Uncrewed Maritime Vessels Must Leverage AI

In September 2024, the 33rd Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, issued her Chief of Naval Operations Navigation Plan for America’s Warfighting Navy. This Navigation Plan embodies “Project 33” in recognition of the fact that Admiral Franchetti is the 33rd Chief of Naval Operations. Project 33 sets targets for enabling the U.S. Navy to make strategically meaningful gains in the fastest possible time. This Plan has several components:

• The readiness component of the Navigation Plan has the goal of eliminating ship, submarine and aircraft maintenance delays and restoring critical infrastructure that sustains and projects the fight from shore.
• The people component of the Navigation Plan notes the goal of recruiting and retaining the force needed to fill officer, chief petty officer and enlisted ranks and delivering a quality of service for Navy personnel.
• The operational component of the Navigation Plan involves creating upgraded command centers for the Navy Fleet commanders and training for combat to ensure that the Navy has a warfighting advantage over its adversaries.
• Finally, the goal to scale robotic and autonomous systems to integrate more platforms at speed focuses on capitalizing on the inherent advantages that uncrewed systems bring to any navy.

While the first three components of Project 33 represent areas that the Navy has been seeking to improve for some time, the most intriguing part of the CNO’s Navigation Plan is the goal of scaling robotic and autonomous systems to integrate more platforms at speed.

The “Why” Behind the Commitment to Uncrewed Systems

Unmanned capabilities not only keep sailors out of harm’s way, but they provide opportunities to greatly expand the sea service’s warfighting capacity at less cost than traditional Navy vessels. The Navigation Plan adds more granularity to the “why” behind the Navy’s commitment to unmanned surface vessels. It notes that robotic and autonomous systems, by augmenting the multi-mission conventional force, will provide opportunities to expand the reach, resilience, and lethality of the combined manned-unmanned Navy team.

A short-term goal articled in the Navigation Plan is to integrate proven robotic and autonomous systems for routine use by the commanders who will employ them and to incorporate mature unmanned capabilities into all deploying carrier and expeditionary strike groups by 2027. The anticipated use of these unmanned capabilities will focus on key operational challenges across critical mission areas.

Focus On the Hybrid Fleet

The Navigation Plan puts special emphasis on the Hybrid Fleet. As Admiral Franchetti noted, absent a large infusion of resources, it will not be possible to build a bigger traditional navy in a few short years. Therefore, the Hybrid Fleet concept—a mix of 350 crewed ships and 150 uncrewed maritime vessels—is seen as a viable path to put enough hulls in the water to accomplish the Navy’s myriad global missions.

Navy officials have been laying the keel for the future Hybrid Fleet via experimentation and other efforts, such as standing up Task Force 59 and Task Force 59.1 in the Arabian Gulf, establishing the disruptive capabilities office, and “operationalizing” the integration of unmanned platforms into numbered fleets beginning with the U.S. 4th Fleet. The Navy is moving from experimentation to integrating robotic and autonomous systems across other numbered fleets.

The U.S. Navy’s commitment to a Hybrid Fleet represents a sound concept-of-operations to put more hulls in the water by fielding relatively inexpensive large- and medium-size unmanned maritime systems in lieu of trying to build more expensive surface combatants. Indeed, the unit price of an Arleigh Burke destroyer is $2.2 billion in 2024 dollars, while the cost of large- and medium-size unmanned maritime systems is a fraction of that cost.

Making Uncrewed Systems Affordable

While the unit cost of uncrewed systems makes them a seemingly affordable option, the devil is in the details. For years, if not decades, uncrewed systems of all kinds, especially uncrewed maritime systems, have been mired in a manpower-intensive paradigm.

One of the most pressing challenges for all navies is to reduce the prohibitively burdensome manpower footprint currently necessary to operate uncrewed systems. Manpower makes up the largest part of the total ownership cost of naval systems. If uncrewed maritime systems are to make up a significant part of any navy, the need to move beyond the “many operators, many-joysticks, one-vehicle” paradigm that has existed during the past decades for most uncrewed systems is clear and compelling.

For this reason, uncrewed systems (and especially uncrewed surface vessels) manufacturers are not only focused on the performance characteristics of their platforms (speed, endurance, stealth and other attributes), but are now inserting AI-technologies into their boats in order to make them more autonomous, aiming for a new concept of operations where one operator can effectively control multiple uncrewed surface vessels, which, themselves, will be “working together and communicating with each other” through the use of advanced AI concepts.

While the list of companies that produce uncrewed surface vessels is large—and growing—there are some that have been leading this effort. These manufacturers have fielded USVs (such as Saildrone, MANTAS, Devil Ray, Corsair, GARC, LRUSV and others) that have—or are planned to have—various levels of autonomy “baked in.”

It is beyond the scope of this article to do a deep dive into how all these uncrewed surface vessels will operate more autonomously than earlier generations of USVs. As just one example, the T12 MANTAS and T38 Devil Ray, both built by Maritime Tactical Systems, Inc. (MARTAC), have demonstrated various levels of autonomy in a number of U.S. Navy and Marine Corps exercises, experiments and demonstrations.

For example, the MANTAS and Devil Ray both have AI-technologies that enable them to abide by the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGS). In one Navy exercise, a MANTAS ran a 25-waypoint autonomous mission around San Diego harbor, demonstrating COLREGS compliance.

As these events continued, Navy event planners were keen to explore even more ambitious uses of AI-enabled technologies for USVs. During exercise Integrated Battle Problem 21, a T38 Devil Ray made a 150-mile round trip autonomous transit from San Diego to San Clemente Island while autonomously dropping two objects.

Working with U.S. Fourth Fleet, a T38 Devil Ray made autonomous, high-speed intercepts at more than 70 knots, as well as follow-on demonstrations designed to show how autonomous craft could trail and intercept drug-smuggling vessels. High speed for the uncrewed surface vessels are key to keeping up with narco “go fast” boats.  For this mission, the intercept speeds need to be performed at, or in excess of, 50kts.

More Uncrewed Surface Vessels & More Autonomy

To be clear, this is not a shout-out to one USV manufacturer, but simply “grabbing the headlines” from several transparent and well-chronicled Navy and Marine Corps events. The Sea Services have plans for an ambitious series of exercises, experiments and demonstrations this year and beyond that are intended to further “wring out” AI-enabled technologies.

If the uncrewed surface vessel industry is to thrive, it must leverage what the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps have achieved during these events and others and find ways to leverage AI-technologies more fully going forward. As the ability of these uncrewed maritime systems to perform a plethora of missions becomes increasingly dependent on a high degree of autonomy, we will likely see more emphasis on what’s inside the craft, not just attributes highlighted at trade shows. Whether used in the military or private sector, needing fewer operators will make uncrewed surface vessels increasingly affordable.