Prince Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa of Bahrain (R) and Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, U.S. 5th Fleet and Combined Maritime Forces, arrive at the pier at Naval Support Activity (NSA) Bahrain. (U.S. Navy /Mark Thomas Mahmod)
WASHINGTON — If the US Navy is going to keep proliferating unmanned surface vessels throughout its fleet, then a key operating principle will be making them worthless to any adversary who might tamper with or steal the technology, according to a senior officer overseeing experimentation efforts.
“We’re going to stick with our general model, of there will be no drone operating that has intrinsic value that is operating at sea,” Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of US 5th Fleet, told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday.
Cooper’s comments come as his command prepares to significantly increase its unmanned surface capabilities. The vice admiral said that by next summer, he aims to have roughly 100 USVs operating in the Middle East. While he did not cite specific capabilities, he did say it would be roughly 20 percent US-owned systems, with the rest contributed by partners and allies.
The build up of unmanned systems follows two incidents of Iranian regular and paramilitary units attempting to seize several Saildrone systems operating in the region. Ultimately, the drones were returned to the US Navy’s possession, but Cooper called Iran’s behavior “flagrant,” “deliberate” and “unwarranted.”
“They were certainly not the actions that we would expect of a professional maritime force. And… they were a direct violation of international law,” Cooper, who holds multiple hats as both a numbered fleet commander and joint roles in regional military coalitions around Bahrain, told reporters.
Asked about what lessons the Navy learned from the encounters with the Iranians, Cooper said it reinforced the importance of not retaining any classified data onboard the platforms, but rather maintaining infrastructure that can quickly move that data to the cloud. He also said he agreed with the sentiments of Saildrone CEO Richard Jenkins, who last month told Breaking Defense that Saildrones are attritable and there’s little harm done if one is stolen.
“It’s incredibly valuable experience to truly understand what happens in the field with real adversaries,” Jenkins said then. “And if someone takes it [a Saildrone], good luck. Keep it, it’s worthless. We’ve got hundreds of them.”
What is less clear from Cooper’s comments, though, is how the US Navy will cope with adversaries interfering with drones that possess sensitive or classified hardware onboard, an inevitable issue given the Navy’s focus on equipping its unmanned systems with a variety of payloads.
Asked about that issue, Cooper said in the near term his command would be focused on “dual use commercial technology,” essentially avoiding the problem entirely. He added that the larger policy question would be an issue for those in the Pentagon to continue to work on.
“We’re one element of a much broader Navy effort,” he said. “We’re very tightly plugged in with the Navy’s unmanned task force that works out here out of the Pentagon. They have multiple — a large effort with other platforms that” will address classified hardware on unmanned systems.
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