The U.S. Navy’s New Navigation Plan: Anticipating the Impact on Uncrewed Surface Systems

In September 2024, the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, issued her Chief of Naval Operations Navigation Plan for America’s Warfighting Navy. Admiral Franchetti describes this Navigation Plan as the strategic guidance to the U.S. Navy.

This Navigation Plan embodies “Project 33” in recognition of the fact that Admiral Franchetti is the 33rd Chief of Naval Operations. Project 33 articulates two overarching objectives: 

• An imperative to be ready for the possibility of war with the People’s Republic of China by 2027, and 
• enhancing the Navy’s long-term advantage.

While this Plan has several components, 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. This is perhaps the most intriguing part of the Navigation Plan and one that will likely have a major impact on the maritime industry.

Momentum to enable the U.S. Navy to leverage uncrewed systems has been building for almost two decades, beginning with the Navy’s Strategic Study Group report titled The Unmanned Imperative and other reports and studies up to and including the Navy’s UNMANNED Campaign Framework.

These aspirational documents have now found purchase in the Navigation Plan for America’s Warfighting Navy with specific goals and objectives for inserting uncrewed and autonomous systems into the Navy inventory.

Admiral Franchetti’s predecessor, Admiral Michael Gilday, articulated the goal of a “500-Ship Navy,” which includes 350 crewed vessels, and 150 uncrewed vessels. Admiral Franchetti has embraced this goal of a “hybrid fleet” and her plan to scale robotic and autonomous systems and integrate them with crewed platforms points directly to the goal of a 500-ship hybrid fleet.

Two recent real-world events have worked to accelerate the U.S. Navy’s development and fielding of uncrewed vessels. The first is the Ukrainian Navy’s use of uncrewed surface vessels to deny the Russian Navy the use of the Western Black Sea, as well as threaten Russia’s supply lines to occupying forces in Crimea. The second is Yemen’s Houthi rebels use of drones against commercial vessels as well as against U.S. and partner navies in the Red Sea.

The U.S. Navy’s & Uncrewed Systems

Uncrewed 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 for America’s Warfighting Navy adds more granularity to the “why” behind the Navy’s commitment to uncrewed 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 crewed-uncrewed 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 uncrewed capabilities into all deploying carrier and expeditionary strike groups by 2027. The anticipated use of these uncrewed capabilities will focus on key operational challenges across critical mission areas.

The Evolving U.S. Navy 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 is seen as a viable path to put enough hulls in the water to accomplish the Navy’s myriad global missions.
The Hybrid Fleet is moving forward. 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, establishing the Disruptive Capabilities Office, and “operationalizing” the integration of uncrewed platforms into numbered fleets beginning with the U.S. 4th Fleet.

Uncrewed Vessels Must Get to the Fight

One of the reasons that the Navigation Plan describes the Navy’s confidence in the ability of uncrewed surface systems to perform as expected next to the Navy’s crewed vessels is the fact that over the past decade, the U.S. Navy, along with allied and partner navies, have inserted commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) uncrewed systems into Navy and Marine Corps events to perform a wide range missions.

That said, small and medium uncrewed surface vessels (along with their air and undersea counterparts) must get to the area of operations to perform their various missions. Given that there is limited space aboard Navy ships, another means must be found. This requires a large uncrewed surface vessel to serve as a “truck.” The Navy wants LUSVs to be low-cost, high-endurance, reconfigurable ships based on commercial ship designs. Some potential candidates for this mission include the Navy’s program of record LUSV, the MARTAC T82, and the Ranger and Nomad USVs operated by Unmanned Surface Vessel Division 1.

Rather than speak in hypotheticals, since it will be in the water next year and will be built from the keel up to transport, launch and recover smaller uncrewed surface vessels of various sizes, the Devil Ray T82 is likely a leading candidate to serve as the truck most capable of carrying, launching and recovering smaller uncrewed craft. With a maximum payload of 35,000 pounds, the T82 could carry eight eighteen-foot T18 USVs configured for various Navy missions such as intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and mine countermeasures (MCM).

A Bright Future for Uncrewed Surface Vessels

This is not a platform-specific solution, but rather a concept. When Navy operators see a capability with different size uncrewed COTS platforms in the water successfully performing the missions presented in this article, they will likely press industry to offer even more-capable platforms to perform these tasks.

The U.S. Navy’s commitment to develop, test and field uncrewed surface vessels at an accelerated pace has profound implications for the maritime community. The need to field a hybrid fleet not at some distant time, but this decade, will likely mean that the Navy can’t wait for uncrewed surface vessels that are developed via the DoD’s often tortuous acquisition process.

What this means for industry is that commercial-off-the-shelf uncrewed surface vessels will likely receive a favorable hearing from Navy officials who increasingly recognize that the need for a hybrid fleet to emerge as soon as possible is compelling. The first step for industry should be to embrace this new security paradigm and think outside the box as to how their COTS uncrewed systems can fulfill a range of Navy mission requirements.