China’s Floating Platform, Gray-Zone Pressure, and the Next Baltic Test
:format(webp)/nginx/o/2026/06/21/17735114t1h3bb6.jpg "China’s Floating Platform, Gray-Zone Pressure, and the Next Baltic Test")
Sweden is investing, among other things, in autonomous underwater systems, including the development of a large underwater drone. Finland’s emphasis has been on surveillance centers, seabed sensors, and data fusion. Germany is also testing and procuring unmanned surface vessels, but, based on what is publicly known, not in the form of a longer-duration Saildrone-type network drifting at sea in the same way Denmark is doing.
Russia’s focus, in addition to the aforementioned Black Sea surveillance buoys, appears from public sources to include the seabed hydroacoustic surveillance network known as Garmonija, or Harmony. Its purpose is to protect strategic maritime areas, especially in the Arctic and in the operating area of the Northern Fleet, and to detect adversary submarines.
Ukraine’s naval drone war has forced Russia to deploy acoustic maritime surveillance buoys in the Black Sea designed to detect Ukrainian naval drones. Several Baltic Sea states, including Russia, are developing military-purpose maritime drones, which means the appearance of corresponding surveillance and defense infrastructure in the Baltic Sea should be expected. Military-technological developments are also likely to bring new types of surface maritime platforms.
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In military history, floating platforms have been a cheap and flexible way to extend military presence at sea without the continuous presence of a conventional warship.
Floating platforms have been used as weapons, barriers, logistics tools, and surveillance assets for centuries. In 1588, during the raid at Calais, the English sent fireships filled with combustible material toward the anchorage of the Spanish Armada, forcing Spanish ships to cut their cables and break formation.
In 1782, during the Great Siege of Gibraltar, Spanish and French forces attempted to break British defenses with specialized floating batteries, which were ultimately destroyed. In the Crimean War, French armored floating batteries were used against the Kinburn fortifications in 1855, demonstrating the emerging logic of industrial-age naval warfare.
Later naval mines and harbor barriers, the Mulberry artificial harbors at Omaha and Gold beaches during the Normandy landings in 1944, and Cold War sonobuoys and hydroacoustic sensor networks belong to the same line of development.