Research Progress on Maritime Multi-Domain Counter-Unmanned Protection Systems and Key Technologies

With the increasing use of unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned surface vessels, and unmanned underwater vehicles in maritime reconnaissance, communication relay, coordinated penetration, and terminal strike missions, high-value maritime targets are facing asymmetric threats characterized by low observability, multi-domain coordination, low cost, and saturation attacks. The focus of maritime counter-unmanned protection has shifted from intercepting individual platforms to identifying, degrading, disrupting, and sustaining against unmanned threat mission chains. This paper reviews the development and key technologies of maritime multi-domain counter-unmanned protection systems. First, the types, application scenarios, and challenges of maritime unmanned systems are analyzed. Then, key technologies are summarized from four aspects: reconnaissance and early warning, jamming and deception, strike and neutralization, and platform protection. Finally, a mission-chain-oriented protection framework based on reconnaissance, jamming, strike, and protection is proposed, and future trends are discussed in cross-domain fusion, soft-kill and hard-kill coordination, cost-effectiveness balance, and system-level verification.