When it Comes to Autonomous Boats: Show, Don’t Tell

Anyone who has attended a writer’s conference has heard writers, editors, agents and publishers repeat the same mantra: “Show, don’t tell.” You can likely intuit what this means, but just to be clear, if you are writing a western thriller and you are describing a bar fight, it can’t be told matter-of-factly. The reader has to hear the crash of beer bottles against the bar’s mirror, feel the gunshots and root for the sheriff.
What does this have to do with uncrewed maritime systems? A great deal.

The U.S. Navy’s embrace of unmanned systems accelerated in 2009 when the Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Studies Group (SSG) issued its report "The Unmanned Imperative." This concept focused on integrating unmanned systems into the Navy’s force structure as a way to ensure maritime dominance. The report was well received by then-CNO Admiral Gary Roughead and soon gained traction Navy-wide.

Over the next decade-plus this SSG report was followed by many others such as the Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap, Naval Research Enterprise Addendum to the Naval Research and Development Framework, Unmanned Campaign Framework and many others. These were necessary but not sufficient, because the Navy was telling but not showing, especially to a skeptical Congress.

However, to paraphrase what Cuba Gooding Junior said to his agent, played by Tom Cruise, in the movie, Jerry Maguire, the U.S. Congress has said to the US Navy: “We will give you the money if, beyond PowerPoint slides, you can show us that these uncrewed surface vessels you want to buy actually do something useful.

Photo credit: Tommy Hancock

Congress has a point, but to be fair, over the past decade the Navy and the Marine Corps have conducted numerous exercises experiments and demonstrations where industry has brought various uncrewed surface vessels and rung them out during these events.

Still, until recently, the Navy has not yet used these in an operational environment where Congress and other stakeholders will see them and have the confidence to provide the funding to accelerate their use.

As this occurs it will make Navy-After-Next more affordable having uncrewed surface vessels complement crewed ships such as $13B Ford class aircraft carriers and the $2.5B Arleigh Burke destroyers.

The other reason uncrewed surface vessels are valued is because of their ability to reduce the danger to human life in high threat areas, to deliver persistent surveillance over areas of interest, and to provide options to war fighters that derive from the advantages of these technologies.

So, what evidence can the Navy show that these technologically advanced vessels are adding value now?
At military-industry conference in San Diego several years ago, the then-Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Michael Gilday, expressed the goal to have uncrewed surface vessels accompany an aircraft carrier strike group by 2027 or 2028.

The Navy has been keen enough to make this happen that this is going to occur later this year when the Theodore Roosevelt strike group will deploy with a Leidos Seahawk uncrewed surface vessel and will participate in the Pacific Fleet, Integrated Battle Problem. This key milestone will signify the transition of uncrewed surface vessels from an experimental vessel to an operational part of the Navy fleet.

Another key milestone was recently achieved. For decades, the concept of operations for air, surface, subsurface, and ground uncrewed systems was built on the paradigm of: “One uncrewed system, many joysticks, many operators.”

Photo credit: Tommy Hancock

The need to enhance the autonomy of its uncrewed systems is especially acute for the U.S. Navy. For autonomous aerial and maritime systems deployed from U.S. Navy ships, every operator and technician must embark on the ship. Each person has a bunk, must be fed, generates administrative and overhead requirements, and has quality of life needs that must be met. This, in turn, generates its own additional manpower needs.

In a demonstration organized by the Joint Staff, three MARTAC uncrewed surface vessels, (T24 and T38 Devel Ray USVs) were controlled by one operator who was either in-the-loop or on-the-loop and who directed these USVs to swarm a target. This brings a new capability to make these uncrewed surface vessels more operationally relevant for the Navy-After-Next.

In a dramatic operational use of uncrewed surface vessels in an operational environment, earlier this year a Saronic Corsair 24-foot uncrewed surface vessel rescued two U.S. Army Apache pilots whose aircraft was shot down by an Iranian kamikaze drone in Iranian territorial waters. The ability to use a USV in a high-threat environment enabled the U.S. military to fulfill the moral imperative to: “Leave no one behind.”
Most recently, three Saronic Corsair USVs were used in an attack on an Iranian port, U.S. Central Command announced on social media. In the 25-second video posted Monday on X, the Corsairs approach an Iranian pier at Bandar Abbas near the Strait of Hormuz with what appears to be a Ghadir-class midget submarine suspended from a gantry out of water.

Congress has noticed. While the Congress hasn’t rained down funding for unmanned surface vessels, it has signaled a keen interest in USVs. An article in Defense One put it this way: “House lawmakers want the Navy to deploy drone boats faster.” The article went on to say: The Navy would have to detail its plans to buy and use seagoing drones under a suite of provisions in the House Armed Services Committee’s draft 2027 defense policy bill. The bill, which passed out of committee late Thursday, would require service leaders to devise a plan to buy, sustain, and operate small, unmanned surface vessels—ones weighing less than 50 metric tons and no more than 50 feet long.

On the Senate side of Congress, the same journal noted: “Senators want a new robot warfare-focused combatant command: A 4-star general would lead the effort, should SASC’s version of the NDAA become law.” The article went on to say: “The Senate Armed Services Committee wants the Defense Department “to adopt the future of warfare by permitting the establishment of the Robotic and Autonomous Systems Combatant Command,” according to the group’s summary of the National Defense Authorization Act. A committee staffer told reporters on Thursday that senators were inspired, in part, by Ukraine’s creation of a drone-focused military service.”

While these are not blockbuster headlines, they do represent a significant change in Congress regarding uncrewed surface vessels and should accelerate their development for the U.S. military. This, in turn, will likely result in economics of scale for the commercial use of these innovative craft.

While uncrewed surface vessels don’t represent a “magic bullet” for the U.S. military, they are changing the character of warfare and most importantly, saving American lives.