The Sea is Changing, Defense is Catching Up

With three-quarters of the Earth's surface covered by ocean, the sea has long been central to global trade, security and power projection. Today, maritime dominance relies on advanced technologies that support both defense and strategic projection.

For many countries, the sea is the primary trade route. Any disruption can significantly increase costs and impact both national and global energy security.
The sea also holds critical underwater infrastructure with networks of cables spanning an estimated millions of miles across the Mid-Atlantic seabed from North America to Europe and Asia. Disruptions to such systems can have devastating consequences to communications, financial transactions, electricity and more.

Strategic naval cooperation is essential. Navies must secure their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), protect freedom of navigation, and maintain presence even far from their own shores.
 

Securing Global Shipping Routes

"Maritime dominance is no longer just a naval concern," says Eli, VP Innovation at Elbit Systems and former Israel Navy officer. "Its impact on the global supply chain is direct."

"A year ago, it would have been very different," he said, referring to the actions of the Houthis in Yemen who in 2023 launched attacks on commercial vessels using UAVs, USVs, and missiles. The result: increased insurance premiums and economic instability.

Despite ongoing conflict in the region, cargo ships continued reaching Israel's Haifa Port mostly uninterrupted. That is no small feat, as since the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas, the Houthis effectively turned the Bab el-Mandeb zone into a maritime no-go zone, attacking and seizing commercial shipping vessels.  

According to a report by the Washington Institute, the Houthis carried out over one hundred attacks on commercial and naval ships since November 2023, leading many shipping companies to change to a much longer and more expensive route. The constant attacks by the Houthis and its impact on global shipping led to the formation of a coalition of naval defensive missions led by the United States and European Union.
 

Power Projection

While Houthi attacks have decreased following the implementation of a January 2025 ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, other maritime threats remain. Chief among them is China's growing influence.

"China understands that controlling ports means controlling trade," Eli explains. As of 2023, China is reported to hold ownership in nearly 100 ports worldwide. This physical reach, combined with advanced missile and integrated air defense systems, enhances its power projection.

Russia follows a similar playbook. From Tartus in Syria to Flamingo Bay in Sudan, its maritime footprint has global reach. In recent years Finland has continued to clear Soviet-era mines from the Gulf of Finland. Like China, Russia has historically understood the importance of the sea to increase its profile on a global scale to maintain its status as a world power. 

According to Eli, there is a big difference between the deep sea and underwater battles of World War II and modern maritime battles where they are more littoral. In today's modern maritime environment, navies not only have to contend with credible and complicated A2/AD threats, but must also defend against land-based munitions, missiles, torpedoes, anti-surface warfare, costal mines, drones and autonomous maritime systems.
 

Controlling the Sea

Recent conflicts in Ukraine and the Red Sea have accelerated the adoption of unmanned maritime systems. Still, many navies remain cautious about relying on autonomous capabilities.

While air forces around the globe have gained confidence in unmanned capabilities, the maritime arena is far more traditional and is taking a relatively longer time in gaining confidence in remote operation capabilities into their arsenal.

Professor Oren Gal, University of Haifa, the Head of Swarms and AI Lab (SAIL), explained that the past decades has seen a change in maritime platforms for monitoring and surveillance from different aspects as well as a rise in underwater platforms.

Prof. Gal's research work is related to swarm systems, where individuals following simple rules can synchronize to perform complex tasks, enhancing their survival. At SAIL, Prof. Gal’s research group study these collective behaviors using AI and advanced mathematical models to understand their mechanisms. These insights are applied to develop autonomous robot swarms, capable of tackling complex tasks across various fields.

Gal, who served in the Israeli Navy, explained that 20 years ago when he was in uniform, in order to operate a vehicle, it was done by an operator with a joystick. 
"There was almost no autonomy, the vessel didn't think for itself, it did only what the operator asked it to do. The US Navy had started its unmanned program, but there were very limited capabilities," he said, adding that "when small platforms are not controlled with an operator and can make decisions for themselves, it's completely changed the picture."
 

Artificial Intelligence at Sea

Swarm tactics and autonomous vessels offer new solutions. During the Russia-Ukraine war, Ukraine used drone swarms to damage and even destroy Russian ships both at port and at sea. The Houthis have also deployed UAVs and USVs with notable impact.

"Naval behavior must adapt," says Gal. "AI has changed what’s possible at sea."

Commanding a naval force in a challenging environment is defined in the span of control, and swarm tactics can be utilized to achieving multiples tasks, for example, in a multi domain complex arena a group of autonomous vessels can work within a connected network to assist in compiling a tactical situation awareness correlated into one coherent maritime picture in real time.  
Explaining that there are a significant number of challenges in the maritime arena, Gal said that there is a need for persistent presence in a country's exclusive economic zone to safeguard critical underwater infrastructure. Another challenge is the presence of mines that can pose a great threat to ships entering ports. Deep water acoustic persistent solutions and creating underwater surveillance also requires significant infrastructure for deployment of means in blue waters.  

"Maritime platforms should incorporate decision making tools in the form of automatic machine learning capabilities and autonomy to achieve a mission," Gal explained, adding that there are "multiple interfaces between the maritime domain and sophisticated AI capabilities." 
As the threat landscape continues to expand, Elbit Systems has been developing the capabilities for nations to outmaneuver any adversary and remain at the helm of controlling the sea.
 

Our Solutions and Platforms

Elbit Systems offers a full maritime portfolio, from Training and Simulation Systems for naval platforms that have been operationally fielded with leading armed forces worldwide for over 20 years to unmanned surface vessels and advanced electronic warfare solutions.

