Beyond the Hybrid Fleet: Building Force Multiplier Integration Through Uncrewed Systems
When defense professionals speak of building “hybrid fleets” that combine crewed and uncrewed systems, they inadvertently minimize what could be the most significant operational revolution since the introduction of precision-guided munitions. The term suggests simple addition: manned platforms plus unmanned platforms equals hybrid capability.
For example, such a formula does not adequately convey what Australia’s pioneering work with uncrewed systems actually demonstrates.
Australia faces extraordinary maritime security challenges, with 37,000 kilometers of coastline and an exclusive economic zone spanning 8.2 million square kilometers which is larger than the continental United States. Yet rather than viewing uncrewed systems as merely additional assets, Rear Admiral Brett Sonter’s Australian Maritime Border Command is pioneering a fundamentally different approach through collaborative innovation that delivers results faster, more affordably, and with greater operational relevance.
The real transformation isn’t about building hybrid fleets. It’s about creating force multiplier integration that fundamentally changes how military organizations generate effects across vast operational spaces.
The Multiplication Principle
Traditional force structure thinking operates on addition: more ships provide more coverage, more aircraft enable more sorties, more personnel allow more operations. This linear relationship between inputs and outputs has governed military planning for centuries. Even the “hybrid fleet” concept maintains this additive logic for it simply adds uncrewed platforms to existing crewed capabilities.
The Philippines’ porcupine defense strategy demonstrates a different mathematical relationship entirely. By deploying networks of unmanned surface vessels, unmanned aerial vehicles, and land-based missile systems that create new defense geometries with multiple axis points from which to launch disruptive capabilities, they fundamentally alter the cost-benefit calculation for potential aggressors.
This represents multiplication rather than addition. Each autonomous platform is relatively inexpensive but can pose significant threats to much more valuable manned vessels. More significantly, autonomous systems can operate in contested environments where human-crewed vessels would face unacceptable risks, maintain persistent presence, operate in swarms that overwhelm traditional defensive systems, and be much more rapidly replaced if destroyed than legacy capital ships.
The multiplication principle means that integrating uncrewed systems doesn’t simply add capability: it multiplies the effectiveness of existing forces while creating entirely new operational possibilities that didn’t exist before.
From Platforms to Effects
One of the most significant insights from Australia’s collaboration is the shift from thinking about platforms to thinking about payloads and effects. This conceptual evolution proves crucial for understanding force multiplication rather than fleet hybridization.
Traditional acquisition focuses on buying ships, aircraft, or vehicles which are discrete pieces of equipment with defined specifications and capabilities. The payload-centric approach focuses on the capabilities these platforms deliver: the sensors, the data, the operational effects that actually matter for mission success.
This distinction enables genuine force multiplication because different platforms can be optimized for different operational environments and requirements, while payloads that provide maritime domain awareness could be common across platforms. The payload-centric approach also enables much more rapid adaptation to changing requirements: new sensors can be integrated as they become available, software updates can add new capabilities, and platform designs can evolve without requiring complete program restarts.
The Philippines approach succeeds because it integrates cutting-edge technology with tactical innovation, leveraging the Maritime Security Consortium which provides up to $95 million annually through U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. Key technological enablers include Starlink communications for real-time data transfer beyond line-of-sight, autonomous navigation using advanced AI systems for independent operation, and modular payloads in systems like the Devil Ray T-38 that can be rapidly reconfigured for different mission requirements.
When you focus on effects rather than platforms, force multiplication emerges naturally from intelligent integration rather than simple platform accumulation.
Security Clusters: The Multiplication Architecture
Sonter’s development of “security clusters” or integrated teams combining uncrewed surface vessels, uncrewed aerial vehicles, and crewed platforms, all working together under a hybrid command structure represents a new operational concept that takes advantage of the unique capabilities of different platform types.
These clusters demonstrate how force multiplication actually operates in practice. Uncrewed surface vessels provide persistent presence and can carry heavy sensor payloads for extended periods. Uncrewed aerial vehicles offer rapid response and the ability to investigate contacts quickly across large areas. Crewed platforms bring human judgment, legal authority, and the capability to conduct interdictions and boardings.
An uncrewed surface vessel might detect a contact of interest and begin tracking it while transmitting data to a command center. An uncrewed aerial vehicle could be launched to provide additional perspective and closer inspection. Only if the situation warrants human intervention would a manned vessel be dispatched, arriving with detailed information about the contact and clear evidence of any violations.
This orchestration creates force multiplication through intelligent task allocation. Each system type contributes what it does best, while the network effect of their integration produces capabilities far exceeding what any single platform type could achieve alone.
