US Army Pacific is conducting maneuver warfare training exercises using mobile autonomous watercraft

By Kris Osborn, President, Warrior

US Army Pacific is conducting maneuver warfare training exercises using mobile autonomous watercraft to transport weapons, identify targets and function as a key networking "node" within a multi-domain combat theater.

Widespread use of disaggregated, autonomous vessels can increase survivability, enable dispersed yet networked formations and perform critical combat transport, targeting and attack operations while creating numerous fast-moving difficult to hit targets for an adversary.

"How do you leverage autonomous to do sustainment and operational maneuver? Recently out here in Hawaii, you know, we practiced with an autonomous vessel that was in the Hawaii operational area, yet it was being controlled only on the East Coast for a while. That is incredible. We can have an autonomous watercraft deliver sustainment or operational maneuver," Maj. Gen. Gavin Gardner, Commander, 8th-Theater Sustainment Command, told Warrior in an interview.

Army-Navy Connectivity

These modern Army Concepts of Operation, perhaps by design, align closely with the US Navy's Distributed Maritime Operations strategy which seeks to leverage autonomy, disaggregated formations, multi-domain networking and long-range precision fires to adapt to modern threat conditions and exact a combat impact. The Navy's Unmanned Surface Vessels have, for instance, been increasingly relying upon advanced algorithms to coordinate autonomous operations across groups of surface and air drones. Maritime warfare and amphibious attack will no longer be envisioned in a linear fashion as it was during WWII and the days of Iwo Jima.

In discussions with Warrior, Gardner agreed that the operational concept involved in deploying groups of autonomous, high-speed dispersed watercraft formations aligns with the Navy's successful Ghost Fleet or Operation Overlord effort involving the accelerated development of autonomous surface vessels capable of performing a growing number of tactical functions without needing human intervention.

There are key technical dimensions to enabling this

Scaling Technology and Operations

"Scaling" deployment and production is critical to bringing these concepts and technologies to significant operational life, as the military services are increasingly working with industry to refine and accelerate promising production strategies.

"I also think the technology is there that we can scale it such that instead of building the Liberty ships we were cranking out at the height of 1944 in order to ensure that the Allies had all the logistics and sustainment, we could crank out autonomous water vessels for very cheap, by the way. And then you just send them on their way and they become a targeting platform. If an enemy wants to go target small autonomous watercraft, well, then they're not targeting bigger platforms that, you know, have a much longer reach from our perspective....so it's kind of a another dilemma you put on an adversary that has to think about," Gardner said.

Gardner told Warrior that making this happen will depend largely on the military service's ability to inspire and leverage industry innovation and production capacity. Industry typically seeks to innovate and develop technologies and platforms which "anticipate" emerging military requirements to, in effect, close capability gaps and offer solutions.

"The American way of war has always been to rely with our industry partners. Go back in time and read the book, Freedoms Forge, for example. We would not have had the arsenal of democracy that we talk about today if it wouldn't have been with that partnership between the Department of Defense, which before then was the War Department and obviously US American industry. (So we do that today through our ability to contract capability forward," Gardner said.

Improving and modifying contracting to optimize industry's ability to innovate, Gardner argued, can generate forward-thinking collaborative strategies to quickly identify and integrate new technologies and strategies.

"What we owe industry is a long term need a long term vision of where we think we need them to supplement our gray Army watercraft to support the joint force. We think we know what that is and right now we are working on how to contract better," Gardner said.

Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a highly qualified expert in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University