Navy Envisions 500-Ship Fleet Including 150 Drones

Video Above: Can the Navy Handle Accelerating to a 500-Ship Fleet

The Chief of Naval Operations Navigation Plan 2022 sets the ambitious and strategically vital goal of developing a 500-ship fleet with as many as 150 unmanned systems, a concept intended to leverage breakthroughs in autonomy, AI-enabled computer processing, data networking and manned-unmanned teaming.

Unmanned Systems

“Unmanned surface and subsurface platforms increase the fleet’s capacity for distribution; expand our intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance advantage; add depth to our missile magazines; supplement logistics; and enhance fleet survivability,” Navy CNO Adm. Michael Gilday writes in the plan.

Maritime warfare is expected to be more dispersed and defined in large measure by breakthrough weapons and sensors with much greater range, precision and data-transmission capability. Unmanned systems and cross-domain air, surface and undersea networking in particular, form the conceptual basis of what could be called a transformation.

“This transition will rebalance the fleet away from exquisite, manpower-intensive platforms toward smaller, less-expensive, yet lethal ones,” Gilday writes in the pan.

Unmanned systems can conduct clandestine forward operating surveillance and reconnaissance missions, function as sensor nodes within a larger, multi-domain meshed warfare network. Advanced algorithms are allowing much greater degrees of collective or collaborative autonomy such that groups of unmanned systems can now operate in tandem with one another and adjust in real-time to changing combat variables. Gilday’s text interprets drones very much in this fashion, as he describes them as critical to rebalancing the fleet by expanding its size while saving money and simultaneously improving lethality.

“This transition will rebalance the fleet away from exquisite, manpower-intensive platforms toward smaller, less-expensive, yet lethal ones,” Gilday writes.