Future Fleet: Unmanned But Not Unarmed

Baby step - but an important one - as discussed in our recent interview with Captain Pete Small.

Listen to "Episode 602: The US Navy's Unmanned Programs, with CAPT Captain Pete Small, USN" on Spreaker.

All according to the Navy/and Marine Unmanned Campaign Plan:

The Medium and Large USVs of tomorrow offer promising solutions to expand the sensor and weapons capacity of the current Fleet. They will be Program of Record, purpose-built vessels that support distributed maritime operations through the Navy Tactical Grid. The MUSV platform is designed as an unmanned sensor-ship, built to carry modular payloads, and standardized to integrate with current and future Navy systems. The LUSV platform will be a high endurance, adjunct magazine, based on commercial designs and built around a common missile launcher with an integrated combat system. The LUSV will add meaningful offensive weapons capability and capacity in Strike and Anti-Surface Warfare.

For the Navy from DARPA: The Angler Program

Hmmm. Which military service would be most interested in the features of this project highlighted below?


DARPA announces DARPA’s Angler Program Awards Contracts to Advance Autonomous Underwater Systems

DARPA has awarded six contracts for work on the Angler program, which aims to

DARPA artist conception

pioneer the next generation of autonomous underwater robotic systems capable of physical intervention in the deep ocean environment. This class of future unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) must overcome reliance on GPS and human intervention to support infrastructure establishment, maintenance, and resilience over the vastness of the ocean. The Angler program seeks to merge breakthroughs in terrestrial and space robotics, as well as underwater sensing, to develop autonomous robotic solutions capable of navigating and surveying ocean depths, and physically manipulating human-made objects of interest.
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The Angler program envisions numerous benefits, including:

• Establishing functionality for long-duration mission navigation and autonomy deprived of GPS and surface-based communication;
• Providing a first-of-its-kind long-distance undersea manipulation platform capable of fully autonomous operation; and
• Advancing perception systems to enable grasping underwater objects in degraded undersea environments.

The program is targeting three phases of development, culminating with a fully integrated prototype completing an underwater mission in a dynamic, open ocean environment.

Why, yes, the U.S. Navy, of course! Lots of missions covered in that list of benefits, aren't there?

The Future is at Hand: ACTUV and the Navy to Come

Future plans:

DARPA has successfully completed its Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) program and has officially transferred the technology demonstration vessel, christened Sea Hunter, to the Office of Naval Research (ONR). ONR will continue developing the revolutionary prototype vehicle—the first of what could ultimately become an entirely new class of ocean-going vessel able to traverse thousands of kilometers over open seas for months at a time, without a single crew member aboard—as the Medium Displacement Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MDUSV).
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“ACTUV represents a new vision of naval surface warfare that trades small numbers of very capable, high-value assets for large numbers of commoditized, simpler platforms that are more capable in the aggregate,” said Fred Kennedy, TTO director. “The U.S. military has talked about the strategic importance of replacing ‘king’ and ‘queen’ pieces on the maritime chessboard with lots of ‘pawns,’ and ACTUV is a first step toward doing exactly that.”

Or, as Robert Work put it:

We are going to remember this because how often can you be at the christening of a robot warship? Now, let me tell you, I'm going to talk a little bit about the Predator in just a few minutes, but in the United States Air Force, there are airplanes and drones. The Navy cannot make that mistake. There have to be warships. And it doesn't matter whether they are manned or unmanned. They will take the fight to the enemy. I'm on a ship that looks like a Klingon “Bird of Prey.”

It's – haze gray. If you look up front of the bridge, at the pilot house, you'll notice big bolts. You can take that pilot house off and this ship can operate autonomously. If the Navy falls in the trap of thinking of these vessels as somehow different than the other haze gray warships that send shivers down the spine of our enemies, wherever they may be in the world, they're going to make a damn big mistake.

Now, I've been waiting for this day for a long time. A long time. We are in a period of incredible technological flux. Advances in autonomy and artificial intelligence and autonomous control systems and advanced computing and big data and learning machines and intuitive rapid visualization tools, meta-materials, miniaturization. They are leading us to a period of a time of great human-machine collaboration.

This will be a change just like other momentous changes in our society. You see this human-machine collaboration in our business and manufacturing now. You see it in our daily lives and you're going to see it increasingly in warfare. So I believe, without a doubt, you're going to look back on this day just like people like you were sitting on the stage when the USS Nautilus was christened, the first nuclear powered submarine, or when the USS Enterprise was commissioned, the first nuclear powered aircraft carrier or when the DDG 1000 was commissioned, our first stealth battleship. And you are going to look back on this and say, "I was part of history."
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And it is designed to be very efficient. This ship you see before you costs a little bit more than $2 million to build. It was designed for an operating cost of $15,000 to $20,000 per day, per day. To give you a sense, a DDG [guided missile destroyer], that's $700k per day. We're talking $15,000 to $20,000 for this vessel to operate for 24 hours. An unmanned helicopter operating for 24 hours would cost $300k.

