A century of seablindness ends with data. Why I am joining Ubotica.

A century of seablindness ends with data. Why I am joining Ubotica.

By Vice Admiral Mark Mellett (Rtd), Board Advisor, Ubotica

I spent four decades in the Naval Service and the Defence Forces. Commanding naval vessels and later leading Ireland's Defence Forces gave me an appreciation of the scale of that responsibility. The sea feeds communities, connects economies and carries the infrastructure on which everyday life depends. Protecting it requires us to understand what is happening across enormous areas, often with limited resources and little time to respond.

That is the challenge I want to help address as an advisor to Ubotica.

The threat is here, and it is growing

Start with the numbers. The Irish Navy recorded 132 shadow fleet transits off our west coast between January and September last year. This year it is 382, with 303 of them since March. That is a 189% increase, and it happened for one reason. In June the Royal Marines boarded the Smyrtos in the Channel with 700,000 barrels of Russian crude aboard. Europe too has started boarding. Belgian special forces took the Ethera in the North Sea in February. Sweden has confiscated a false-flagged tanker in the Baltic. Russia cannot risk that again. So it has rerouted around Ireland.

Ageing tankers operating with uncertain standards of maintenance and oversight are a particular concern in the North Atlantic. An accident could have devastating consequences for coastal communities and marine ecosystems. Alongside that environmental danger is the security concern surrounding activity near critical subsea infrastructure.

Shadow fleets are half the story. The Baltic has seen six suspected seabed incidents since the Nord Stream explosions: the Balticconnector pipeline in 2023, the Estlink 2 power cable at Christmas 2024, and most recently the Fitburg, seized by Finnish police on New Year's Eve after dragging its anchor for tens of kilometres before it reached the Helsinki to Tallinn cable.

This is a pattern, not a run of accidents. Fourteen subsea cables connect Ireland, four of them to North America, and about three-quarters of the transatlantic cables in the northern hemisphere pass through or near Irish waters, most of them off the south-west coast. Intelligence sources say Russia has mapped them. Europe is already in a hybrid war. Ireland is not a bystander. We are the western flank.

We need to understand which vessels are present, how their behaviour is changing and which movements warrant closer attention. We also need that understanding early enough to do something useful with it.

Illegal fishing deserves the same attention

The need for better observation extends beyond the Russian threat.

Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing undermines efforts to manage fish stocks and protect marine ecosystems. It takes resources from legitimate fishers and threatens the food security and livelihoods of coastal communities. These consequences are particularly severe where authorities have finite capacity to monitor their waters.

For the people whose livelihoods depend on the sea, this is an immediate security issue. A protected area needs monitoring and enforcement that gives responsible fishers confidence the rules are being upheld, while giving authorities the evidence to decide where to patrol and what to investigate.

That means combining observations over time with vessel records and the rules that apply in a particular area. A vessel's presence, especially in the absence of a tracking signal, does not by itself establish an offence. It can, however, tell us where further investigation is needed.

Better observation can help make that investigation more focused and effective.

The commander's problem

Every navy faces the same arithmetic: a fixed number of hulls, a sea that does not shrink, a threat that moves. Ireland has it harder than most. The Irish Naval Service covers an exclusive economic zone of roughly 880,000 square kilometres, a fifth of the EU's entire fisheries area. From the bridge, radar reaches twenty-odd nautical miles for a large vessel and far less for a small one. Beyond that horizon, a commander is guessing, and every guess is paid for in crew, fuel and opportunity, because a ship committed to one contact cannot do anything else.

I have paid that price. Patrolling between the Tuskar and the Fastnet, I knew roughly where my target was and could not close it. When it finally came in, it was clean. The cargo had been moved somewhere in 250 miles of ocean.

Six months later, same situation, better information. A predicted intercept, a night transit, the ship held ten miles back under fishing lights, boats sent over the horizon to where the target would be in twenty minutes, not where it was. Two tonnes of narcotics.

The difference was not the ship. It was knowing where to look before we sailed. That is what a recognised maritime picture has to mean now: not just pixels, but what the vessel will do next.

What Ubotica does differently

Much of maritime surveillance begins with collecting data and searching for signs of trouble. Ubotica's Live Maritime Intelligence starts by predicting where to look, then gathering evidence to confirm what is there.

It builds a predictive risk model across a nation's exclusive economic zone: a map of where activity may warrant attention, now and in the hours ahead. It combines the locations of cables and other infrastructure with vessel information, sanctions lists and unusual behaviour.

It then selects and tasks the most suitable commercial Earth Observation satellites: radar through darkness and cloud, optical imagery when visibility allows, and radio-frequency sensing to help locate maritime activity over wide areas. Available resources focus on the highest-priority observations.

On satellites equipped with Ubotica's onboard AI, analysis begins in orbit, allowing vessel detections to reach operators before the full imagery arrives. On the ground, those detections are combined with AIS vessel-tracking reports and open-source intelligence. A vessel visible in imagery with no matching AIS report becomes a potentially dark contact for further investigation.

In recent operational environments, Ubotica has pinpointed dark vessels operating in Irish waters. A single observation can turn a search across hundreds or thousands of square kilometres into a targeted search area, while successive observations can maintain a picture of a vessel's movements.

For any commander, that is invaluable intelligence. It helps answer an immediate question: where should I direct my attention and deploy my limited resources?

Why I am joining Ubotica

Ireland's maritime security is inseparable from Europe's. Our cables, energy infrastructure and shipping routes connect us to our neighbours. Protecting fisheries and marine ecosystems demands the same cooperation.

Ireland's first Maritime Security Strategy provides a framework for action. Delivery requires sustained investment, coordination and technology that makes a practical difference today.

Ubotica offers Ireland an opportunity to contribute a capability of real value to Europe. Its AI has already flown in orbit.

I am joining to help develop that capability in Ireland and put it to work across European waters. My contribution will be to connect the technology with the decisions commanders face, protecting critical infrastructure and communities whose livelihoods depend on healthy seas.

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