NAVAL DRONES

The Center for International Maritime Security's most recent "Sea Control" podcast  features an interesting and wide-ranging discussion on future unmanned and optionally-manned naval systems.  Much of the discussion revolves around the challenges of operating large surface ships without manpower, to include some of the more mundane functions, such as maintenance. Alex Clarke, of the Phoenix Think Tank, proposed the concept of an "unmanned wingman" for Offshore Patrol Vessels performing remote operations.  He also mentioned the possibility of USVs taking on the role of the T-AGOs towed array sonar operations for anti-submarine warfare. Essentially, this concept mirrors what DARPA's ACTUV  program intends to do.  Other topics of consideration are unmanned alternatives to aircraft carriers, the difficult question of whether destroying an unmanned vehicle is an act of war, and command and control schemes.  

Editor's note: Reprinted with permission from the Naval Postgraduate School's  CRUSER News . by Professor David Jenn, NPS Electrical Engineering Faculty, jenn(at)nps.edu There are numerous advantages of wireless power transfer (WPT) for many remote energy source and battery charging applications. In a WPT system, power is transmitted wirelessly from a base station to a client. The concept was first demonstrated for vehicle propulsion in the mid 1960s. More recently, WPT has been used for charging wireless devices, and commercial WPT charging technologies have appeared on the market under the names Witricity and Energous. Measurement setup used to obtain efficiency and coil installed in a UAV hull (photo courtesy NPS). In a typical WPT system, prime power is provided by the base station, converted to radio frequency, and then transferred through space to a receiving coil or antenna. On the client side the received power is filtered, transformed in voltage, a...

Editor's Note: This article is reprinted with permission from the Naval Postgraduate School's " CRUSER News. "  By Professor Curtis Blais, faculty at the Naval Postgraduate School's  Modeling, Virtual Environments and Simulation (MOVES) Institute .  Contact: clblais(at) nps.edu  Combat models are used in major assessments such as Quadrennial Defense Reviews for Naval system acquisition and future force structure decisions. For several years, the Navy has been adding capabilities to the Synthetic Theater Operations Research Model (STORM) originally developed by the U.S. Air Force. Similarly, the Army and Marine Corps employ a specific analytical model called the Combined Arms Analysis Tool for the 21st Century (COMBATXXI) to evaluate major proposed changes in materiel and associated warfighting operations and tactics. The CRUSER Charter identifies numerous Naval initiatives for study and development of unmanned systems, such as the Unmanned Carrier Launched Ai...

Researchers at Austria's University of Graz have demonstrated the largest collection of swarming autonomous underwater vehicles with their Collective Cognitive Robots (CoCoRo) project.  A total of 41 autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) were assembled for recent swarm testing at the University's  Artificial Life Lab . Though funded by the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for Research (FP7) with the intention of developing civilian innovations for environmental monitoring and research, CoCoRo has implications for future military unmanned underwater vehicle swarm activity.   Under development since 2011, CoCoRo's swarm demonstration consists of three types of robots: Jeff is an agile fish-like robot with various pressure and magnetic sensors for obstacle detection, avoidance, and navigation.  The swarm also featured 20 saucer-shaped Lily robots that randomly search for objects while communicating with each other using blue-LED lights.  The...

It's time for our annual wrap-up of the stories on unmanned naval systems that most resonated on this site, social media feeds, and the public writ large.  Here are the top naval drone stories of the year: The introduction of UAVs for maritime missions by non-state actors, specifically migrant rescue and anti-piracy , became reality. The Royal Navy established a UAV Squadron  to intitutionalize its ScanEagle operations . Despite continued operational testing with the X-47B prototype, politics and indecision created further delays with the U.S. Navy's  UCLASS RFP (still not released by the way). Unmanned systems were key in the Malaysian Airlines Flight #370 Search . The  MQ-8C Fire Scout made significant strides towards its first operational deployment. The U.S. Navy's  Swarming USV program , really a plug and play unmanned craft system, garnered significant interest. Interestingly, the story that seemed to p...

2 May 2014 - Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. Jonathan Greenert tours Pennsylvania State University's Applied Research Laboratory facilities to see firsthand their innovative anti-torpedo torpedoes and unmanned undersea vehicles. (U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Peter D. Lawlor/Released) Since he assumed office in 2011, the development of unmanned systems payloads has been a priority during the tenure of U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathon Greenert.  His recent  Position Report  provides updates to several programs discussed in his original  Navigation Plan. Highlights related to unmanned systems include: Undersea Warfare "In the fall of 2014, our large displacement unmanned undersea vehicle ( LDUUV ) program reached its first acquisition gate, Milestone A, which initiated technology development." Unmanned Air Systems "We continued testing the  X-47B  Unmanned Carrier Aircraft System Demonstrator, and for t...

This year's United States FIFTH Fleet's International Mine Countermeasures Exercise is well underway in Middle East waters, running until 13 November.  This third iteration of the exercise will be the largest ever, with 6,500 sailors from 44 nations and 38 ships participating.  As with past exercises , unmanned undersea vehicle detachments from several countries will show off their latest hardware in a realistic operating environment.  A total of 19 UUVs will take part in the waters of the Arabian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, and the northern Red Sea.  On the U.S. side, a focus will be placed on overcoming unmanned mine-countermeasures challenges including the transfer of sensor data at sea, reducing unmanned mission duration, and enhancing trust in autonomy.   One of the new unmanned technologies to be demonstrated during the exercise is Northrop Grumman's Mine-Hunting Unit (MHU) .  The MHU unmanned surface vehicle tested  its ability to deploy, tow, and...