C2 Robotics’ Chief Technology Officer Dr Tom Loveard and Director Strategy Dr Marcus Hellyer have published a thought piece in the Australian Naval Review (2025 Issue 1), the journal of the Australian Naval Institute.
Drawing on their understanding of the capabilities of C2 Robotics’ Speartooth Large Uncrewed Underwater Vessels (LUUV), Tom and Marcus explore what the world looks like when tens or even hundreds of thousands of LUUVs populate the oceans. Not only will they have a significant operational impact, but they have the potential to change the strategic balance. Starting with the operational realm, they write:
‘When equipped with appropriate payloads, LUUVs can currently perform, or will be able to perform in the near term, the following missions:
- Strike on stationary maritime targets
- Strike on moving maritime targets
- Strike on land targets in the littoral
- Barrier operations in chokepoints
- Barrier operations off harbours (for example, preventing submarines from deploying)
- Trade blockade through threatened or actual strikes on merchant ships
- Spoofing/diversion/distraction
- Mine warfare
- Support to amphibious operations (for example, hydrography and rapid environmental assessment)
- Covert logistics
- Persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and electronic warfare.
Many of the payloads needed for these missions exist already. They are also benefiting from ongoing miniaturisation allowing more payloads (in both number and type) to be carried – every LUUV can be an ISR platform by default, regardless of its primary mission, as it has the space and power for multiple sensors. Moreover, integration into the LUUV host platform can be done much more rapidly than into a traditional crewed platform.’
The authors write that LUUVs can already conduct kinetic operations against stationary targets, however:
‘Based on our experience, we believe that the step from existing LUUV systems to a capability that can target moving surface shipping would not be difficult, time-consuming or costly and could be achieved by integration of a range of existing propulsion systems and payloads. Therefore, this is a near-term capability. Should maritime conflict break out in our region, these developments would be rapidly accelerated as they have been in all areas of autonomous systems through the war in Ukraine.’
While a number of authors have explored the operational potential of LUUVs, Tom and Marcus go further and look at the possible strategic impact of fleets of thousands of LUUVs. Should one think that that is a figment of the imagination, we should consider that LUUVs are simply underwater EVs–and last year China made over 10 million EVs. They write:
‘With 100,000 LUUVs it would be possible to disrupt all ocean-borne global trade. Released in huge numbers at the outset of a conflict (or indeed pre-emptively beforehand), LUUVs could swamp every major port in the world, every strategic strait and bottleneck. Even sea lines of communication crossing the open oceans could be filled with large numbers of LUUVs, supported by small recharging vessels keeping them at sea despite the distances involved. The oceans would be filled with sensors and weapons.’
The implications are profound: ‘it is important to consider the global strategic impacts of scenarios in which nations employ massed LUUVs. If one country were able to control the world’s oceans, every other country would be forced to decide whether to forgo ocean access and trade or otherwise concede to the will of the nation with the LUUV fleet, likely resulting in exclusive trade with only that nation and its allies.’
Science fiction? Or a possible future that Australia needs to prepare for?
For the full essay, click here.