USS Zumwalt sails with an Independence-class Littoral Combat Ship

WASHINGTON: The Navy is preparing a first-of-its-kind operational command to test and develop concepts for its new generation of unmanned surface vessels, a major step in getting autonomous ships into the fleet.  

The establishment of Unmanned Surface Vessel Division One in 2022 comes as the service is pressing hard to design and field a range of unmanned ships capable of deploying deep into contested waters far in front of crewed ships to hunt mines, monitoring Chinese ships and submarines, and launch ship-killing missiles.

The new command will be “purpose-built to train and operate USVs at scale,” Capt. Henry Adams, Commander Surface Development Squadron ONE, told Breaking Defense. 

The new command will fall under Adams’ SURFDEVRON 1, and Adams, who retires Thursday, considers it one of the biggest accomplishments of his two-year tenure. “Getting the agreement from ‘big Navy’ to allow the surface force to establish the subordinate command whose day job is to train and operate USVs is a big deal,” he said, “and it is going to be that initial operational unit from which we’ll be able to scale USV training, maintenance, and operations.” 

Established in 2019, SURFDEVRON 1 has been one of the more innovative commands in the Navy, bringing together the service’s first unmanned ships and working to integrate them with the first two of three eventual Zumwalt destroyers — a ship which has struggled to find a role or real mission within the fleet.

Adams’ command is preparing to help run a major operational exercise in April that will see Medium Unmanned Surface Vessels like the Sea Hunter and Sea Hawk, which have been a major focus of Navy leadership, run through drills with the USS Zumwalt.

All of those pieces will come together in April off the California coast for the Fleet Battle Problem exercise, designed to allow the Navy to take a hard look at how its new unmanned ships can begin integrating with crewed ships and drones.

The exercise will include the Super Swarm project, a secretive Office of Naval Research experimental effort to operate swarms of small drones, and the MQ-8B Fire Scout UAV launched from a Littoral Combat Ship, as well as the MQ-9 Sea Guardian UAV. The Fire Scout and Sea Guardian will integrate with both Navy and Marine Corps units.

On the water, Sea Hunter and Sea Hawk “will work with crewed ships by running anti-submarine warfare and building maritime domain awareness,” according to Navy spokesman Lt. Tim Pietrack. The MQ-9 Sea Guardian will also expand its traditional ISR mission by working with both Navy and Marine Corps systems in hunting for submarines as well. 

The submarine-hunting mission is taking on vastly more importance as newer, more capable Chinese submarines are built and deployed. The Office of Naval Intelligence has estimated that Beijing will launch around 10 new submarines by 2030, bringing the total to around 76 boats. The Russian submarine fleet is smaller, at about 58 boats, but is considered far more advanced than its Chinese counterpart.

After struggling for years to complete work on the problematic Zumwalt destroyers, the exercise will put to the test Navy plans to finally carve out a role for the ships. The newest Zumwalt, USS Michael Monsoor, will command and control both “manned and unmanned forces to conduct long-range, multi-domain fires,” during the exercise, Pietrack added.

The findings of the exercise will be pumped back into the acquisition arm of the Navy to better understand what these early technologies bring, and how sailors actually used them — or didn’t — in an operational scenario.

“Certainly in my career, this is the largest and most ambitious effort to integrate the sheer number of platforms and payloads into one integrated underway event,” Adams said. “It’s also shaped around relevant tactical vignettes that are based on actual fleet contingencies.”

The SURFDEVRON 1 office will continue to grow over the next year, adding two large unmanned ships that are part of the joint Navy/Strategic Capabilities Office Ghost Fleet Overlord program.

The Overlord effort is the cornerstone of the Navy’s plan to begin building larger unmanned ships that can act as firing platforms for anti-ship missiles, vastly expanding the Navy’s punch and playing a key role in the dispersed operations the Pentagon is looking to implement in the Pacific.

Late last year, the first Overlord ship traveled 4,700 miles from the Gulf Coast to California, arriving in the Pacific in time to take part in the Dawn Blitz exercise. Navy officials have said it operated autonomously about 97% of the time during the voyage, and was only fully piloted when it traversed the Panama Canal, 

As new unmanned ships arrive and are more fully integrated into Navy and Marine Corps exercises, Adams thinks the sight of the vessels on the water will be less newsworthy, and more like just another day for the Navy. “One day in the next year or so, it will not be uncommon to see multiple USVs at sea” working with crewed ships, he said. 

As he prepares to retire, Adams said, one of the biggest successes of his tenure has been to “normalize unmanned surface participation in some key Flagship fleet events,” from Dawn Blitz to the  Overlord transit and now the exercise next month.

The result of all of these exercises has been “to begin familiarizing fleet operators and what it’s going to look like to operate with unmanned surface, but also to get operators the opportunity to give us feedback” to send back to the Navy’s acquisition community.