Hybrid Autonomy Sabotage: Innovation Anchored in Tradition

Introduction

Strategic Context: Sabotage as a Renewed Threat

Recent public statements by the United Kingdom’s Secret Intelligence Service and Security Service have highlighted escalating threats from hostile state actors conducting sabotage operations on British soil. The 2025 UK Strategic Defense Review and NATO plans for enhanced defensive measures against drone, cyber, and sabotage threats underscore the renewed strategic priority of protecting critical infrastructure, personnel, and supply chains from evolving asymmetric threats.

Against this backdrop of heightened alarm over Russian and Iranian sabotage threats to the UK, the world has watched as Ukraine and Israel have conducted significant, spectacular sabotage operations. These developments demand a reevaluation of the concept of sabotage in the modern era, likely threat evolution and enduring characteristics to inform security policy, planning and operations.

Purpose and Scope

This analysis provides a systematic comparison of contemporary sabotage operations with historical precedents to identify enduring operational characteristics versus novel tactical innovations, assess the disruptive impact of emerging technologies on traditional security paradigms, and inform defensive strategies and capability development priorities. The analysis excludes cyber-enabled sabotage operations and Cold War-era contingency planning, focusing on physical operations.

Methodology

Definitional Framework

Given the contested nature of terminology in this domain, this analysis employs the following operational definitions:

Sabotage: defined here as covert operations conducted by state actors behind enemy lines or within adversary territory to destroy political, military, or economic targets—whether personnel, facilities, materiel, or critical enablers. This definition draws from the WWII era Office of Strategic Services (OSS) sabotage field manual, which emphasizes the deliberate destruction of enemy capabilities through clandestine means. While sabotage operations may employ proxies, agents, or sympathizers, this analysis focuses on operations with direct state control.

Terrorism: in light of significant definitional analysis in the field, this analysis adopts a narrow operational definition focused on tactics and targets rather than ideological motivations. We examine attacks by non-state actors whose tactics, modus operandi, operating environment, and targets parallel those defined as sabotage above. Mass civilian casualty attacks characteristic of contemporary Islamic extremist terrorism fall outside our analytical scope. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) campaign provides relevant case studies due to its focus on military, political, and infrastructure targets employing methods analogous to state sabotage operations.

This definitional approach enables comparison across state and non-state actors while maintaining focus on operational characteristics rather than political legitimacy or motivational factors. The distinction between sabotage and terrorism in this analysis is primarily one of actor type (state vs. non-state) rather than tactical methodology.

Analytical Framework

The comparative analysis employs the following eight operational factors assessed on a three-tier ordinal scale (low, medium, high):

• Logistics: Requirements for personnel, materiel, transportation, and communications support
• Range: Operational distances from staging areas to targets
• Coordination: Complexity of multi-element synchronization
• Resources: Human and material requirements, including specialized capabilities
• Intelligence: Information requirements for planning and execution
• Secrecy & Surprise: Operational security and tactical deception for the attack to remain hidden, and the extent to which the attack is characterized as ‘unthinkable’ or ‘unimaginable’ in post-attack coverage.
• Precision: Accurate, bounded, intentional, and discriminate targeting.
• Exposure: Time spent operating within a hostile environment, particularly in the attack execution and post-attack recovery phases of an operation.

Target-Based Categorization

To ensure systematic comparison across temporal and technological contexts, operations are organized into four target-based categories: Aviation Assets (attacks on airfields, aircraft, and aviation facilities), Naval Assets (operations against warships, naval bases, and maritime infrastructure), Leadership (assassination operations against high-value individuals), and Infrastructure (attacks on power generation, communications, and industrial facilities).

This categorization enables like-for-like comparison between contemporary and historical operations, controlling for target-specific operational requirements and constraints—a case study from each context (present day, WWII, PIRA) for each of our target categories is selected for detailed analysis using the eight-factor framework detailed above.

