USN 'Ghost Fleet' Large Unmanned Surface Vessel (LUSV)

TomcatViP said:
Regarding unscheduled maintenance, I am pretty sure that unmanned doesn't translate into deserted during peace time. There would probably be some form of maintenance and monitoring crew onboard on such large (and sensitive!) vessels.
Remark that most of their time at sea will be for force training and defense posture. A robotic fleet doesn't need training, albeit constant testing.
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My understanding is that this is one of the schisms among the robotic fleet proponents: those advocating for truly unmanned vs. minimally manned.
  • Unmanned comes with cost savings. both direct, e.g., salary, and indirect, e.g., ship tonnage for food, potable water, accommodations etc.
  • Minimally manned has cost disadvantages but has humans for complex, or just unforeseen, situations where the AI/programming falls short
Personally, I fail to see how the same technology level that supposedly would allow completely unmanned vessels to cruise around for a months at a time also requires a frigate to have a crew of 200.

Some of it will all come down to the ConOps: a "loyal wingman" robot ship, that could even be remotely operated during especially tricky times, is a much less daunting proposition than an independently operating vessel.

I think cars provide a useful model here: while self driving, fully autonomous cars remain experimental, we've seen a profusion of specific features from them become commonplace, e.g., cars parallel park themselves, can do highway cruising on their own, can do emergency stops to avoid collision, and so on . . Based on this, the BB1984 plan would be:
  • have multiple, autonomous vessel research programs going on
  • implement proven features from the research programs into manned ships to reduce crew requirements
  • try to implement a "loyal wingman" vessel first that can not only draw on resources and remote operation from a parent ship, but also be "temporarily crewed" for especially complex, short term operations
 
Some of the crewing talk around the Ghost Fleet envisions the robotic fleet being "optionally crewed:" during peacetime they would have a small crew which would enable them to do things like presence missions and cross-training in addition to maintenance. In the event of a conflict, the crews would be transferred to fill up the (often under-crewed) combatants and the hulls would focus on being external magazines for the non-robot ships.
 
TomcatViP said:
A robotic fleet doesn't need training
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I don't think so, at least not for the immediate and medium term.
I'm pretty sure a robotic armed ship will be just like existing robotic armed planes (the MQ-xx drones), so will be operated by remote pilots, only many more than just one per ship.
And those operators will need training.

And that's before the baddies start jamming, hacking, and whatnot, and before stuff happens like it always does in war.

I hear all the arguments about cost savings without humans, but I'd be surprised if any sizeable ship had less than a dozen or three humans on board when in hot operations, unless for a very short extremely risky op.
 
news.yahoo.com

US Navy aims to field manned-unmanned fleet within 10 years

Several leaders at the Sea-Air-Space conference presented updates on key unmanned programs. Here are the highlights.
news.yahoo.com news.yahoo.com

Large USV

Gilday outlined a path to award a construction contract on the first Large Unmanned Surface Vehicles in FY25.

“The [capability development document] is being developed right now. It will deliver in ’23, and it actually lays out the specific requirement for LUSV,” he said during a lunchtime speech April 4.

Meanwhile, the Navy is turning to industry to begin tests on engineering plant designs that are reliable enough to operate for a month or more at sea without human intervention.

He told reporters after his speech that “within two months, we’ll be doing land-based engineering testing” at commercial test locations. Rather than wait until the Navy finalizes requirements and selects a vendor to put its design through round-the-clock operations ashore, the service plans to start testing multiple industry offerings now.

Defense News previously reported the Navy would begin industry-led testing even as the service builds a test site at Naval Surface Warfare Center Philadelphia Division in Pennsylvania.

Following a year of testing at these industry sites, the Navy will “decide how we’re going to put that engineering plant together and then make the investment in a land-based test site up in Philly, where we’ll run that engineering plant just like we’ve done with [destroyers], just like we intend to do with frigate,” Gilday said.

Gilday noted the service will complete the requirements document by the end of FY23; the land-based testing at commercial sites will begin in the next two months and wrap up in FY24; and the Navy will select an LUSV builder by the end of FY25.

The Medium USV program — for which there are seven prototypes in the water or on contract to be built — will follow behind the LUSV program. As Gilday explained, LUSV is paving the way in maturing the hardware for unmanned vessels and the software for autonomous behavior.

LUSV is to serve as an adjunct magazine, hauling around missiles that a crewed ship could remotely launch. MUSV will carry sensing and non-kinetic weapons payloads.

Even as this programmatic work on LUSV continues, Gilday said, the Navy must also invest in making the Large and Medium vessels operationally useful. He noted the service will experiment with underway refueling, remote firing, and new payloads for surveillance, electronic warfare, anti-submarine warfare and more.

“We’re going to improve our ability to command and control this ocean of things that a manned and unmanned navy brings to the fore,” he added.
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CIWS systems may not be all that effective against the low emmissions of a heavy ATGW-class of weapon launched by a ghost boat. Plenty big for a large caliber forward-firing cannon. Looks big enough it could potentially carry one or two guided torpedoes. Any of those weapons can certainly give frigate-sized ships a very bad day. The counter is probably airborne assets.
 
Congress mandated a 720 hour requirement in the 2021 NDAA for the LUSV with no human intervention or preventative/corrective maintenance on the equipment permitted during this time and that the engine system could not exhibit any failures or issues that would require maintenance of any kind during operations on an unmanned ship for 30 days.

Navy achieved the objective with four different contractors, all chose diesels, 2 Caterpillar, one Cummins and one MAN.

https://www.navalnews.com/naval-new...s-engine-testing-milestones-for-lusv-program/


PS In February presentation CNO Adm Franchetti "devoted much of her appearance to the Navy's burgeoning efforts to incorporate autonomous and unmanned surface, air, and undersea drones into its operations. It may take 15 years—three five-year Future Years Defense Program cycles—for today’s experiments to blossom into full-scale operations, she said" assuming that policy can only be achieved at the expense of the surface fleet.


https://www.defenseone.com/threats/...-robot-ships-speed-and-scale-cno-says/394162/
 

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Great--automated combatants to protect automated container ships from automated pirates.

Greetings Warfighter!
You have been recruited by the USN to defend the MAERSK Alabama against the Houthi Armada.
 
I see the Dutch are entertaining a similar concept as the American LUSV.

They are going with a lightly manned auxiliary missile-carrier instead of the US goal of an LUSV.

I predict the Dutch and the Americans will end up in a similar place but the US will spend billions more to get there.
 

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