosive-laden Saronic Corsair boats approaching and exploding under a dock on which an Iranian midget submarine was parked. Last month, a Corsair rescued two pilots of an Apache helicopter gunship that Iran had downed in the Persian Gulf.
The US Navy has 11 nuclear-powered super carriers, it fields the world’s second largest air force with 3,700 aircraft and operates 70 nuclear powered submarines, a dozen of whom can destroy the world several times over. Any other time, this force would have shot off a few Tomahawk cruise missiles, each costing over $4 million, at Bandar Abbas. But the US Navy instead chose to send in an armed mosquito fleet of the kind that Iran and the Houthis have used to wage chokepoint warfare. This is a clear sign of how attack drone technology is evolving— where even superpowers are opting for low-cost attritable systems, affordable enough to be placed at high risk or expended in combat, yet effective enough to deliver critical mission capabilities. They also help the US conserve a depleting arsenal of high and conserve high-end munitions and missiles.
Ukraine currently leads the world in USV technology. Ukraine has innovatively deployed drones in its ongoing war with Russia and plans to double annual drone production to 20 million units. In October 2022, Ukranian USVs struck deep inside Sevastopol harbour targeting Russian warships. In 2024, a Ukranian USV fired a missile downing a Russian helicopter. On July 15, a Ukranian USV launched an armed ground robot at a Russian island— the world’s first such amphibious attack.
Interestingly, this is a race where India is on par with, if not ahead of the rest of the pack. India entered the unmanned surface vessels club in 2024 with a benignly titled Sagarmala Parikrama (sea garland) where the ‘Matangi’, a 13-metre-long USV made by Pune-based defence firm Sagar Defence Engineering, traveled the 1500-km distance from Mumbai to Tuticorin. The vessel was developed under a 2022 project under the iDEX-Defence Innovation Organisation under the Ministry of Defence. At the heart of the vessel is an indigenous AI-driven control suite the firm calls ‘Genesis’, an operating system capable of transforming most maritime platforms into intelligent, autonomous systems.
In the two years since its journey, the Matangi has spawned a USV ecosystem. The navy has placed orders for dozens of autonomous, weaponised fast interceptor craft (FICs) to secure its 7,500 kilometre coastline and a 2.3 million square kilometre Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Over the next five years the navy will acquire hundreds of USVs for a range of duties including coastal security, reconnaissance and surveillance, and mine clearing operations. The navy has begun inducing USVs armed with 12.7 mm heavy machine guns to be used for patrolling duties. Larger variants of these boats have a range of over 300 nautical miles, a speed of over 40 knots, can operate in sea states of 6 and survive sea state 8 (10 being the maximum). In hybrid search and rescue mode the boats can carry 14 persons. In a first for any vessel of this type in the country, it has a self-righting facility — which means the boat can return to the upright position after capsizing. These boats can operate in swarms and are remotely controlled via satellite and mesh RF network— where devices communicate over radio signals and form a self-healing, multi-path network, designed to maintain continuous communication over decentralised topology.
One way attack USV variants made by Sagar Defence can carry an explosive payload of approximately 300 kgs, equal to that of heavyweight torpedoes fired by submarines or long range missiles launched by warships. It is a deadly new capability in the naval arsenal.