Subsea surveillance: why connecting military and civilian assets could be crucial
High-end assets such as this Manta Ray large UUV will play a part in future subsea surveillance, but combining them with existing civilian infrastructure would provide more extensive and cost-effective coverage. (Photo: Northrop Grumman)
As costs rise and threats multiply, maritime awareness is shifting from platforms to networks, and civilian infrastructure plays a central role.
Legacy approaches to underwater maritime awareness and defence, built around expensive crewed naval platforms, fixed arrays and episodic patrols, were designed for a different strategic environment and struggle to scale to today’s threat picture. UDT 2026, held this April in London, surfaced three distinct but converging responses to that problem.
First, Bryan Clark, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, opened a presentation on “Exploiting the Allied Undersea Advantage” by reframing what anti-submarine warfare (ASW) success actually looks like.
ASW, he argued, does not have to mean the prosecution – damage or destruction – of enemy submarines. Drawing on Second World
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