01 / 05
−50%trade
through the Suez Canal, early 2024Red Sea, closed
Missiles, drones and drone boats at Bab-el-Mandeb sent shipping around Africa, adding 10+ days a voyage. Oil through the strait fell from 8.7M to 4.0M barrels a day.
Anti-drone maritime defense
Caladh systems detect, track, and defeat hostile drones above and below the waterline so they can’t get near critical infrastructure.
The problem
Cheap aerial drones changed modern warfare. The same shift is starting underwater.
01
Cheap and capable
Low-cost, mass-manufacturable autonomous vehicles can go deeper and farther than ever. Better sensors, onboard autonomy and smarter navigation let them find and reach targets without a human in the loop.
02
Infrastructure is exposed
The targets are expensive and exposed: naval bases, commercial ports, offshore energy, and the fiber cables that carry the internet. There’s no perimeter below the waterline.
03
Defenses haven’t kept up
Many solutions detect and track underwater drones, but few stop them. Nets and marine mammals are not practical or scalable. Kinetic responses are costly, escalatory, and dangerous near the assets they’re meant to protect.
The impact
Unprecedented asymmetry.
A strike that costs almost nothing can close a trade route, poison a sea, or sink a ship.
02 / 05
465,000metric tons of methane
released into the environmentNord Stream, severed
Seabed sabotage caused the largest methane release from a single event ever recorded.
03 / 05
$400Msubmarine
SBU estimate · Novorossiysk, 15 Dec 2025Hit by an underwater drone
A drone navigated a protected harbor to strike a Kilo-class submarine in port.
04 / 05
23crew evacuated
off Sochi, 6 October 2026Tanker ablaze off Sochi
Naval drones set a crude tanker ablaze. Smoke blanketed parts of a resort city of almost 500,000.
05 / 05
6+ships hit
western Black Sea, October 2026Ships sunk off NATO shores
Drones struck at least six merchant ships in October, most recently a container ship off Bulgaria on 28 October. Some two dozen seafarers were likely killed in these recent attacks.
Products
Built to counter a new class of threats.
Caladh builds systems that keep hostile drones away from critical maritime infrastructure, above and below the waterline.
Eclipse
Eclipse is a non-kinetic defense system that denies navigation, communication, and sensing on unmanned maritime vehicles, above and below the waterline. Eclipse is easily deployed as a network around high-value maritime assets.
Form factor
Moored buoy or tow-fish
Domains
Above & below water
Threat detection
Integrated detection; compatible with third party systems
Targets
USVs & UUVs
Cloak
Cloak is a non-kinetic, trawl-resistant defense system that conceals critical subsea infrastructure by degrading and deceiving sensing on information gathering underwater drones. It is lowered on a line and recovered with a pop-up buoy.
Form factor
Low-profile trawl-resistant shell
Domains
Seabed
Threat detection
Integrated detection, and compatible with third party systems
Targets
AUVs and ROVs
Get in touch
Protecting a site, investing, building a career at Caladh, or something else entirely: we’d like to hear from you.
Or email us directly: contact@caladh.com