So just like what happened with Predator, I am absolutely salivating to see what is going to happen when this baby gets down to the [Commander, U.S. 3rd Fleet] after O&R has checked it all out, made sure it's safe, and see what our creative warfighters of the U.S. Navy can do with it.

You can imagine anti-submarine warfare pickets, you can imagine anti-submarine warfare wolfpacks, you can imagine mine warfare flotillas, you can imagine distributive anti-surface warfare surface action groups, you can imagine this carrying deception vans, electronic warfare vans. You can actually envision, just do the math, these -- we can build these for $20 million, five for $100 million, 25 for half a billion, 50 for a billion.

This area right here looks pretty good. We might be able to put a six pack or a four pack of missiles on them. Now imagine 50 of these distributed and operating together under the hands of a flotilla commander, and this is really something.

Want low cost, potent warships that require no manning, thus saving all that wasted space on the human needs for food, water, berthing? Get on it!

On Midrats 3 Jan 2016 - Episode 313: "Fleet Architecture and Strategic Efficiency with Barney Rubel"

U.S. Navy photo by MC3 B. Siens

Please join us at 5:00pm on 3 Jan 2016 for Midrats Episode 313: Fleet Architecture and Strategic Efficiency with Barney Rubel discussing

How do you balance cost, risk, peacetime habits and wartime requirements in designing and using the world's largest Navy?

CVN-78, U.S. Navy photo byMC2 Aidan P. Campbell

How do we maximize the most the utility of our platforms now, and create a future fleet best suited for what is coming up?

"Sea Control Ship" (1972 design)

Our guest for the full hour to discuss will be Barney Rubel, CAPT, USN (Ret.).

Robert C. “Barney” Rubel is a retired naval officer. From 2006 to 2014, he was Dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the US Naval War College. Prior to assuming this position, he was Chairman of the Wargaming Department. A thirty-year Navy veteran, he received his commission through the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps at the University of Illinois. He subsequently became a light attack naval aviator, flying the A-7 Corsair II and later the F/A-18 Hornet. He commanded Strike Fighter Squadron 131 and also served as the Inspector General at U.S. Southern Command.

Listen live or pick the show up later by clicking here or by visiting our iTunes page here.

Drone Wars: Combined Manned, Unmanned Carrier Operations

Shouldn't be surprise, should it?

I mean, that was the plan - right? USS Theodore Roosevelt Conducts Combined Manned, Unmanned Operations:

“Today we showed that the X-47B could take off, land and fly in the carrier pattern with manned aircraft while maintaining normal flight deck operations. This is key for the future Carrier Air Wing.”

Capt. Beau Duarte
Program Manager, Navy’s Unmanned Carrier Aviation office

Wave of the future.

More:

The first series of manned/unmanned operations began Sunday morning when the ship launched an F/A-18 and an X-47B. After an eight-minute flight, the X-47B executed an arrested landing, folded its wings and taxied out of the landing area.

Future of the U.S. Navy: Bigger Role for Its Military Sealift Command?

A glimpse into possible future steps of the U.S. Navy in Steven Beardsley's Stars and Stripes article, "With Navy strained, Sealift Command crews eye greater military role"

. . . Navy has handed over . . . much of its workload to the Military Sealift Command over the past 65 years, freeing up sailors to man destroyers, aircraft carriers and other warships.
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“I see the ‘M’ in military Sealift Command growing,” Rear Adm. T.K. Shannon, commander of MSC, said in a recent interview. “And when I say the ‘M,’ I don’t mean doubling the number of active-duty naval officers on our staff. I see the type of work we are involved in growing in that military element.”
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USNS Spearhead (JHSV-1) U.S. Navy photo by MC1 Phil Beaufort

The nature of recent U.S. operations has also played to MSC’s strengths. While international law prohibits auxiliary from participating in conflict with state forces, and MSC ships aren’t designed for warfare, the Pentagon has tapped civilian-crewed vessels for missions related to counterterrorism or piracy. The USNS GySgt. Fred W. Stockham, a roll-on, roll-off pre-positioning vessel, has anchored off the Philippines as part of a special operations task force. The USNS Lewis and Clark held captured Somali pirates on board in 2009.

As the article notes, there are lots of issues that may need to be resolved as this process expands.

Read the whole thing.

