In 2025, FLANQ and CiS announced a partnership agreement to jointly develop and deploy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) from Uncrewed Surface Vessels (USVs). In the first of two long read blog posts, we take a deep dive into the partnership. In part one, we explore the new realities of defence in Europe and in part two, the technical challenges of launching and recovering a quadcopter on a moving target which can – depending on the variant – be not much bigger than a standup paddle board. (8-minute read)

Persistent. Distributed. Scalable
Across Europe’s eastern and northern flanks, the security environment is shifting in ways that demand new approaches to surveillance and response. From the Baltic Sea to the High North, European governments are confronting a complex mix of challenges – increased geopolitical tension, heightened concern over the protection of critical undersea infrastructure, and the persistent activity of “shadow fleets” penetrating territorial waters.

These developments are occurring across an enormous maritime area. Thousands of kilometres of subsea communication cables, pipelines and offshore energy infrastructure now underpin Europe’s economy and energy security. Yet monitoring this environment remains a demanding task, particularly when relying on traditional (crewed) military doctrine designed for a different era.

The result is a growing recognition across EU defence and security communities that maritime awareness must become more persistent, more distributed and more scalable. Increasingly, that conversation is turning towards collaborative autonomous systems.

The limits of traditional maritime surveillance
Europe’s naval and coastguard forces operate some of the most capable surveillance assets in the world. Maritime patrol aircraft and specialist surveillance vessels provide exceptional sensing capability and operational reach. But these assets are also finite.

Exquisite platforms – whether aircraft or ships – are expensive build, operate and limited in number. Their deployment must be carefully prioritised, and even the most capable systems cannot remain on station indefinitely. As a result, large areas of sea space often rely on periodic patrols rather than continuous monitoring.

This approach is increasingly mismatched with today’s threat environment. Activities such as sanction evasions, suspicious vessel rendezvous, or potential interference with subsea infrastructure may occur in narrow time windows. Detecting and understanding these events often requires persistent presence rather than irregular patrols.Maintaining that level of coverage using traditional platforms alone is neither practical nor economically sustainable.

Look only to events in the Middle East when, in early March 2026, a UK RAF base on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus was attached with an aerial drone. The UK government quickly responded by committing to send a Royal Navy Type 45 destroyer to region to provide an air defence capability for the island – a destroyer that was hundreds of miles away in the UK undergoing planned maintenance. It took around two weeks to prepare the vessel and set sail. High tempo regional conflicts like these expose critical short comings in a nation’s operational readiness and ability to protect its own sovereignty and those of its close allies.

Uncrewed first
Across NATO and European defence planning, uncrewed systems are now considered mature enough to form the persistent foundation of maritime awareness. Rather than replacing traditional assets, these systems provide a distributed sensing layer that operates continuously across large areas of ocean. Crewed platforms can then be deployed selectively when higher levels of investigation, visual deterrent or strike capability are required.

This new vision for “uncrewed wherever possible, crewed only where necessary” doctrine reflects both operational logic and economic reality. Autonomous surface vessels – procured, built and deployed in weeks not years – can remain at sea for extended periods, conducting intelligence gathering tasks at a fraction of the operating cost associated with crewed platforms. Just as importantly, they reduce risk to personnel while expanding the geographic reach of maritime monitoring.

However, the real step change is not autonomy alone. It lies in how autonomous systems increasingly work together – and not just swarms of the same type – but subsea, surface and aerial platforms intelligently cooperating much in the same way a traditional carrier strike group is configured.

From single platforms to collaborative autonomy
Early deployments of naval maritime autonomy often focused on individual platforms – a drone deployed off the back deck, an uncrewed vessel launched from a mother ship, or a remote sensor network deployed in the seafloor. While valuable, these standalone systems inevitably face limitations in coverage and flexibility.

FLANQ USVs can loiter on station for weeks, but if something is detected at long range and closer inspection is required, there is a time and tactical trade-off. Time to sail to the contact (which may have left the detection area) and tactical in terms of revealing your position and becoming a target itself. An aerial drone like those from CiS can survey large areas quickly but cannot remain airborne indefinitely. Collaborative autonomy – as demonstrated at last year’s REPMUS exercise in Portugal – addresses this challenge by combining the strengths of different platforms.

A FLANQ uncrewed surface vessel provides endurance, surface and subsea perception, communications connectivity and now – hangar space for an UAV. CiS’ flagship quadcopter, Orka, can be remotely tasked airborne in around 10 seconds, travel at 100 kph to investigate contacts, and even designate targets. Together, the two platforms operate as a single coordinated system-of-systems, sharing data and tasks to build a richer picture of the maritime environment.

Modern autonomous systems increasingly rely on integrated sensor suites and data fusion to combine multiple sources of information, including electro-optical cameras, radar and other maritime sensors, into a unified operational picture that can support operator decision-making in real-time. The result is a surveillance capability that is both persistent and responsive.

Monitoring the Baltic and High North
The value of this approach becomes particularly clear in the context of European waters. The Baltic Sea, for example, is one of the world’s busiest and most strategically sensitive maritime regions. Commercial shipping, energy infrastructure and naval activity all coexist within a relatively confined operating space. Monitoring vessel behaviour in such an environment requires sustained observation and the ability to investigate anomalies quickly.

Shadow fleet activity presents a different but equally demanding challenge. Vessels operating with their AIS transponder disabled, spoofing GNSS, dragging the anchors, or following unusual routes can be difficult to track using conventional patrol patterns. Persistent autonomous monitoring using USV-UAV assets to shadow the shadow fleets can help identify these patterns earlier and maintain visibility over vessels of interest for extended periods.

Europe’s northern flank presents a different operational problem: scale. Vast areas of ocean, often in harsh environmental conditions, must be monitored despite limited infrastructure and long distances from allied naval bases. Collaborative autonomous systems offer a way to extend surveillance reach without proportionally increasing operational cost.

Persistence without exquisite cost
One of the most compelling advantages of distributed autonomous systems is economic. Exquisite platforms – destroyers, aircraft carriers and frigates – remain indispensable for truly frontline operations, as Cyprus illustrates. But when it comes to routine border patrols and wide-area surveillance and early detection tasks, their operating costs can quickly become prohibitive. Decades of defence cuts means that there’s simple too many missions with too few ships. Autonomous systems offer a complementary model.

Lower-cost attributable platforms operating cooperatively can remain on station for weeks, continuously gathering information and building a detailed understanding of maritime activity. When something unusual occurs, higher-capability assets can then be directed with far greater precision.

This layered approach enables security forces to achieve greater coverage and persistence without dramatically increasing budgets, service personnel or physical fleet sizes. In effect, autonomous systems allow navies to scale, and scale quickly.

A collaborative approach to maritime autonomy
The partnership between FLANQ and CiS reflects this broader shift in thinking about maritime capability. By integrating autonomous surface vessels with aerial systems and advanced autonomy software, the collaboration aims to deliver a capability that is designed from the outset for diverse maritime security missions – from ISR to MCM to search and rescue. Rather than treating individual platforms as standalone solutions, the focus is on how systems can operate together to extend sensing reach, maintain continuous presence and deliver actionable intelligence, in real-time, straight to commanders.

Such capabilities are increasingly relevant as European nations look to strengthen the protection of their maritime infrastructure and improve visibility across contested sea spaces. Yet delivering this type of collaborative autonomy involves solving a number of complex engineering challenges – none more so than enabling aerial systems to operate reliably from uncrewed surface vessels moving in open water.

In part two of our blog, we explore the technical problem at the heart of this capability: how to launch, recover and recharge UAVs from autonomous surface vessels in real sea conditions.