By Logan Williams, Warrior Editorial Fellow
The U.S. Navy has chosen three companies to present their prototypes for an autonomous, unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV). These three companies are industry leaders and, instead of developing a highly customized new platform, these three companies are expected to present their prototypes within a month. Each of the three companies – the Norwegian Kongsberg Defense & Aerospace, Oceaneering (based in my home state, in Gales Ferry, Connecticut), and Anduril Industries based in California, which specializes in marketing controversial technologies to the U.S. military – has a functioning UUV platform or prototype that they are marketing as suited to the Pentagon’s needs.
Anduril’s Dive-LD was the UUV of choice for Australia’s Royal Navy. These two entities have partnered to facilitate the co-development of a modified UUV for Austrlia’s defense needs within the Indo-Pacific, using primarily Australian labor and manufacturing infrastructure.
Oceaneering is a company which specializes in providing services to the petroleum industry, for offshore oil and gas drilling infrastructure; however, it has been a longtime U.S. Naval contractor, providing technology to support underwater operations, in particular, equipment for underwater submarine crew rescue.
Kongsberg offers the Hugin sub-surface, autonomous vehicle, which it has manufactured since the 1990s. the Hugin has also been the platform of choice for Italy’s Navy.
Anduril Dive-LD & Kongberg Hugin
Both Anduril’s Dive-LD and the Kongsberg Hugin can operate at 6,000 meters below the surface; however, the Dive-LD can operate for 10 days consecutively, whereas the Hugin has a maximum consecutive operation timeframe of 100 hours (approximately four days). The reduced operation timeframe of the Hugin is a severe, possibly critical, deficiency. Sub-surface operations within the contested waters of the Indo-Pacific region demand extended periods of time with no intervention by supporting forces, which may not be able to provide maintenance or support rapidly due to China’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities, the inability to partake in multi-week operations would render the Hugin next to useless as a capability for the U.S. Navy.
These submarines, at approximately 20-feet in length, are much smaller than the U.S. Navy’s planned XL-UUV, the Boeing Orca, which has faced several project and delivery delays.
These contracts provided by the Pentagon will allow U.S. Navy units to rent or purchase any of these UUV platforms for testing, as a precursor to the Pentagon’s future choice of one such platform to enter into military service as the U.S. Navy’s standard, autonomous UUV of choice.
The purchasing of these off-the-shelf platforms is an excellent manifestation of President Biden’s first-ever, one of a kind, National Defense Industrial Strategy, which listed the purchasing of highly-capable off-the-shelf systems as a key solution to over-customization and scope-creep, as well as the bottlenecks that are currently crippling the United States defense-industrial base.
These UUVs are a crucial capability because, despite the stated goal, the United States’ defense-industrial base has not reliably produced two fast-attack subs per-year in over 30 years. During the term of President Ronald Reagan, the United States was able to produce a whopping four subs a year, but under President Clinton, the U.S. Navy effectively halted submarine procurement, destroying the manufacturers who were forced to layoff employees and retire critical infrastructure in response to capsizing demand.
While the U.S. Navy is hopeful that it can once again restore the requisite industrial capability to produce two submarines per-year, it needs off the shelf UUVs, which offer rapid procurement, to expand its submarine fleet, instead of waiting around for a miracle.
In an inevitable conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific, sub-surface warfare will be a deciding factor, as submarines enable the United States to sink Chinese surface vessels in contested waters, without having to expose the United States’ own naval fleet to China’s damaging A2/D2 capabilities, such as their over-hyped anti-ship ballistic missiles. Until recently, the sub-surface battle-space was an arena in which the United States could thoroughly dominate China.
For decades, Chinese submarines have been a laughingstock, built from whatever technology China could scrape together by reverse-engineering (stealing) Russian diesel-powered designs. These submarines were easy to track and easier to destroy.
This is no longer the case.
China has begun to produce a new generation of nuclear-powered, guided missile submarines. These submarines have the ability to strike targets within the United States, while remaining relatively far afield, at a standoff range far closer to China’s protective umbrella, and thus, far more difficult to destroy.
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These new nuclear submarines are also designed to be far quieter than previous Chinese models, making them far harder to detect and identify with passive sonar. These Chinese subs will require the United States submarines to use active sonar, which emits a signal to detect objects in the ocean, but which also makes the U.S.’ submarine easily identifiable — putting the vessel and its entire crew at extreme risk.
These new Chinese submarines do not approach the technological capabilities of the United States’ subs, but then again, they don’t have to.
The greatest impediments to the United States’ increased production of military necessities are the lack of available labor, a lack of cooperation from private industry and the academy, as well as a lack of support from an increasingly isolationist public — these are not issues with which totalitarian go
vernments such as China’s need to grapple.
China’s new submarines may not be on par with the United States technological frontiers, but they are certainly able to evade U.S. forces for an extended period of time. Combining this with the fact that China is able to boost production far faster than the United States ever could, the real threat from these submarines becomes clear: China may be able to produce just enough to overextend the United States submarine fleet, and then overwhelm that fleet.
This is why countering China’s submarine capability is increasingly a job for which the United States will need the assistance of its key allies, such as Japan, which just added a new, advanced, air-independent propulsion, diesel-powered attack submarine to its fleet, as a part of a larger effort to increase the size of its arsenal.
While these new UUVs are decidedly not attack submarines, they offer a range of possibilities for crucial capabilities.These UUVs could be used for reconnaissance and intelligence collection. However, these UUVs could also deliver a payload deep into contested waters, and they can be used for mine-clearing operations. Interestingly, a UUV/manned attack submarine pairing could theoretically be used to increase the lethality of the United States submarine fleet; if the UUV could use active sonar to identify Chinese subs, and rapidly communicate that information to manned subs, U.S. Navy personnel would not need to be put at risk to identify and destroy Chinese submarines, en masse.
While these submarines are no replacement for powerhouse, nuclear-powered, cruise missile fast-attack submarines, they are a stop-gap measure necessary to ensure that the United States is ready to wage war against China, should that day ever come.
Logan Williams currently studies at the University of Connecticut. He is an International Affairs Researcher; Work Published in Newspapers, Magazines, and Journals, Such As: Geopolitics Magazine, Modern Diplomacy, Tufts University’s The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Democracy Paradox, Diario Las Américas, International Affairs Forum, Fair Observer, History Is Now Magazine, UNC at Chapel Hill’s American Diplomacy, The Center for Military Modernization’s Warrior Maven Magazine
