GoKawiilCompanies and governments are increasingly waking up to the fact that the future of warfare isn't just in the skies, but also on the ocean floor. Nations and corporations alike are devoting attention as well as piles of cash to new technologies designed for underwater use, as concerns grow about the vulnerability of critical infrastructure like connectivity cables and energy pipelines traversing the seabed. It comes amid growing concerns of so-called hybrid warfare, a broad term which can include cyberattacks, energy sabotage, disinformation, and economic pressure, with or without being accompanied by conventional military methods. "It's the changing threat environment that's brought this to the fore," Katja Bego, senior research fellow at Chatham House, told CNBC. At the same time, rapid advances in artificial intelligence, drones and autonomous technology are making new approaches to underwater surveillance possible, she said. From autonomous underwater vehicles to sensors attached to subsea cables, governments and military alliances are exploring ways to better monitor the infrastructure that underpins the global economy. "Our whole economy is built on top of this," Bego said.
'The next logical domain'
In September 2022, months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, explosions ruptured the Nord Stream gas pipelines beneath the Baltic Sea. Investigators determined the pipelines, built to deliver natural gas from Russia to Germany, had been deliberately sabotaged. The incident, alongside damage to subsea infrastructure in other parts of the world like the Arctic and near Taiwan, has focused governments' attention on vulnerabilities that received little attention in the decades following the Cold War, according to Bego. "This has been neglected for quite a long time, so it's quite a lot of catching up to be done," she said. More than 1.5 million kilometers of submarine communications cables are in service globally as of early 2026, according to TeleGeography, a telecommunications research firm that tracks global subsea cable networks.
This submarine cable map shows an estimated 1.5 million kilometers of subsea Map by TeleGeography
Alongside telecommunications cables and oil and gas pipelines, a growing network of subsea power cables also connects electricity markets and carries electricity from offshore wind farms to land. Meanwhile, the widespread deployment of aerial drones during the war between Ukraine and Russia has shown how autonomous systems operated from afar can change the nature of warfare. Bego described the maritime environment as "the next logical domain." Defense companies are now positioning themselves for that shift.
Underwater view of a submarine cable and drum resting on the ocean floor, with glowing fiber optic lines flowing across the seabed conveying technology, connectivity and deep-sea infrastructure. Alllex | E+ | Getty Images
Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri announced in July plans to acquire majority stakes in four companies, for around 600 million euros ($689 million) to expand capabilities across underwater and surface drones, marine surveying and subsea communications. The company is building on more than a century of submarine expertise to move from what CEO Pierroberto Folgiero calls the "conventional underwater" world into an "unconventional" one encompassing smaller submarines, drones and underwater telecommunications. Speaking to CNBC in July, Folgiero described underwater telecommunications as "the real enabler of this new ecosystem." Folgiero sees future surface ships acting as "motherships," coordinating networks of vehicles operating above the seabed and throughout the water column. Fincantieri isn't alone. Major defense groups, including France's Thales , have established businesses spanning sonar, anti-submarine warfare, mine detection and autonomous underwater systems, as large and small firms alike seek a role in the emerging market for operating beneath the ocean surface.
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Underwater drones
Germany-based defense-tech company Euroatlas is another company with its sights set on the potentially lucrative business of defending the seabed. It has developed an autonomous underwater vehicle called GrayShark that can travel to an assigned area and carry out a mission without continuous human control, according to Verineia Codrean, the company's chief strategy and partnerships officer. It's designed to avoid obstacles and follow predetermined instructions when it encounters something unexpected. While inspecting a pipeline, for example, it could identify a mine-like object, report the discovery and wait for an operator to decide whether it should investigate further. Rather than guarding every mile of cable with warships, Codrean imagines a future with fleets of autonomous vehicles continuously patrolling strategic areas of the seabed and converging when one detects something unusual. "It is virtually impossible to cover the entire ocean," Codrean told CNBC. "You just need to know which are the areas that are more interesting to have that constant visibility of what is happening there." She argued that this is fundamentally a problem of scale, as frigates, submarines and maritime patrol aircraft are too expensive and scarce to maintain a continuous presence across the vast areas where cables, pipelines and other strategic assets are located. "The underwater space domain is gaining a bigger set of problems that wasn't present until now," she said, adding that "from a mathematics perspective, [crewed assets] cannot be everywhere and anywhere where these problems are popping up, either a sabotage or some movement from an enemy submarine."
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