Marine Corps Launches More Drones From Amphibious Assault Ships

By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

Surface, air and undersea maritime warfare drones can be “cached and hidden” on large amphibious assault ships to survey enemy coastline, hunt submarines, conduct forward undersea and surface reconnaissance, deliver small attack units or even launch precision attacks when directed by a human.

“Cached and hidden” were the words used by the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Christopher Mahoney when talking on Capitol Hill about how large amphibious assault ships can host, store, launch, hide and operate large numbers of drones.  These operational dynamics offer a window into part of the rationale behind a widespread Congressional, Navy/Marine Corps and industry push for more amphibious assault ship pertains to the increasing operational scope the ships are able to perform. 

Forward positioned amphibs can not only launch amphibious assaults if needed but also operate as maritime 5th-generation air attack transporters. A single America-class amphib, for instance, can deploy with as many as 20 F-35s on board, something of considerable relevance in the heavily Maritime regions of the Pacific where an ability to project 5th-gen airpower would provide a decisive margin of difference for any US and allied force needed to combat a Chinese air and amphibious assault. China has no vertical-take-off 5th-gen equivalent and only a few prototype carrier-launched 5th-gen J-31 prototypes, so the ability to forward operate F-35s on carriers and amphibs in the Pacific offers a decisive and impactful advantage with efforts to deter Chinese aggression. At the same time, amphibs can not only launch 5th-gen air attacks but also, as Mahoney referred to, they can operate large numbers of unmanned systems in support of an integrated, joint warfare effort.

Drone Explosion

Explosive growth in networking technologies, acoustic and electronic sensing and AI-enabled data analysis continues to propel an ongoing Navy and Marine Corps effort to exponentially increase its number of unmanned systems. Algorithms enabling increased autonomy, coupled with increasingly secure transport layer information exchange, are generating new concepts of operation for maritime and amphibious warfare, ideas which help implement the Navy’s larger Distributed Maritime Operations strategy. The thinking with DMO, an effort underway for several years now, is to enable a strongly networked, yet disaggregated multi-domain maritime force to vastly expand its combat engagement envelope and operational sphere using new generations of long-range sensing, radar, precision weaponry, satellites and a fast-growing fleet of drones.

A former Director of Navy Expeditionary Warfare seemed to anticipate this as far back as five or six years ago by advocating for the Corps to use big-deck amphibs as “motherships” controlling thousands of unmanned systems. “We will still need the bigs,” Ret. Maj. Gen. David Coffman said years ago at the Surface Navy Association when he served as the Director, Navy Expeditionary Warfare. At this time, Coffman envisioned a future operating environment in which large fleets of increasingly capable, autonomous unmanned systems could deliver supplies, provide supportive fires, search for enemy targets in high-risk areas, clear mines, find submarines and operate as forward “nodes” in a dispersed maritime formation.

Amphibious assault ships are critical to these kinds of disaggregated, manned-unmanned operations for several key reasons, Coffman told Warrior, not only because they provide the required protected mobility for Marines but because they add paradigm-changing operational capability to the force as well.