The First 72 Hours – Why We Could Lose the Next Littoral Fight

The sea was black glass, silent, deceptive, endless. From the bridge of our modified support vessel, I watched the horizon pulse with the slow rhythm of distant cargo traffic. Somewhere out there between the Filipino islands and Taiwan’s shadow was our target: a flagged research trawler running dark. Intelligence indicated it was a transfer node moving advanced ISR payloads from a state proxy to a local militant group. Our team’s job was to confirm, surveil, and if needed, intercept.

We launched the UUV, an off-the-books model we’d used before in Libya, into the water with a hydropneumatic cradle we fabricated at sea. The current was fast but manageable. The UUV dipped beneath the surface and began feeding live video and EM data.

 Ten seconds later: GPS drift. The encrypted drone relay, our overwatch node, cut out completely. Our team commo looked up from his ruggedized console and said what we were all thinking.

What followed was thirty minutes of partial blindness. We got snapshots, brief flashes of the target vessel, then nothing. Without live ISR or reliable spectrum tools, we couldn’t track its shadow run through the archipelago.

Again, we  improvised.

A dangerous illusion in Washington persists, believing capability shortfalls in irregular warfare are solvable before the bullets and drove fly during conflict.  The lack of urgency in the procurement cycle, fractured modernization, and interagency stovepipes are just part of the process. But in the Indo-Pacific littorals, the process is the problem eroding readiness and lethality. Senate Armed Services Committee Testimony.

USSOCOM and IWTSD both claim responsibility for advancing irregular warfare tools and technologies. However, in practice, these two entities  operate like two ships in the night, unaware of and  unable to coordinate their modernization vectors. As of today, no formalized process exists for capturing  maritime SOF capability gaps from USSOCOM tactical teams to IWTSD, charged with providing solutions.

Meanwhile, our adversaries field unmanned swarms and real-time AI-enhanced ISR systems across the region. While SOCOM teams modify oilfield support vessels, wiring together comms relays with commercial routers, and wait for tools stuck in “transition planning” purgatory.

The process and bottlenecks  are  not an abstract risk, but an operational liability. In fact, the 2025 Executive Order Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance, issued on April 9, 2025, =highlights contested logistics and irregular maritime warfare as national priorities. However,  funding, whether through the Maritime Security Trust Fund (MSTF), DPA Title III, or MARAD expansions is still not reaching forward-deployed operators at speed. The tools and pathways exist, but integration remains elusive.

For instance, proven government and commercial systems show the technology base is realized. The U.S. Navy’s Sea Hunter/Sea Hawk and Ghost Fleet Overlord USVs executed long-range autonomous transits (including Pacific crossings over 4,000 nautical miles) and live-fire events (such as SM-6 missile launches), validating core autonomy, C2, and safety functions. On the commercial side, autonomy-enabled fleets like Ocean Infinity’s Armada (DNV remote-ops compliant), Exail’s DriX (with over 15,000 operational hours worldwide), SEA-KIT’s USVs (including 22-day offshore missions), Saildrone, Liquid Robotics' Wave Glider, and XOCEAN (with over 130,000 hours across 1,000+ missions) accumulated large-scale operational hours in demanding environments across the globe. Furthermore, USSOCOM’s recent successful demonstrations of advanced maritime ISR nodes at Trident Spectre indicate clear paths to rapid transition. However, these paths remain obstructed by fragmented acquisition policies. USSOCOM’s 2025 Fact Book and SOF Imperatives underscores these maritime priorities, emphasizing low-signature mobility, expeditionary ISR, precision resupply, and spectrum dominance, while noting persistent gaps in maritime mobility and force projection. The true bottleneck remains acquisition and integration, not the availability of capable and proven platforms.

In the weeks that followed, I tried to track down who, exactly, “owned” the solution we needed. The ruggedized edge ISR kit I’d seen demoed at a classified exercise two years ago? It was developed through an IWTSD funded program but only fielded to select interagency teams on the ground. The maritime comms relay prototype from a USSOCOM innovation sprint? Never passed risk review due to “deployment uncertainty.” The modular UUV control node built for shallow littoral ops? Technically successful, but not in production.

So, we did what operators always do when the system fails, we improvised.

