In the late 1990s, the United Arab Emirates’ navy acquired two Dutch frigates with anti-ship and anti-submarine capabilities. Despite their advanced capabilities, the frigates rarely left their base, primarily because they required too much manpower – around 120 crew members for each. In 2008, the two frigates were decommissioned and converted into super luxury yachts. Such lack of manpower is endemic across the UAE armed forces, with a total force of 63,000 according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ “The Military Balance 2022,” but it is particularly prevalent in the country’s navy, with only 2,500 to 3,000 personnel. The navy needs substantial manpower to operate many of its vessels: Its Mubarraz-class fast attack craft needs a crew of 40, and the Abu Dhabi-class corvette needs 70 people, a similar manpower requirement to the recently purchased Gowind-class corvettes. With around 43 coastal and patrol vessels, manpower scarcity has always been a challenge. But advances in unmanned systems and artificial intelligence could help the UAE partially overcome this obstacle.

In September 2021, the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet set up Task Force 59 in Bahrain as an incubator to experiment with integrating artificial intelligence into unmanned systems. By May, the task force was already “contributing to daily operations in regional waters by enhancing maritime surveillance,” and by June, it had “surpassed 15,000 total sailing hours for unmanned surface vessels throughout the region.” Operating out of Bahrain and Aqaba, Jordan, the task force has a relatively small team (21 people as of February) with diverse backgrounds, including naval reservists, cybersecurity and technology experts, CEOs, and young scholars, enabling it to work among both industry and academic circles.

With the ambitious goal of deploying a fleet of a hundred unmanned surface vessels, or USVs, by the summer of 2023 to patrol the waters of the Middle East, Task Force 59 has deployed its unmanned systems in at least six bilateral and multilateral exercises since September 2021. In February, the world’s largest unmanned maritime exercise (International Maritime Exercise/Cutlass Express 2022), for example, allowed the task force to engage in 14 different operational scenarios, suggesting that these systems are now prepared to face highly complex situations. The United States was the participant with the largest presence, but more than 80 unmanned systems from 10 total countries, including the UAE, Israel, France, and Japan, participated in the naval drill, as well as the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Anduril, a California-based company specializing in autonomous systems, sensor integration, and counter-unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, technology.

With its partners, Task Force 59 has tested a variety of USVs including the Saildrone Explorer, MANTAS T-12, and T38 Devil Ray, along with the V-BAT unmanned aerial vehicle. In the near future, the task force may add other USVs, like the Sea Hunter and Seahawk, as well as the MQ-9B SeaGuardian UAV and MQ-8B Fire Scout unmanned autonomous helicopter. Bringing together these unmanned aerial, surface, and underwater systems will allow the task force to integrate different sensors into one larger network, which could help the task force achieve its main goal of increasing surveillance, but these platforms could also be easily armed. To test these different systems efficiently, the task force is using a fee-for-service contracting model: When the team sees something interesting, they “lease it, get it into the theatre, and test it.”

USVs have four main advantages over manned systems. First, they are on average cheaper than their manned counterparts, partly because there is no need to include space for crew members. One guided-missile destroyer costs about the same as 2,000 Saildrones, however the former is a main surface vessel designed to engage in high-intensity warfare, whereas the latter is designed to conduct surveillance and data collection. Second, USVs can be designed more efficiently due to the lack of crew. So, vessels can withstand extreme speeds or high-speed turns that might be harmful to human beings. Third, they require a lot less manpower and can stay at sea for longer without the need to refuel or resupply. There are two instances of Task Force 59 vessels spending over a hundred days at sea. Other vessels, like the Saildrone, can stay at sea for up to 12 months, relying solely on wind and solar power. Fourth, unmanned systems could dramatically increase the area under surveillance, also known as Maritime Domain Awareness, doubling or even tripling the current range.

Unmanned systems allow the U.S. Navy to put “more eyes above, on and below the water’s surface” to expand its scope of observation of the seas and create a deterrent effect. Further, Task Force 59 is leveraging the images provided by these drones as well as AI “to map the waters of the region, establish patterns of life, and detect unusual behaviors,” such as illegal fishing or smuggling operations. Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, refers to this as the “Digital Ocean.” This intelligent reading of numerous inputs and images would then allow crewed ships to react more rapidly and efficiently. When used collaboratively, these technologies promise to alter the picture that informs the operations of the United States and its partners, potentially strengthening efforts to maintain maritime security in the region.

Several Gulf Arab partners are, according to Cooper, already pursuing this capability and are working closely with Washington to test these technologies and integrate them into their own navies and coast guards. After a long period of research and development, USV technology has only become mature enough in the past two years to work out initial flaws, but having reached this stage, its adoption is becoming more rapid. Advances in unmanned vehicles and AI could be highly beneficial to the United States’ Gulf Arab partners, particularly smaller countries like the UAE, helping them compensate for their severe lack of manpower.

The UAE, in particular, aims to become a leader in unmanned systems: Its defense conglomerate EDGE announced in November 2021 a partnership with Israel Aerospace Industries to develop USVs. Less than a month later, Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council launched the Mohamed bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge – Maritime Grand Challenge. The contest, which will be held in the UAE capital in June 2023, seeks to “advance the collaboration among autonomous and unmanned aerial and surface vehicles.”

The tasks these unmanned vehicles need to accomplish are aimed at addressing the UAE’s pressing maritime security challenges, including piracy, smuggling, and coastline security. In the Maritime Grand Challenge, the UAE has taken a DARPA-like approach, imitating the U.S. agency’s efforts to spur the development of key technologies almost two decades ago. Since it is expensive to fund research on autonomous vehicles, the UAE has set up a competition open to universities and labs from all over the world. Competing for a prize of over $3 million, so far 12 teams have made it to the final phase. Emirati authorities now have some of the world’s brightest engineers and researchers helping them develop complex technologies at a relatively low cost. What remains to be seen is whether the acquisition of such systems will lead to some sort of integration of maritime defense assets and information sharing not just with the United States but also between the UAE and its neighbors.