We had a discussion regarding a "MSC/USN dual crewed" ship with Captain Jon Rogers on "Midrats Episode 222:

Current Military Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Midrats on BlogTalkRadio

Hat tip to Lee.

Thoughts on the U.S. Navy of the Future: Capt. Wayne Hughes "Single-Purpose Warships for the Littorals"

VT Halter Marine photo Patrol Missile Craft

In a age of generalization and massive high dollar "do-it-all" warships, Captain Wayne Hughes offers up an alternative point of view in the pages of the June 2014 Naval Institute Proceedings with his thoughts set out in 'Single-Purpose Warships for the Littorals':

Foreign littoral waters have become an unsafe place to operate on the sea surface. Although the bulk of U.S. naval action has been in coastal waters since 1950, their significance has increased with the rise of China, the continuing threat from Iran, and the recent ventures of other countries, such as Russia. In these narrow seas, early warning and constant alertness are harder to achieve. Depth of fire is lost for lack of sea room. The clutter of inlets, differing coastlines and islands, coastal shipping, fishing boats, and oil rigs are all factors that complicate both offensive and defensive tactics.

For many reasons, a single-purpose ship is far preferable to an open-ocean multipurpose ship in situations that require a vessel to sail in these dangerous areas. The advantage of the single-purpose ship can be clearly illustrated by using lost combat capabilities as the basis of comparison. Assume a notional multipurpose ship has four. These might be surface-missile warfare, antisubmarine warfare, mine clearance, and the employment of helicopters or unmanned aerial vehicles. Since there is a high probability that one modern antiship cruise missile will put either ship out of action, the advantage in missile combat is 4:1 in favor of the single-purpose ship; when the multipurpose ship is put out of action in a missile battle, the Fleet also loses all its other capabilities. This is a tactical measure of combat advantage. (footnotes omitted)

Read the whole thing.

We had Captain Hughes on Midrats for an interesting discussion about a year and half ago, Episode 150: Policy, Fleet Size, and the Navy Next.

A Repeated Note on a Call for Small, Numerous Ships

Way back in 2008 we were discussing the shaping of the U.S. Navy fleet at The Time is Right for Revolution and the links therein. Part of that discussion follows:

CDR Salamander's Maritime Strategy Monday: the Revolt of the Commanders ought to stir up discussion - though I am not sure how many "flag bound" O-6s are reading blogs critical of the group think that has put us where we are. I do know that when on exercises it was common to acknowledge that some issues were "too hard" or "too time consuming" to let them dominate the exercise, though in real life one will not be able to "assume away" such problems.

In my view, during my last days being involved with such matters, we were not training senior officers in how to fight and how hard that fighting is against a determined enemy who has had time to build forces designed to exploit your well-known weaknesses.

So when CDR S calls for a "commander's revolt" I understand his frustration. And note that John Boyd paid for his revolution heavily while lesser men gained from his insight. The would-be revolutionaries need to understand the risks.

These commanders need some political help from someone who understands that we shouldn't have billion dollar ships doing missions poorly that could be done better by having many more mission-designed ships. To use a famous Navy phrase, "any ship can be a mine sweeper once." Real minesweepers can be reused after they have swept a channel- multibillion dollar "capital ships" cannot.

Given the promise of "network centric warfare," merely connecting a few huge platforms under-utilizes the potential for linking many small ships for greater tactical flexibility. Or, as Captain Wayne Hughes writes in Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat (p.286):

We have seen that the number of ships is the most valuable attribute that a fleet can have. We also saw that many small ships offer more tactical flexibility... The U.S. Navy is composed of large, highly capable ships, many of which have area defense capability. It was for defense more than for offense that the American navy sacrificed numbers for quality.*

The asterisk is to his footnote:

Another reason is because of the economies of scale. A large ship with three times the displacement of a small one will have three or more times the payload and probably only cost twice as much. Sometimes the ship must be big to carry and operate its payload, modern carrier aircraft illustrate. A large ship is also more comfortable for long cruises in many kinds of weather.

Hughes needs to be listened to. Sometimes the economies of scale and crew comfort need to be weighed against other factors, like winning wars and not being afraid to send your expensive ships into harm's way.

Where are we five years on? We are still having the same discussion - albeit the number of Littoral Combat Ships (more properly, "Littoral Drone Carriers" or LDCs) is growing. Exactly where the vast drone force is right now is unclear, though drones ought to be cheaper and easier to build in most ways - just turn the job over to robots as GM has done to most of its automobile manufacturing.

Smaller, faster, cheaper and dispersed in the theater where that matters (Southeast Asia) ought to be the U.S. Navy mantra for the next few months and years.

Not to the exclusion of the big gray hulls - as an adjunct force, not a replacement.