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The U.S. Navy's Plans For Unmanned and Autonomous Systems Leave Too Much Unexplained - War On The Rocks
The U.S. Navy's Plans For Unmanned and Autonomous Systems Leave Too Much Unexplained - War On The Rocks
The U.S. Navy's Plans For Unmanned and Autonomous Systems Leave Too Much Unexplained - War On The Rocks
THE U.S. NAVY’S PLANS FOR UNMANNED AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS LEAVE TOO
MUCH UNEXPLAINED
GREGORY V. COX DECEMBER 10, 2021
COMMENTARY
The U.S. Navy is moving forward with its plans for a more distributed fleet in
which intelligent unmanned or autonomous platforms will play a significant role.
Unfortunately, many of the details about these novel systems are left to the
imagination — often a poor substitute for filling in the blanks. It may be that the
blanks cannot be satisfactorily filled when describing the infrastructure for
sustaining these unmanned systems. Rightly or wrongly, the Navy focuses most
of its discussion on the direct offensive contributions of unmanned systems for
combat with major powers on warfighting impact and metrics such as effects on
targets, capacity, and tempo. Less discussion focuses on the indirect sustainment
tasks.
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Not all automated systems will be offboard platforms, of course. Automation will
have a role to play in some of a ship’s onboard defensive systems. Our concern,
however, is with offboard air, surface, and subsurface unmanned vehicles that
will operate with some degree of autonomy. It matters logistically whether these
offboard systems are expendable or recoverable because recoverable systems
must not only be launched, but also retrieved, refueled (or recharged), and
maintained during the potentially long pre-combat period. Launching and
recovering those systems will occur with some regularity measured in hours,
days, or weeks. How often depends on design details of the systems themselves,
but smaller systems require quicker turnarounds (e.g., hours or days), and thus
daily launch and recovery operations should be expected, along with the
significant logistical burdens that must be borne for this to happen.
This leads to a fundamental tradeoff without a good solution. If the Navy wants to
develop small quantities of intelligent, precision offensive unmanned systems,
then those systems should be regarded as valuable and require their own (costly)
defensive measures. Otherwise they become effectively expendable. Conversely,
if the Navy wants to emphasize quantity over quality with inexpensive mass (such
as “swarms”), it needs to recognize that there is great advantage to the side that
owns the nearby land where even larger quantities of such unmanned systems
can be generated. In swarm warfare, quantity trumps quality. Either way, there is
an infrastructure tail that cannot be ignored.
To its credit, the Navy acknowledges the thorny problems with the command and
control of unmanned systems, recognizing degrees of autonomy in a spectrum
ranging from human-operated systems at one end to near-independent
autonomous systems at the other end. Midway between those extremes are
human-supervised systems and human-machine teaming. We are not going to
dissect this spectrum any further and will simply refer generically to unmanned
systems, recognizing that missions and technology will imply different degrees
of autonomy.
There are a multitude of ways to describe the problems that unmanned systems
might solve, but all should be about shifting the cost balance in favor of the
United States. In that context, one might seek to fill in the following blank:
Unmanned or autonomous systems solve challenges that are too _____________
for traditional warfighting approaches.
Possibilities for filling in this blank include “tedious or boring”: long-duration
surveillance and reconnaissance are good examples of this; “overwhelming,” as in
large salvos of anti-ship missiles, or enemy swarms; “dangerous”: missions
inside the ever-expanding enemy airspace and sea space are challenges that
might be addressed with unmanned systems; or “physiologically taxing,” because
humans need oxygen, in scarce supply at high altitudes and not readily available
beneath the surface. Nor is human physiology consistent with long-duration
missions in tightly confined spaces. Other problems unmanned or autonomous
systems could solve might be situations moving too fast for traditional
approaches — electronic warfare and electronic spectrum management fit into
this category, as do hypersonic weapons although many of these might be
addressed through onboard rather than offboard systems — or where a
traditional, manned approach might be too expensive, though the Department of
Defense’s record in this area is not stellar.
Technology Matters
Technology to support unmanned systems has been evolving for decades, even
centuries. These technologies, including those involving air, surface, and
subsurface systems, continue to advance for naval applications.
Along the way, some of the technology endeavors have been unsuccessful even at
small scale, but progress has been most pronounced for surveillance, mostly
airborne, transitioning from legacy strategic spaceborne surveillance to newer
operational and tactical airborne surveillance. When the dust settles, it may be
that surveillance from space, air, surface, and subsurface proves to be the most
fruitful application of unmanned technologies.
The Navy can sustain small numbers of unmanned systems today. If that is the
future that the Navy envisions, with only small quantities of systems that may be
superb in quality and capability, it should say so. But the illusion created by the
Navy’s strategy, whether intentional or not, is that the number of offboard
unmanned systems in use will not be small. Furthermore, unless the offboard
systems have exceedingly long range and endurance, launching and recovering
them must be done with some proximity to their operational locations,
presumably at risk of attack from the adversary.
This begs the question: What part of the Navy force structure and budget will be
used for large-scale sustainment of unmanned systems at sea? There are some
possibilities, but none look particularly attractive.
For example, one possibility is expeditionary sea bases. There are currently five
of these ships either built or planned that, depending on system design, could be
adapted or retrofitted for launch and recovery operations of multiple systems,
although how many and how quickly is unclear. Probably only two or three of
these sea bases would be available in an overseas theater during the weeks and
months before combat, and they could become high-value targets for the
adversary.
The Navy might use amphibious ships with well decks and flight decks. These
warships are an option, but they are not optimal for launch and recovery
operations, nor would retasking them to this effect be optimal for the marines
who conduct missions with these ships.
Submarines have some role to play. These boats have capability, but limited
capacity, for launching and recovering (mostly undersea) systems. Routine
maintenance of those systems aboard the submarine is unlikely.
Nearby land bases are another possibility, but not a certainty. As the U.S. Marine
Corps’ expeditionary advanced base operations concept evolves, the Navy might
find that unmanned systems can be useful for the defense of these land bases, but
their role for offense is less certain.
Finally, a new class of support ship is always an option, but there is no public
discussion of this option and nothing in the Navy’s current shipbuilding plan.
The silence is, indeed, deafening.
Iran has long posed the technical possibility of a swarm by sea, and the Navy
sometimes speaks of having its own swarm capabilities, although that discussion
appears to be transitioning from sea swarms to air swarms. Nonetheless, the
Navy’s current strategy for intelligent autonomous systems leaves its intentions
for swarm warfare ambiguous.
Consider the case study of the Nagorno-Karabakh war cited in the Navy’s
strategy.
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Dr. Gregory V. Cox is a semi-retired national security professional with nearly 50 years of
experience, mostly with Navy systems and operations. Over his career he has observed
multiple launch and recovery operations from Navy ships with (manned and unmanned)
offboard air, surface, and subsurface systems. Previously on the research staffs at the Center
for Naval Analyses and the Institute for Defense Analyses, he currently holds adjunct
positions with the Institute for Defense Analyses and Johns Hopkins University. The views
expressed here are nonetheless his own.
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