NAVAL DRONES

Looking Back at 2015  Our highly unscientific Twitter poll below shows what some readers thought were the most significant events in unmanned naval systems for 2015. Most significant naval drone story of 2015? — Naval Drones (@NavalDrones) December 28, 2015 For details on these stories, see:  X-47B Refueling ,  Russian Kanyon Nuclear UUV ,  UCLASS RFP X-47B takes on fuel And Forward to 2016 What follows are our expectations, hunches, and just wild guesses of the major developments to watch for in naval unmanned systems industry during the coming year. Sanity Prevails  - After spending nearly a billion dollars and more than two decades developing the troubled  Remote Minehunting System , the U.S. Navy will cancel the program.  Lockheed's RMS, which was intended to be one of the Littoral Combat Ship's key mission packages, will be replaced by one or more of the growing number of versatile, less expensive mine-countermeasure UUVs. Also,...

Earlier this week, guest blogger Mark Tempest posted some interesting ideas on low cost alternatives to traditional combatants which could be configured to carry unmanned surface vehicles, playing on the idea that payload truly is more important than platform.  These concepts are unorthodox, though as Mark points out, not unprecedented.  In a time of shrinking budgets and smaller fleets, the navy should explore how to optimize various combinations of ships and the unmanned vehicles they will carry, with an eye towards both effectiveness and efficiency.  Mine counter-measures is an important, though often short-changed mission, with various trade-offs between payload and platform. Between the Littoral Combat Ship "seaframe" and mission modules, the U.S. Navy has invested billions of dollars in R&D and acquisition money to develop (though still not fully) the capability to conduct off-board, unmanned mine counter-measures.  LCS will carr...