Autonomous Seabed Systems, Sea Denial and the Future of Freedom of Navigation: Deterrence, Escalation, Law and Confidence-Building, with Lessons for the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean

Autonomous and remotely emplaced seabed systems, including modern successors to the naval mine, are changing the strategic geometry of the sea. This companion to the author's study of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone examines their implications strictly at the level of strategy, law and policy; it deliberately contains no technical or operational detail. It argues that such systems strengthen sea denial relative to sea control, raise the exposure of carriers and other high-value units in contested seabeds, and therefore push naval power projection towards distribution, uncrewed persistence and partnership. At the same time they add three distinctive risks: accidents, because autonomous devices may misidentify or outlive their purpose; attribution failures, because seabed incidents are hard to assign; and escalation, because autonomy compresses decision time. The paper reviews the governing law (Hague Convention VIII of 1907, UNCLOS, the San Remo Manual, the principles of the law of armed conflict and the ICJ's Corfu Channel and Nicaragua judgments) and identifies where autonomy strains it. It then maps a ladder of arms-control and confidence-building options, from unilateral declarations and incident-at-sea agreements to notification regimes and a possible binding instrument, and closes with an agenda for coastal states of the Bay of Bengal and the wider Indian Ocean, whose economies depend on open sea lanes, undersea cables and secure seabed knowledge.