Sea drones see expanding role in US Navy deployments

The U.S. Navy’s use of unmanned sea surface drones has been on the rise even before one of the vessels helped rescue the crew of a downed U.S. Army AH-64 Apache helicopter on Tuesday off the coast of Oman.

Capt. Tim Hawkins, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, said the 24-foot Corsair drone was part of Task Force 59, the leading team for fielding unmanned vessels within the Navy.

”The Task Force began fielding these drones in theater in late March,” Hawkins said.

The Navy has also announced that a Seahawk unmanned surface vessel would be part of the upcoming deployment of USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group. The move comes after a successful 2023 deployment of the Seahawk on autonomous missions in the Pacific.

The choice of which kind of sea surface drone to send with crewed ships is expanding through the Navy’s new marketplace for medium-sized unmanned ships.

Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said integrating sea drones into deployed forces could enable longer-range surveillance and intelligence.

“It can mainly act as a forward sensor node — like a helicopter does, but with more persistence,” Clark said. “The MUSV has cameras in addition to radar and electronic sensors, so it can give the commander visual information that radar alone cannot provide. That can be useful in dealing with threats like Chinese Maritime Militia ships that look like fishing boats on radar but are in fact intelligence gathering platforms that might interfere with the carrier’s operations.”

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle has highlighted the role of unmanned vessels — on the surface, below the sea and in the air — as giving the Navy more options for “tailored forces” to respond to operational demands.

Instead of sending a carrier strike force to respond to a flash point, Navy leaders could mix and match responses to a pre-selected menu of options.

“What a hedge strategy avoids is a brittle, single-purpose force that is either overbuilt for the high-end fight and underused day to day or optimized for low-end crises and overmatched,” Caudle said in February.

That flexibility could help the Navy avoid long deployments, such as the record-setting deployment of USS Gerald R. Ford, which moved from Europe to the Caribbean and then the Middle East in response to force demands.

Unmanned vessels are a force multiplier at a time when crewed ships and the number of sailors are stretched thin. Autonomous vessels that can carry cargo and perform resupply and refueling operations can take the place of a crewed ship, which can be assigned other duties or other locations.

The Navy is attempting to accelerate the selection process by instituting a marketplace approach to the design and potential purchase of certain unmanned vessels.

Last month, the Navy named seven companies that will submit design prototypes for a Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel. The seven companies include Saronic, maker of the Corsair used in the rescue operation, and Leidos, whose Seahawk is deploying with USS Theodore Roosevelt.

Unlike other procurement programs, companies pay for and build the prototype to a set of basic standards: a vessel that can carry up to 25 metric tons at 25 knots in moderately rough seas for at least 2,500 nautical miles.

Every entrant that meets the requirements will receive $15 million and be eligible for a production contract. The Navy could choose all or none of the vessels.

Having a slew of one-off designs in the past would have been seen as a confusing collection of mismatched pieces. But Clark said a variety of responses to the specifications could yield new ideas and uses for the vessels, rather than trying to shape competing designs into a single prototype.

“The Navy needs MUSVs with different characteristics depending on the mission,” Clark said. “For example, sensing and deception/electronic warfare need long endurance but not as much speed. But being an adjunct magazine to a surface action group requires higher speed but does not require as much endurance.”

What might have been seen as confusion under earlier procurement systems has a flip side in a variety of choices.

“It’s a strength,” Clark said.

The use of drones in missions such as the rescue of the downed helicopter crew also underlines an important upside of unmanned vessels — they do not put crew members in harm’s way.

When an Air Force F-15 was shot down in April in southern Iran, manned helicopters and planes were used to find and extract the crew. During the operation, an A-10 Thunderbolt II was hit by Iranian anti-aircraft fire and limped back to friendly airspace before the pilot ejected.

During Tuesday’s rescue of the helicopter crew, the unmanned Corsair drone was guided to the incident site, located the soldiers and then carried them to safer waters before a helicopter was dispatched to complete the rescue.

Mark Cancian, a former Marine who is now an analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said pilot rescues are among the most difficult operations, putting more personnel in danger, in addition to those who need rescuing. While a drone was able to find and extract the two AH-64 crew, in World War II, a similar mission would have likely required a submarine.

“Thus endangering 80 personnel and tying up a valuable warfighting asset,” Cancian said. “It therefore makes sense to put unmanned surface drones in dangerous places where pilots might need rescue. This produces the same capability but at less risk than sending a crewed platform.”

More than 40 aircraft had been lost or damaged by mid-May since the start of the war in Iran, according to a congressional report.

Cancian said that while many Navy roles likely can’t be replaced by uncrewed ships, finding roles for then is a good strategy and potentially life-saving.

“Drones have long been envisioned as doing work that is too dirty, dangerous, or dull for human operators,” Cancian said.