How Digital Deterrence Enhances Deterrence and Defence on the Maritime Flank

As regional conflict in recent years has amply demonstrated, digital innovation is in the process of undertaking a silent but radical transformation of defence and security theatres, moving intelligence and operational solutions inexorably and at pace from a hardware-dominated domain into one where data, software and applied AI are at the centre of effective decision-making. Although historically not viewed as a discrete defence domain, digital capabilities now serve as a critical enabler across all domains – including maritime, air, land, space, and cyber. As threats evolve, the ability to exploit data at the speed of relevance is vital, ensuring that defence has information superiority to achieve the strategic advantage of evidence-backed, effective decision making.

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In this latest article, we review how digital capabilities secure advantage to enhance deterrence and defence on the maritime flank.

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Achieving optimum hardware performance through a data-led approach

Historically, defence capabilities have relied on hardware superiority, often at great expense to a country’s taxpayers. Today, deterrence can be achieved by leveraging the capabilities of commercial technology through an agile, software-led and data-driven approach to ensure cost-effective surveillance at scale. Maritime security is an example of how a deterrent effect can be achieved at scale through applying this kind of ?approach. Through a software-led approach, vast amounts of data from a network of maritime sensors can now be processed and analysed using AI, such as Computer Vision on images from satellites, aircraft and UAVs, shore and surface assets. Fused with data other sources, this can deliver alerts relevant to the operational requirements of multiple users across departments and organisations, achieving cost-effective surveillance at scale with self-iterating improvements in performance and outcome. An approach based on a threat assessment, which delivers sensitive situational awareness insights only to the relevant users, while maintaining surveillance for multiple maritime stakeholders.

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Legacy defence procurement models, typically characterised by long timelines and high costs, often leave forces with obsolete technology, creating vulnerabilities and long-tail capital costs to taxpayers. Instead, a modern, software-led approach can leverage commercial technologies, such as off-the-shelf sensors, to provide credible, cost-effective, scalable, and rapidly deployable solutions that ensure defence forces remain operationally effective and?well ahead of the curve in relation to emerging threats.

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A software-led procurement approach to maritime surveillance

A modern defence strategy requires, then, a shift from platform-centric procurement to a networked, data-led approach.

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Some of the most important considerations are the following:

• Distributed Digital Maritime Sensors: moving from rigid, hardware-dependent procurement to modular and flexible, software-led surveillance networks.
• Smart Data Exploitation: filtering vast amounts of big data to provide decision-makers with relevant, actionable insights.
• Adaptive Threat-Based Solutions: selecting data sources and tools based on situational needs, reducing vulnerability to outdated systems.
• Continuous Capability Development: early adoption of emerging technologies and iterative refinement and development, through close and continuous working relationships between users and suppliers.

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Solutions like Sirius’s INSIGHT platform are at the forefront of this shift to a software-led approach, fusing together data feeds from land, sea, air and space, and delivering real-time alerts of suspicious activities at sea to enhance situational awareness without overwhelming operators with irrelevant information.

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This approach strengthens maritime resilience and security, enhances deterrence, and ensures that defence forces can adapt rapidly, efficiently and cost-effectively to emerging, and often unconventional and assymetric, high-risk threats.

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Multi-use commercial and defence capabilities

The distinction between civilian and military capabilities have become increasingly blurred in the face of modern defence challenges, as the use of low-cost commercial UAVs in the conflict in Ukraine attests to. Similarly, the applications for maritime surveillance are muliti-use and span defence, law enforcement, fisheries protection, marine management, and critical infrastructure protection. Data from civilian and military operations can also be leveraged to contribute to defence planning and provide training based on real world scenarios, maximising operational success.

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Strengthening Regional Cooperation

Regional cooperation among allies is a hallmark of what makes modern defence successful, sustainable and integrated. Open-architecture systems enable the interoperability of equipment and information-sharing among allies, allowing smaller nations to contribute purposefully to international security agreements and enabling nations to work together in a manner that enables all to demonstrate the unity and collective strength that underpins effective deterrence and defence.

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Conclusion

In the modern defence domain, deterrence is about much more than mere hardware capabilities—it is about information superiority, strategic communication, resource optionality and ultra-rapid decision-making. A data-driven approach, applying AI to defence, significantly enhances situational awareness, improves resilience, and maximises operational effectiveness. The success of defence operations now hinges on innovation, interoperability, and the ability to analyse information at the speed of relevance, ensuring that nations are optimally prepared to deal with constantly evolving threats.

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Visit us at IDEX 2025 from 17-21 February at Stand 03-A36 in the ADS Pavilion to discuss how Sirius’s Maritime Domain Awareness and Understanding technology can deliver deterrence and defence capabilities for you.?

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www.siriusinsight.ai