The shift from linear kill chains to maritime kill webs exemplifies this transformation: traditional naval operations relied on vulnerable linear processes, but the kill web paradigm enabled by maritime autonomous systems shifts to distributed, networked warfare, where sensing, decision-making, and strike capabilities spread across multiple platforms operating as an integrated network.
The Economics of Multiplication
By using uncrewed systems for initial detection and surveillance, Australia can reserve its expensive crewed assets for situations that truly require human intervention. But this economic benefit represents only the surface level of force multiplication.
The full cost of deploying a crewed patrol vessel includes fuel, crew salaries, maintenance, port facilities, training, insurance, and depreciation. For routine surveillance missions, these costs can be enormous relative to the intelligence value gained. An uncrewed system, by contrast, has much lower operating costs and can remain on station for extended periods without the human factors that limit manned operations.
More significantly, personnel implications are substantial: maritime patrol operations are demanding on crew, particularly in remote areas and difficult weather conditions. By reducing the number of routine patrols required, uncrewed systems can improve crew rest, reduce turnover, and allow personnel to focus on missions that truly require their skills and judgment.
This economic multiplication extends beyond immediate cost savings to force structure implications. With force-multiplying integration, military organizations can accomplish more with smaller crewed force structures, redirecting resources toward capability enhancement rather than simple force expansion.
The porcupine defense strategy succeeds because it fundamentally alters the cost-benefit calculation for potential aggressors: each autonomous platform represents a relatively inexpensive asset that can nonetheless pose significant threats to much more valuable manned vessels. This asymmetric advantage extends beyond mere economics because autonomous systems can operate in contested environments where human-crewed vessels would face unacceptable risks.
Evidence-Based Operations: Quality Multiplication
When crewed assets now respond to a potential violation identified through uncrewed surveillance, they arrive armed with photographic evidence, sonar data, detailed tracking information, and often extended observation of the suspect vessel’s behavior. This represents another dimension of force multiplication: quality enhancement.
Sonter explains that improved persistence delivers “greater assurance on the decision to interdict which requires the few crewed assets available. This improved validation ensures valuable resources aren’t wasted, improves crew morale by ensuring their time is spent on meaningful missions, and strengthens the legal foundation for enforcement actions”.
The multiplication here operates across multiple dimensions simultaneously. Crewed forces become more effective because they deploy with better information. Legal proceedings become more successful because evidence quality improves. Deterrence increases because potential violators understand detection probability has risen dramatically. Diplomatic complications decrease because enforcement actions rest on solid evidentiary foundations.
The legal implications are particularly significant in maritime law enforcement: courts require evidence that meets strict standards, and witness testimony can be challenged or contradicted. High-quality sensor data, properly collected and documented, provides the kind of evidence that supports successful prosecutions and deters future violations.
This evidence-based multiplication transforms the entire operational approach from reactive response to informed intervention, fundamentally changing the nature of maritime security operations.
Distributed Command: Organizational Multiplication
The development of security clusters has forced innovation in command-and-control concepts that extends far beyond uncrewed systems. Sonter’s approach combines centralized oversight with decentralized execution, allowing local commanders to coordinate available assets in response to developing situations while maintaining higher-level awareness and control.
This hybrid command structure enables force multiplication through organizational adaptation. Uncrewed systems generate enormous amounts of data that must be processed, analyzed, and acted upon. Traditional command structures weren’t designed for this volume and velocity of information.
The multiplication principle applies here through distributed decision-making that leverages both human creativity and machine persistence. Rather than all decisions flowing through centralized hierarchies, local commanders can orchestrate responses using available assets while higher headquarters maintains strategic perspective and provides additional resources when needed.
Maritime autonomous systems enable crisis management and escalation control by providing graduated responses from passive ISR to active weapons carriers, giving military commanders precise, scalable options tailored to specific threat levels.
This organizational multiplication means smaller command staffs can manage larger operational areas more effectively, while simultaneously improving response times and decision quality.
Geographic Multiplication: Expanding the Possible
Sonter’s vision for distributed security effects addresses Australia’s fundamental challenge: how to maintain effective security coverage across distances that would challenge any navy. This geographic dimension of force multiplication proves particularly significant.
An uncrewed surface vessel with advanced sensors can provide persistent surveillance in remote areas where maintaining a crewed presence would be prohibitively expensive. Aerial drones can rapidly investigate contacts across multiple surface platforms.
This distributed approach provides resilience against various forms of disruption: if one platform is damaged or compromised, others can adjust to maintain coverage. If weather prevents aerial operations, surface assets can compensate. If communication links are disrupted, individual platforms can continue operating autonomously while working to reestablish contact.
The Philippines’ approach is particularly suited to their unique geographic challenges: with over 7,000 islands and vast maritime domains to defend, traditional naval strategies would require prohibitively expensive fleets. Instead, their Comprehensive Archipelagic Defense Concept leverages autonomous systems to create persistent surveillance and response capabilities across their territorial waters.
