Navy LUSV Drone Boats to Fire Weapons With “Strike Payloads” Controlled by Humans
·
By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization
The Navy drone explosion continues and is expanding internationally as several fast-emerging Large Unmanned Surface Vehicles go on patrol in waters off Japan to advance interoperability, test and refine the boundaries of maritime vessel autonomy and coordinate disaggregated missions with key regional allies.
Two key 300-foot LUSV prototypes, the US Navy’s Mariner and Ranger, arrived recently in Yokusuka Japan to conduct semi-autonomous missions and likely work in close coordination with Japanese Self-Defense Forces, US Navy manned vessels and a host of surface, air or undersea unmanned systems.
Perhaps of greatest significance, these large vessels are an integral part of the Navy’s well-established Ghost Fleet program, a longstanding high-tech effort to enable large groups of surface unmanned systems to operate autonomously and semi-autonomously in close coordination with one another for various operations in a range of formations. Beginning with the Office of Naval Research years ago, the Ghost Fleet effort has made so much progress that it transitioned to the Navy … and is now embarking upon international missions. Ghost Fleet has made breakthrough progress in recent years, as advances in autonomy and new algorithms enable groups of unmanned surface vessels to share information with one another, coordinate missions specifics and adapt to changing maritime combat circumstances with little or no human intervention. Submarine hunting, forward reconnaissance, mine clearing and even attack missions can now be performed by forward unmanned systems operating with various degrees of autonomy.
Intended to support the Navy’s Small and Medium-class USVs, and network with undersea, air and surface drones, the LUSVs have the size, weight and power capability to operate large weapons systems and function as attack platforms. The Navy is of course clear that any use of lethal force will be decided by a human operating in a command and control capacity.
LUSV “Strike Payloads”
While much of the developmental specifics and plans regarding sensors, payload, radar and weapons integration is likely still being reviewed by the Navy as it examines and refines requirements, an interesting Sept. 5, Congressional Research Report refers to Navy thinking that indeed the large boats could be armed with “strike payloads” including anti-ship missiles.
“The Navy wants LUSVs to be low-cost, high-endurance, reconfigurable ships with ample capacity for carrying various modular payloads—particularly anti-surface warfare (ASuW) and strike payloads, meaning principally anti-ship and landattack missiles. Each LUSV could be equipped with a vertical launch system (VLS) with 16 to 32 missile-launching tubes,” the CRS report, called “Navy Large Unmanned Surface and Undersea Vehicles: Background and issues for Congress,” explains.
