Here’s the DARPA project it says could pull the Navy a decade forward in unmanned technology

[Get Ya Wig Split]

WASHINGTON – A project inside the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has the potential to pull the Navy’s unmanned surface vessel aspirations forward a decade, a senior DARPA official said Wednesday at the annual C4ISR Conference.

DARPA’s effort to develop a ship designed from the keel up to operate without humans, known as “NOMARS” for “no mariners,” is a separate effort from the Navy’s quest to develop a family of large and medium unmanned surface vessels. But the benefits of that program, if successful, could be a giant leap forward for the concept the Navy is developing, said Mike Leahy, who heads the Tactical Technology Office at DARPA.

The Navy “will only be able to go so far with where the technology has matured,” Leahy said.

“What we’re able to do is link to that group [developing USVs for the Navy], get information about what missions they are trying to accomplish, the sizing and other constraints, feed that into NOMARS project so that we can take the same class of ship – looking at the same ideas in terms of a hull form – and when we are successful we can dump that right into their tranche and pull that forward a decade from where it might have been on a traditional path.”

The Navy and DARPA have been closely linked in efforts to develop unmanned platforms but DARPA’s NOMARs will remain an independent effort, Leahy said.

The Navy has “been involved in the source selection, they’re involved in the testing we’re doing, so that we can make sure that information is flowing,” Leahy said. “But we will reserve the right to take risks that may not be in the direction they want to go. Because sometimes learning what does not work is even more valuable than what does.

“The physics is going to tell you what you need to know, and you can’t cheat it.”

Another Option

The Navy is currently pursuing both a large and medium unmanned surface vessel that can perform missions for the surface Navy as a means of increasing aggregate naval power without wrapping a $2 billion hull around 96 missile tubes, as Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday has said publicly, referencing the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.

A recent study by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments said the Navy was barking up the wrong tree in its pursuit of an optionally manned large unmanned surface vessel, saying it should instead pursue an “optionally unmanned” corvette that could perform the normal range of peacetime surface Navy missions and perhaps be used as an unmanned external missile magazine in the event of conflict.

The drive toward integrating unmanned surface vehicles in the force, which Navy officials suggested could make up a significant portion of the future fleet’s force structure, was kicked off in earnest with the rollout of the 2020 budget.

Senior Navy officials have talked about the LUSV as a kind of external missile magazine that can autonomously navigate to and integrate with the force, then shoot its missiles and return for reload, keeping the big manned surface combatants in the fight and fielded longer.

https://www.c4isrnet.com/2020/05/06...navy-a-decade-forward-in-unmanned-technology/

 

[Pax Ottomana]

Okay, but how will it perform in a modern battle theater with heavy ECM? What does it do when it can't transmit/receive radio signals from base, or GPS satellites? This is a general problem with many unmanned platforms.

 

[dBSPL]

Let's give an example on a smaller scale: the producing tactical drones (which mostly operates in cramped EW active war theaters) are now quite general worldwide. Many country can combine ready-made avionics packages to make remote controlled drones. However, few countries are capable of producing unmanned aircrafts with full autonomous duty capability in non-GPS environments and under heavy EW conditions(Or almost they reached this level). USA comes first among these countries. The US defense budget, companies and universities are investing in related technologies in excess of billions of dollars each year. we are in the process of transition to fully autonomous systems thx to AI. Similar projects related to the air forces are also being carried out in recent years. Even in Turkey, a few projects are carried out on a different scales. It is quite possible for the USA to allocate huge funds to these technologies for many years.

The threshold for naval platforms is higher (additional matured technologies needed), but it is likely to become an area where unmanned systems will become widespread as sooner or later as the todays air forces. My guess is that when the defense industries of the countries reach the level that can produce unmanned fighter jets(probably will needs advanced deep learning and interpretation), their common systems and artificial intelligence capacity will enable these countries to make blue water USVs.