Geographic multiplication means operational reach expands exponentially relative to force structure investment. Areas previously beyond practical coverage become continuously monitored. Response times to distant incidents decrease dramatically. The entire operational geography transforms from limitation to opportunity.
Learning from Ukraine: Rapid Multiplication Through Adaptation
The conflict in Ukraine demonstrates how practical adoption drives effective uncrewed system employment far more effectively than theoretical development cycles. Ukrainian forces have successfully integrated multiple types of automated systems through rapid deployment, field modification, and continuous operator feedback, producing remarkably effective tactical applications in timeframes measured in weeks and months rather than years and decades.
The Ukrainian model reveals several principles applicable to force multiplication. First, operator experience drives innovation more effectively than engineering specification. Second, the most effective uncrewed systems often emerge from adapting existing platforms rather than developing new ones. Third, effective employment often requires combining multiple simple systems rather than developing single complex platforms.
The Ukrainian experience also demonstrates the importance of human-machine collaboration rather than complete automation: the most successful operations combine automated platforms with human decision-making, leveraging machine advantages in persistence and precision while retaining human advantages in creativity and adaptation.
For force multiplication, this suggests that rapid fielding and iterative improvement multiply effectiveness faster than waiting for perfect systems. The multiplication comes from operational learning cycles, not just technological sophistication.
Regional Multiplication: Collaborative Force Enhancement
The payload-focused collaboration approach could enable much more flexible partnerships that respect national sovereignty while enhancing collective security. This regional dimension extends force multiplication beyond single-nation capabilities to multinational effects.
Rather than each nation developing separate, expensive solutions, countries could collaborate on payload development and data sharing while maintaining their preferred platform approaches. A sensor system developed for Australia’s northern waters might be equally valuable to Indonesian, Philippine, or Japanese maritime forces, even if deployed on completely different vessels.
The data sharing aspects are particularly valuable: maritime domain awareness is inherently collaborative: a vessel detected by Australian systems may enter Indonesian or Philippine waters, where continued tracking by their systems would benefit all parties. Standardized data formats and communication protocols could enable seamless tracking across national boundaries while preserving each nation’s sovereign control over their own operations.
This regional multiplication means collective security capabilities can exceed the sum of individual national investments, creating force multiplication at the alliance level without requiring formal military integration or controversial sovereignty compromises.
The Path Forward: Implementing Multiplication
Moving beyond hybrid fleet thinking to force multiplier integration requires several practical steps that defense organizations can implement immediately.
• First, direct engagement between operational commanders and industry partners accelerates the feedback loop dramatically, leading to faster innovation and more relevant solutions.
• Second, setting ambitious stretch goals drives innovation in ways that incremental improvements cannot.
• Third, focusing on effects rather than platforms enables greater flexibility and often reveals more cost-effective approaches.
• Fourth, organizations should empower operators to drive innovation rather than restricting development to acquisition specialists.
• Fifth, adoption-focused rather than acquisition-focused policies prioritize getting technology into operators’ hands quickly rather than waiting for perfect solutions.
• Sixth, viewing full autonomy as a long-term journey rather than immediate requirement creates space for systematic capability building that delivers value throughout the development process.
The multiplication principle must guide all these implementation steps. Each decision should be evaluated not by whether it adds capability, but by whether it multiplies the effectiveness of existing forces while creating new operational possibilities.
Conclusion: Language Shapes Reality
The “hybrid fleet” concept perpetuates additive thinking that fundamentally misunderstands the transformation uncrewed systems enable. As one observer noted, the ability to hold major naval assets at risk using relatively inexpensive autonomous systems represents a shift in maritime power dynamics that may define the future of naval warfare in contested waters worldwide.
Maritime autonomous systems are driving a transformation in maritime power dynamics by democratizing advanced naval capabilities, making it possible for nations to create formidable defensive networks that are resilient, cost-effective, and capable of holding much larger adversaries’ assets at risk.
What Australia and the Philippines demonstrate isn’t hybrid fleet development: it’s force multiplier integration that changes the fundamental mathematics of military effectiveness. The future of maritime security is being written in waters where innovative thinking about technology, collaboration, and operational concepts creates new possibilities for protecting vast ocean domains with limited resources.
The multiplication has already begun. The question is whether defense institutions will recognize it, embrace it, and accelerate it or whether they’ll continue thinking additively about capabilities that demand multiplicative approaches.
See the following:
Reimagining Maritime Security: Australia’s Collaborative Approach to Uncrewed Systems
Unlocking Military Potential: The Immediate Opportunities in Uncrewed Systems
Shaping a Porcupine Defense Strategy for the Philippines: The Role of Maritime Autonomous Systems