Case Study Selection

This section details the case studies selected for analysis, and the associated rationale for inclusion, as well as notable exclusions. Figure 1 summarizes our case studies:

Figure 1: Overview of case study comparison

While this analysis excludes Cold War-era Soviet, US, and NATO sabotage case studies, the following insightful analyses were examined: a 2024 study by Richterova et al analyses Russia’s new ‘gig economy’ sabotage, another 2024 from Richertova article explores the historic context of Soviet sabotage and the 2020 study by Sinai examines Cold War ‘stay behind force’ concepts.

Present Day Cases:

• 2025 Israeli Operation Rising Lion against Iranian nuclear facilities demonstrates the integration of human intelligence, covert logistics networks, and autonomous drone capabilities.
• 2025 Ukrainian Operation Spiders Web coordinated attacks on the Russian strategic bomber fleet demonstrate long-range, AI-enhanced multi-platform coordination.
• 2024 Israeli assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran demonstrates precision leadership targeting in hostile overseas territory against a high-level target at a secure location.
• 2022 Ukrainian sea drone assault on Sevastopol Naval Base demonstrates long-range, drone-based targeting of naval assets.

The 2024 Israeli pager operation against Hezbollah was excluded due to the unprecedented scale of the operation, which lacks historical parallels despite the UK Special Operations Executive (SOE) efforts to create novel, disguised explosives and weapons.

The 2025 Ukrainian integrated sea-air drone platform attacks were omitted in favor of the sea-drone operation, as they primarily targeted energy infrastructure, not military maritime assets.

World War II Cases:

• 1942 UK Operation Albumen commando raid on a German airfield
• 1942 UK Operation Anthropoid SOE & Czech resistance assassination of Reinhard Heydrich
• 1942 UK-Norwegian Operation Title attempted a manned torpedo attack against a German warship
• 1943 UK-Norwegian Op Grouse and Op Gunnerside commando raids on Vemork power station

We selected the first Chariot manned torpedo attack against the German Tirpitz battleship (despite operational failure) over the subsequent X-Class mini-submarine operation (Operation Source) to match the Ukrainian use of sea surface drones (and the fact that we have not examined Ukrainian sub-surface drone attacks, such as the June 2025 attack against the Kursk Bridge). 

PIRA Cases:

• 1990 Bombing of UK Navy RFA Fort Victoria as a naval asset target case study
• 1991 Mortar attack on 10 Downing Street (the UK Prime Minister’s official residence) as a leadership target case study
• 1994 Heathrow airport mortar attack as an aviation target case study
• 1996 Bombing plot targeting electricity substations as an infrastructure target case study

We opted to consider the PIRA 10 Downing Street attack over the PIRA Brighton bombing attack targeting PM Thatcher or the bombing assassination of Lord Mountbatten in County Sligo, Republic of Ireland, as the 10 Downing Street attack occurred in London (UK capital city) and is the more recent attack.

We opted to exclude the September 2000 Real IRA rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack on SIS headquarters as it was conducted by RIRA, despite being a relevant tactical case study in terms of considering the potential to replace a manned craft with a weapons-bearing sea surface autonomous drone, akin to the Ukraine attacks against Russian naval assets.

Comparative Analysis

Aviation Asset Target Comparison: Analysis of the Ukrainian Operation Spider’s Web against Russian strategic aviation assets reveals significant tactical advantages from drone employment: Range Extension (operational reach increased from tens to hundreds of kilometers, reliant on the ability to covertly transport and pre-position, and remotely activate coordinated launch), exposure reduction (elimination of human presence in hostile territory during execution), and enhanced precision (real-time guidance of increased number of strike assets versus on the ground, ad-hoc limited strikes from human on-target attack force).  Historical comparison demonstrates continuity in deception requirements and logistical complexity, while highlighting the transformative impact of remote/autonomous platforms.

Naval Asset Target Comparison:  The Ukrainian Black Sea Fleet headquarters attack exemplifies the convergence of surface and aerial drone capabilities, creating multi-domain challenges for maritime security. Key innovations include: platform integration (coordinated sea-air drone operations represents a significant tactical evolution, impacting operating range cross-domain defense planning), distributed launch (increased freedom of operation, ability to launch from wide coastal areas rather than dedication facilities or specialized warships), and cost-capability ratio (cost and scale benefits as a result of commercial technology adaptation).