Designed by naval officers, the Training and Simulation systems recreate conditions, systems and munitions and range from mission preparation, through execution, to post-mission debriefing and analysis. Employing innovative technologies and training concepts, including advanced computer-generated forces (CGF) and C4I system exploitation to produce high-fidelity, virtual environments are as close to reality as it gets. 

In the face of ever-evolving threats, Elbit Systems' innovative technology brings together autonomy, stealth, sensors, and more to discover, track and classify potential threats. The company's advanced maritime and coastal security systems deliver intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and identification capabilities to our customers.

Bringing the benefits of net-centric interoperability to the entire naval fleet, Elbit Systems empowers naval commanders and crews by aiming to provide secure, reliable and continuous access to the information they need to interact with air and land forces. 

The company's expertise spans comprehensive naval warfare solutions, from advanced Combat Management Systems (CMS) enabling real-time tactical decision-making to sophisticated ELINT capabilities that ensure submarine survivability in dense electromagnetic environments.

The CMS and Anti-Ship Missile Defence (ASMD) are integrated into the ship's combat suite to protect against multiple incoming threats, and the CMS enables force interoperability and coordinate various mission profiles. The CMS handles the challenges of anti-missile warfare, anti-surface warfare, shore attacks, anti-submarine warfare, mine-counter measure missions, surveillance and special operations.

Elbit's extensive range of naval laser warning systems (LWS) provide sea vessels of all sizes with quick and accurate threat detection against laser-guided bombs and missiles, air and shore-based designators, rangefinders, beam riders, sea-skimming threats and more.

As a leading systems integrator, Elbit specializes in complete naval platform modernization, incorporating cutting-edge C4I, radar, weapons, navigation, sonar, and electronic warfare systems. The solutions aim to deliver enhanced combat effectiveness while ensuring interoperability across maritime, land and air forces, enabling militaries worldwide to address emerging security challenges effectively.

As previously mentioned, unmanned systems are playing a growing role in the modern naval warfare arena. While accelerated by the war in Ukraine, this trend is not entirely new. For example, unmanned maritime systems have long been deployed in sea mine clearance missions to minimize risk to sailors.
Leveraging its decades long experience and leading position in Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), Elbit Systems has been active in the field of Unmanned Surface Vessels (USVs) for two decades. In 2013 Elbit launched the development of its Seagull™ family of multi-mission, modular-payload and highly autonomous USVs. Designed from the outset as unmanned platforms, Seagull USVs feature long endurance, comprehensive backup and redundancy, and an open IP based, architecture that separates between safety-critical vessel management, and mission management. This architecture not only supports an effective and robustly tested vessel management capacity (including vessel subsystems, autonomous navigation with collision avoidance, etc.) but also faster and easier mission capabilities enhancement where new payloads, data links and functional capabilities are integrated based on evolving mission needs and ever-advancing technology.

Seagull USVs are monitored and controlled by the Mission Control System (MCS) which supports the entire mission cycle from mission planning through mission execution to mission replay and debrief. Seagull USVs have dynamic autonomy ranging from full remote control through supervised autonomous mission execution in accordance with the mission plan and fully autonomous execution such as in emergency conditions. The MCS controls and monitors multiple USVs via flexible line of sight and SATCOM based data link configurations. Seagull USVs can also be operated in a local (manned) configuration. 

Realizing the growing underwater threats posed by the proliferation of submarines, and midget submarines in hostile nations, sea mines and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), Elbit focused its attention on the Seagull family's underwater warfare capabilities where the force multiplier to navies is relatively larger.  

A submarine is a deadly foe and is by nature stealthier than surface ships and thus a combined force of multiple ships and air assets is typically required to defeat a submarine. USVs costing a fraction of ASW frigates can replace or augment surface ships in a naval ASW force significantly boosting the ASW's force capabilities and posing a greater challenge to the enemy submarine. This underwater warfare focus approach led Seagull USVs to be amongst world leaders in USV MCM capabilities and a pioneer and leader in tactical USV ASW capabilities.

Seagull USVs support MCM, ASW, EW, force protection, diver-detection, bottom-survey and additional missions. Elbit has integrated a wide variety of different payloads in the Seagull USV system leading to the implementation of robust, demonstrated and deliverable end-to-end mission capabilities in support of the above-mentioned missions. As an example, for ASW, Elbit offers payload suites featuring active/passive towed array sonar, dipping sonar, ASW torpedoes and Radar ESM / ELINT systems. The integration of C4I in both the vessels and MCS and the resulting capability to compile, consider and present an integrated tactical picture is a key to Seagull USVs autonomy and mission capabilities.
The Seagull family of USVs includes several vessel sizes, all sharing a large payload capacity and the capability to enable the end user to swap payloads in a matter of hours to configure the USVs for different missions. For example, A pair of Seagull USVs returning from a Mine Counter Measures (MCM) mission can be configured to perform an Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) mission in usually less than 6 hours, by swapping the modular payload suit on the vessels. Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) is a base capability in all payload configurations.
And as today’s naval platforms, both submarines and surface vessels, face a wide range of rapidly evolving, increasingly sophisticated electromagnetic signals, Elbit Systems EW and SIGINT -Elisra (Elisra), has developed ultra-smart maritime EW, surveillance and intelligence collection solutions that effectively detect, gather, identify and alert with respect to suspicious electromagnetic emissions in both open seas and littoral waters.

Distinguishing between threatening and non-threatening signals, these cutting-edge intelligence capabilities aim to enable timely processing and immediate, maximized responses.

In use worldwide with various navies and coast guard forces including with NATO nation fleets, our solutions have logged tens of thousands of operational hours on naval vessels and onboard fixed-wing and rotary aircraft. 
With demand for maritime surveillance growing, Elbit Systems continues to evolve its technologies to help navies worldwide maintain operational advantage – above and below the surface.