Ucrania est\u00e1 empleando gran cantidad y variedad de Sistemas Aut\u00f3nomos Navales (USVs), para hundir buques y destruir aeronaves de combate enemigas desde los primeros meses de la invasi\u00f3n rusa a ese pa\u00eds. Muchas fuerzas navales observan y analizan con atenci\u00f3n las plataformas y armas utilizadas, los innovadores modos de empleo por parte de Ucrania, as\u00ed como las contramedidas defensivas que aplica Rusia para minimizar los efectos de estos ataques. Los analistas de EEUU se preguntan adem\u00e1s, si estas ense\u00f1anzas resultan v\u00e1lidas para ser aplicadas por la US Navy en apoyo de Taiw\u00e1n en un futuro conflicto con una potencia como China.<\/p>\n
Even though Ukraine does not have much in the way of a navy, it has scored several victories against the Russian military by using drone boats known as unmanned surface vessels, or USVs, providing lessons to the U.S. Navy about the future of naval warfare.<\/p>\n
In 2024, explosives-laden Ukrainian USVs sank the Russian missile corvette\u00a0Ivanovets<\/a>\u00a0and the patrol ship\u00a0Sergey Kotov<\/a>\u00a0in the Black Sea.\u00a0 More recently, Ukraine claimed in May that its USVs armed with AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles\u00a0shot down two Russian Su-30 Flanker fighters.<\/a><\/p>\n The question now for the U.S. Navy is how much it can learn from Ukraine about using USVs against an adversary such as China.<\/p>\n The Navy is already looking into the technology\u2019s potential. In 2024, the service delivered its first 24 small uncrewed vessels to its newly established Unmanned Surface Vessel Squadron, and construction of the Navy\u2019s first unmanned ship,\u00a0USX-1 Defiant<\/a>, was finished this year, Acting Chief of Naval Operations Adm. James Kilby wrote in his\u00a0advance testimony<\/a>\u00a0to Congress in May.<\/p>\n The United States, along with its allies and partners, should plan to build enough USVs to flood the combat zone in case of war, said\u00a0James Holmes<\/a>, the J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.<\/p>\n Holmes noted that the U.S. Navy has asked the defense industry for proposals to build unmanned vessels that can carry a couple of shipping containers loaded with missiles or sensors before 2027. That is the year by which U.S. officials have warned\u00a0China could attempt to invade Taiwan<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cTo survive, Taiwan needs to keep an invasion fleet from crossing the strait to land troops on the beaches,\u201d Holmes told Task & Purpose. \u201cUnmanned surface and aerial vehicles operating in concert with manned surface missile patrol craft and coastal defense artillery \u2014 antiship missiles \u2014 is the formula to accomplish that.\u201d<\/p>\n However,\u00a0retired Navy Capt. Thomas Shugart<\/a>\u00a0said the United States needs to be very careful about trying to apply lessons from Ukraine\u2019s naval conflict to a war with China over Taiwan.<\/p>\n For the U.S. military to use short-range unmanned surface vessels against a Chinese invasion force, those vessels would likely need to be deployed to Taiwan before an attack, because China would quickly isolate the island, said Shugart, an adjunct senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security think tank in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n These drone boats would also have to be widely dispersed, because China would pound Taiwan with missiles before an invasion, Shugart told Task & Purpose<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the kind of thing we should be doing,\u201d Shugart said. \u201cThe things that I\u2019m worried about with such an effort is that it needs to be an immense scale because China is not going to come over with just a few dozen ships. They\u2019ll probably use hundreds of ships, including a lot of merchant ships. So, you need a lot of these things in order to make a significant dent in that fleet.\u201d<\/p>\n Those Chinese ships would also be able to see the drone boats coming and launch countermeasures against them, he said.<\/p>\n Shugart added that a fight between the U.S. and Chinese navies in the Pacific would be different from the battle between Ukraine and Russia in the Black Sea.<\/p>\n Still, one of the major lessons that the U.S. Navy can learn from Ukraine about using USVs is the importance of adaptation, said\u00a0retired Navy Capt. Bradley Martin<\/a>, a senior policy researcher with the RAND Corporation.<\/p>\n After Ukraine\u2019s initial successes with drone boats, Russia adapted its defenses against them, and that forced the Ukrainians to find new ways to use USVs, Martin told Task & Purpose. The cycle has continued, and each side\u2019s tactics, techniques, and procedures change every few months.<\/p>\n The U.S. military needs to heed Ukraine\u2019s example and look for new roles for drone boats, said Martin, who added that USVs could be fitted with missiles, mines, or guns to sink enemy ships.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot of different ways that USVs might be used,\u201d Martin said. \u201cThey aren\u2019t just going to be used for swarming attacks \u2014 suicide, one-way type of attacks that we\u2019ve seen in Ukraine to a degree. There are probably going to be USV variants that can do a lot of different things \u2014 fire missiles, for example. It isn\u2019t just a matter of a platform; it\u2019s what you can put on the platform. And I think we need to learn all those things. And I think Ukraine is providing a good case study for what we should be thinking about.\u201d<\/p>\n