Infrastructure Target Comparison:  Israeli Operation Rising Lion demonstrates sophisticated integration of human intelligence, cyber capabilities, and kinetic effects. The operation’s success relied on Extended Secret Preparation (multi-year infiltration and pre-positioning), Sophisticated, timely intelligence and planning fusion (AI-enhanced target selection and operational planning), and Tactical Surprise (despite heightened security environments).  Here, too, the essential role of secrecy, covert supply chains, transportation, and storage within a hostile operating environment is clear.

Leadership Targeting Target Comparison:  The assassination of the Hamas leader in Tehran reveals minimal technological disruption in close-access operations, emphasizing the enduring centrality of human intelligence and operational tradecraft.  The ability to gain covert close physical access/proximity to targets (locations, facilities, or the target in transit) remains vital. However, recent attacks employing standoff weapons and the potential for long-range aerial drones change what counts as close physical proximity.

Key Findings

Technological Disruption

The emergence of ‘hybrid autonomy sabotage’, where covert human operations leverage autonomous or semi-autonomous unmanned systems, has created significant operational advantages for attackers:

• Extended Operational Range: Removal of human limitations enables continental-scale operations, as the speed and range of unmanned platforms extend the area of operations of attackers
• Reduced Tactical Exposure: Remote/autonomous platforms minimize personnel risk on targets, and therefore may change attacker cost-benefit calculus, lowering the barrier to execution
• Enhanced Precision: Real-time guidance and AI-enabled targeting increase the precision, but also the stealth and resilience of attacks
• Cost Accessibility: Commercial technology adaptation democratizes capabilities, shaping attacker cost-benefit calculus towards a lower barrier to execution

Enduring Characteristics

Despite the disruptive impact of technological advances, fundamental requirements persist:

• Covert Networks & Operational Security: The ability for attackers to operate in secret to organize, plan, transport, store, and move remains critical.
• Border Security: Physical access control remains foundational to counter-sabotage, as porous borders undermine the most sophisticated access and security controls, and large expanses of open habitat are readily exploited by attackers to prepare, train, and organize
• Intelligence Primacy: Target development and operational planning require sophisticated collection, though the radical expansion of open source intelligence capabilities offers attackers significant benefit in comparison to historic operations.
• Deception: Camouflage, disguise, and concealment are enduring essential components for both covert planning and tactical surprise.

Security Implications

Several recent analyses have analyzed the Ukraine war to identify insights for modern warfare, including lessons for modern warfare, how Ukrainian Special Operations experience can inform future US military warfighting, and special forces operations.

This analysis focused on implications primarily from a ‘defender’ perspective – that is, what it means to secure and protect vital personnel, assets, and facilities in the context of hybrid autonomous sabotage.

The impact of technological disruption has a direct impact on the planning, resource allocation, and intelligence efforts of the security community, including:

• Perimeter Redefinition: Security zones must account for long-range aerial and maritime drone threats, with direct consideration for wide area surveillance, early warning intelligence systems, and a reinterpretation of proximity
• Multi-Domain Integration: Air, sea, and ground defenses require unified command structures, supported by integrated intelligence and information, and cross-domain physical protection systems
• Supply Chain Security: Enhanced screening for dual-use technologies and components, suppliers, logistics operations, and shipments to identify weaknesses, enhanced surveillance, and proactive assurance
• Intelligence-led Disruption: Identification and disruption of attackers and their people networks must remain a priority for intelligence and security organizations, including the private sector
• Counter-Intelligence Enhancement: Proactive vigilance for the detection and disruption of insider threats and adversary espionage operations remains essential, including enhanced operational security awareness and behaviors within defender organizations

Future Considerations

Emerging Threats

Considering the radical rate of tactical and technological innovation over the past two years, and the trends of continued technological advancements—and AI-enabled autonomy in particular—hold the prospect for continued threat evolution. Here we present key focus areas identified in our analysis.

Continued advances in drone range and payload, coupled with increased autonomous navigation, targeting, mission planning, and deception technologies, will further elevate sabotage threats. The ability to easily integrate non-kinetic effectors (such as electronic warfare payloads) onto drone platforms, as part of synchronized coordinated attacks, can further expand tactical effectiveness and sophistication.

