Europe reimagines rearmament at sea, learning from Russia’s war on Ukraine

Athens, Greece – Days before a new United States-led peace proposal diverted his attention, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Athens, where the two leaders announced plans to cooperate “on the development and deployment of maritime unmanned systems”.

The following day, on November 17, he was in the French capital, Paris, announcing the co-production of Rafale multirole aircraft and interceptor drones, and the day after that, he was in the Spanish capital, Madrid, calling for co-production of precision-guided missiles.

Other co-production agreements have been signed with Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom.

The current peace plan being proposed by the administration of US President Donald Trump, if anything, makes such weapons programmes even more urgent, say experts.

“None of the drafts that are currently circulating are going to be anything close to being enacted. So there is no peace plan,” said Keir Giles, a Eurasia expert with Chatham House, a London-based think tank.

“However, if … this is something we have to take seriously, then … this makes Ukraine’s situation incalculably worse,” he told Al Jazeera. “The whole point of the Russian proposals is to leave Ukraine defenceless against the next round of Russian attacks.

“Ukraine is even more reliant on whatever long-term agreements for bolstering its defence it can lock in as rapidly as possible,” Giles said.

Technology to give Ukraine ‘an edge’

As Ukraine weaves itself into the defence fabric of Europe, it is offering its combat experience and its battlefields as testing grounds for new systems, particularly unmanned systems. In return, it seeks to light the forges of long-dormant production to match Russia in scale.

“Ukraine is moving towards integrating all of its unmanned systems,” Ukraine arms expert Olena Kryzhanivska told Al Jazeera, adding, “either aerial, ground or naval systems. So that’s the symbiosis of different technologies. That’s something that would give an edge in this conflict.”

On December 31, Ukraine became the first country in the world to down enemy helicopters by mounting air-to-air Sidewinder missiles on a domestically manufactured Magura unmanned surface vessel (USV) and launching them remotely.

On May 2, it made military history again, downing two Russian Sukhoi jets from a Magura.

Last month, Ukraine’s coastal defence forces experimented again, using a Magura to deliver a first-person view (FPV) drone close to Russian vessels.

“The operation was quick, accurate, and without risk to our fighters,” the unit said.

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) said it had modified the Magura to travel 1,500km (930 miles) autonomously and doubled its payload to 2 tonnes of explosive.

Ukraine’s Defence Minister Denys Shmyhal proudly displayed it to foreign dignitaries at the International Defence Industries Forum in Kyiv.

Its innovation could make Ukraine a valuable partner to European defence consortia.

Representatives of Greece’s largest shipyard, Skaramangas, plan to be among those travelling to Ukraine to discuss co-production deals.

“We are developing a small unmanned reconnaissance craft and a larger, 12-metre unmanned craft with heavy weaponry,” Skaramangas Shipyards chief Miltiadis Varvitsiotis told Al Jazeera. “These are going to be made of composite materials, possibly carbon fibre, which we have developed extensively, but we are also looking into other materials.”

Those other materials could perhaps come from the UK, where a startup, Expedition Zero, has patented a process to turn volcanic rock into boat hulls by creating a compound out of the silicon in the rock and resin. It calls the product EcoMinera because it was originally developed as an eco-friendly, recyclable alternative to fibreglass.

Expedition Zero builds 12-metre catamarans and has built a prototype 20-metre ocean-going sailing vessel. But EcoMinera’s properties now appear applicable to military uses as well. The material resists abrasion better than steel, so a hull made of it can survive groundings and collisions, and since it melts at volcanic temperatures of 1,500C (2,732F), it can be used to bulletproof fuel tanks and fireproof lithium batteries.

“We’ve already had discussions with companies that said, ‘If you can give us a product that will contain a lithium fire on a yacht, we’ll buy it from you tomorrow’,” Expedition Zero boss Andrew Cowen told Al Jazeera.

“We’re talking to a group in the UK already about an application for an underwater autonomous vehicle … It could easily have a military application as well, because a lot of these vehicles operate in harsh environments.”

Transforming Europe?

More than a year ago, former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi named innovation as one of the three key areas where Europe was lagging behind its competitors.

“We rely on a handful of suppliers for critical raw materials and import over 80 percent of our digital technology,” he said. “Only four of the world’s top 50 tech companies are European … We must bring innovation back to Europe.”

Six months after Draghi’s speech, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the defence sector was being endowed with a 150-billion-euro ($170bn) windfall from Brussels and 650 billion euros ($750bn) in fiscal space from national budgets – a plan called RearmEU.

Another $164bn could come next month from frozen Russian assets in Europe.

The threat perception from Russia and the motive power of this money stand in stark contrast to the indifference of European governments to defence innovation before the Ukraine war.

In 2018, Greek company Barracuda built Greece’s first USV and the Hellenic Navy deployed it as part of a NATO exercise off Taranto in southern Italy. Its five cameras relayed live images via a Greek frigate to NATO headquarters in Brussels.

Three years later, Barracuda built Multi Mission 747, an inflatable USV that could be configured to carry two torpedoes or a rocket launcher – much like the Magura concept Ukraine developed last year.

Neither Barracuda’s reconnaissance USV nor its search-and-destroy USV were ordered by the Hellenic Navy.

“There was great interest from officers but none from the politicians who draft the budgets,” Barracuda founder Tasos Hatzistefanou told Al Jazeera. “If the Hellenic Navy in 2021 had procured Multi Mission 747, I would have built an unmanned underwater vehicle by now, but in this environment, I’m not allowed to be creative.”

That may now change, with European money and Ukrainian experience.

“It will happen,” said Hatzistefanou. “But we lost a lot of time in which we could have performed miracles.”