The Future Of Drones
Summary: Richard Weir, former Director at Northrop Grumman, leads a closed-door session on the void in maritime surveillance and minesweeping. It confronts the loss of legacy minesweepers and costly High-Value Assets, with Ukraine proving the case for cheap, attritable FPV drones. Focus: adapting Ukrainian-style FPV tactics for the water, integrating sub-3kg SWaP radars, and bypassing procurement lags through allied partnering.
The global defense apparatus is currently standing naked in a field when it comes to maritime surveillance and minesweeping. Decades ago, naval forces retired their legacy minesweeping fleets under the assumption that a robust network of underwater, surface, and airborne drones would effortlessly replace them. That capability never fully materialized. Compounding this, the U.S. and its allies are suddenly hemorrhaging High-Value Assets (HAVAs)—losing multi-million dollar MQ-9s and massive MQ-4 Tritons at a rate modern procurement cannot sustain.
The tactical mandate has officially shifted: defense ministries no longer want gold-plated, vulnerable platforms; they urgently need "affordable mass" through small, attritable Category 1-3 drones equipped with advanced sensors. The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has provided a stark, real-world proving ground for this concept, highlighting a glaring omission in traditional maritime doctrine: the devastating effectiveness of First-Person View (FPV) drones. Specifically, the rapid battlefield deployment of fiber-optic FPV drones—which offer unjammable, high-bandwidth control in severe electronic warfare (EW) environments—demonstrates exactly the kind of lethal, low-cost innovation navies must now adapt for maritime environments.
In this closed-door, operational teardown, we are bringing together defense prime C-suites, naval procurement officials, and aerospace systems integrators to map the immediate commercial opportunities in maritime surveillance. Anchored by Richard Weir—Managing Director at Blue Wave Merchant Partners and former Director of International Policy at Northrop Grumman—we will break down the exact technologies required to fill this void. We are skipping the theoretical drone hype to focus on the brutal ground truth: adapting Ukrainian-style FPV attritability for the water, integrating sub-3kg Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) radars, navigating a supply chain where fewer than five capable manufacturers exist globally, and bypassing 36-month procurement lags through aggressive allied partnering.