Potential for long-range, large-scale, cross-domain autonomous swarm attacks would create a class of threat that can overwhelm even the best-prepared point defenses. The long-hypothesized ‘Micro-Drone Assassination’ concept, in which miniaturized platforms are able to navigate to, access, and navigate through previously secure ‘hard target’ spaces to locate, identify, and strike high-value personnel, is a clear evolution of current technology and tactics.

While much of the technology for weaponized drones is retained in state entities, the prospect of the proliferation of existing weaponized drones (or the means to easily adapt civilian drones with homemade explosives/weapons) into criminal, terrorist, and other non-state threat actors represents an ongoing national security concern.

Defensive Evolution

Our analysis has identified the following concepts for further consideration by defense and security stakeholders:

• Extended Security Perimeters: Surveillance and interdiction capabilities must expand from traditional facility boundaries to account for drone launch sites potentially hundreds of kilometers distant, including mobile coastal launch points for maritime targets
• Supply Chain Infiltration Detection: Enhanced tracking of the export and sales of weaponized drones, together with monitoring of dual-use technology purchases, with particular focus on commercial drone components, communications equipment, and explosive precursors that enable “commercial-off-the-shelf lethality” of weaponized drones employed in recent operations
• Human Network Disruption: Renewed emphasis on counter-intelligence operations targeting pre-positioning activities, safe house networks, and logistics chains that remain essential despite technological advances
• Multi-Domain Sensor Integration: Unified detection systems spanning air, sea, and ground approaches with automated correlation capabilities to identify coordinated attack preparations across domains

Follow-On Research

This study was a short, limited comparative analysis that provides initial analytical conclusions.  There remains much research to characterize the evolving threat, security implications, and to develop effective responses.

We propose three strands of follow-on research:

• Enhanced Analysis: While our rapid, limited analysis has highlighted key insights, further in-depth analysis will develop a stronger evidence base for decision-making and planning.  We recommend an expanded study to include the Cold War era and expanded comparative analysis, and a more sophisticated, structured futures analysis.
• Technological Threat Tracking & Prototyping: Our analysis is based on reported operations and technology from Ukraine and Israel, and is therefore reactive in nature.  The potential to be proactive – to actively imagine, research, and prototype ‘the next evolution’ based on operational insights and target vulnerabilities would provide a greater chance for planners to stay ahead of the threat landscape.  We recommend the formation of a controlled, secure prototyping effort with trusted stakeholders to develop and test sabotage threat concepts.
• Enduring rapid iteration, integrated red teaming capability: Our limited analysis was a static, point-in-time comparison. The ability for attackers and defenders to learn from each other, to dynamically calibrate decision-making and actions, is absent.  We recommend the formation of an enduring group of trusted stakeholders to conduct realistic (with input from the threat prototyping effort described above, plus threat and operations experts).

Conclusions

Contemporary sabotage operations represent a marked shift toward hybrid autonomy sabotage.  They are high-caliber evolutions of longstanding operational concepts, resting on the enduring imperatives of secrecy, intelligence, deception, and human networks.

As these capabilities proliferate, defenders must balance targeted technological adaptations with strengthened counterintelligence and physical security, recognizing that future threats are likely to involve autonomous, cross-domain weaponized systems deployed in unconventional ways.

In assessing what has changed – and what has not – this analysis confirms that effective counter-sabotage strategies require sustained investment in traditional protective security and intelligence operations, alongside enhanced wide-area surveillance, supply chain integrity, and operational resilience.

ANNEX A: Comparative Analysis Data

This section contains the case study comparison analysis data for each of our four cases, color-coded to guide the reader to positive and negative judgments.

Airfield Case Study Analysis

Table A1: Comparative analysis of airfield attacks

Naval Asset Case Study Analysis

Table A2: Comparative analysis of naval asset attacks

Infrastructure Case Study Analysis

Table A3: Comparative analysis of infrastructure attacks

Leadership Assassination Case Study Analysis

Table A4: Comparative analysis of leadership assassination attacks