But here’s the problem: in the South China Sea, the margin for error is zero. There’s no such thing as “good enough” when you’re up against layered Chinese ISR nets, radar pickets, and signals denial operations run by state-backed militias. The adversary isn’t waiting for our acquisition timelines. They’re innovating at the tactical edge, deploying unmanned swarms, and fusing AI-driven targeting into fishing fleets.

What we’re missing isn’t tech, it’s synchronization. And that gap is widening. While vendors showcase unmanned surface vessels with limited sea state survivability and questionable autonomy stacks, forward teams are still fabricating launch systems from rusted OSVs. “Sustainable ISR” has become a buzzword in boardrooms, but on the water, it’s still a spreadsheet excuse for not fielding ruggedized tools that survive denied spectrum conditions.

USSOCOM’s modernization priorities are increasingly maritime in nature: low-signature mobility, expeditionary ISR, precision resupply, spectrum dominance. As Gen. Bryan Fenton, USSOCOM Commander, testified on April 8, 2025, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, SOF demand has surged by 35% in deterrence efforts, yet acquisition silos continue to hinder rapid fielding of tools for contested littorals. IWTSD’s funded capability lanes: Surveillance Collection and Operations Support (SCOS), Protection, Survivability and Recovery (PSR), Tactical Offensive Support (TOS) are all highly relevant. Despite positive steps like IWTSD’s March 6, 2025, Industry Day and the release of its Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) 25S5000 around March 20, 2025, which emphasizes relevant lanes like SCOS, these two entities are operating in silos, with no joint framework to deconflict, prioritize, or co-develop the tools special operators need in the maritime domain.

I’ve served with JSOC Task Forces, clandestine, and paramilitary intelligence units in environments where the mission shifted in hours, not months. That tempo demands modernization efforts that are operator-driven, mission-configurable, and deployed at the speed of threat evolution.

Right now, we don’t have that. And every time we rig another “Frankenstein” platform to execute a critical maritime mission, we widen the gap.

Let’s be clear: the next conflict will not look like Iraq or Afghanistan. It will unfold in the blue-green battlespace, a patchwork of sea lanes, island chains, and denied coastlines. Proxy forces. Civilian vessels with covert ISR. Subsurface threats. Autonomous platforms operating under plausible deniability.

This is the battlespace for which neither USSOCOM nor IWTSD is fully prepared.

Yet these are the exact kinds of capabilities IWTSD could rapidly field and USSOCOM urgently needs. The only thing missing is institutional will.

To close this maritime irregular warfare gap, the U.S. must modernize collaboratively. Here’s how:

We don’t have years. We may not even have months. In the Indo-Pacific, the lines between competition and conflict are already blurred. Maritime irregular warfare is no longer a theoretical construct, it’s operational reality. The question isn’t whether USSOCOM or IWTSD has the right tools. The question is whether anyone will bring them together in time to make a difference.

I’ve seen too many missions hinge on systems we didn’t have because no one thought to bridge the gap between the operator’s need and the innovator’s build. It’s not a funding problem. It’s not a technology problem. It’s a solvable leadership challenge.

And it’s solvable. Despite Senate and House NDAA markups in July 2025 authorizing $925 billion, targeted maritime IW integrations remain absent. Hearings like the House Armed Services Committee’s February 26, 2025, session on “The Role of Special Operations in Great Power Competition” signal growing awareness of SOF’s evolving role in maritime domains and proxy threats, but action on integration still lags.

To secure victory within the critical first 72 hours of the next littoral conflict, we must act decisively now. The establishment of a USSOCOM IWTSD Maritime Integration Cell, forward deployment of capability-development teams, and streamlined procurement of vetted commercial platforms are operational imperatives, not mere recommendations. INDOPACOM commanders and Congressional defense committees must prioritize launching a pilot program immediately, before Q3 2025 ends, to validate these solutions. Recent briefings to the House Armed Services Committee have already acknowledged the shortfall in littoral maneuver connectors and afloat C2. This is the window. If pilot programs are not launched before FY26 planning cycles fully lock in with the FY2026 NDAA authorizing $925 billion in national defense funding but still emphasizing broader SOF readiness over targeted maritime fixes we risk another lost year. 29 And in the Indo-Pacific, that’s operational malpractice. Operational realities demand action bureaucratic inertia is no longer an acceptable risk.

Richard Byno, EVP of Defense at Eureka Naval Craft. Richard began his career as a Special Operations Marine and a Force Reconnaissance Marine. Subsequently, he transitioned to senior roles within the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).