designed for specific missions. The emphasis must remain on USV ship design that is focused on modularity to accommodate payloads for specific missions, where the platform remains constant and the modularity within the platform supports multiple missions. A Concept of Operations for Unmanned Surface Vehicles The concept of operations proposed is to marry various size unmanned surface, subsurface and aerial unmanned vehicles to perform missions that the USN has – and will continue to have – as the Navy-After-Next evolves. Simply put, the Navy can use the evolving large unmanned surface vehicle as a ‘truck’ to move smaller USVs, UUVs and UAVs into the battle space in the contested littoral and expeditionary environment. While there is a plethora of important Navy missions, this combination of unmanned platforms can accomplish, this article will focus on two: intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and mine countermeasures (MCM), two critically important Navy missions. There are many large, medium and small unmanned systems that can be adopted for these tasks. The technical challenge remains that they must be designed to ensure that the multiple sized UxSs associated with these missions can be adapted to work together toward a common mission goal. This article will offer concrete examples, using commercial-off-the shelf (COTS) unmanned systems that have been employed in recent Navy and Marine Corps events. In each case, these systems not only demonstrated mission accomplishment, but also the hull, mechanical and electrical (HME) attributes and maturity that Congress is demanding before proceeding with robust acquisition of Navy unmanned systems. While there is a wide range of medium unmanned surface vehicles (MUSVs) that can potentially meet the Navy’s needs, there are three that appear to be furthest along in the development cycle. These MUSVs cover a wide range of sizes, hull types and capabilities. All have moved along different developmental paths. They are: • The Textron monohull Common Unmanned Surface Vessel (CUSV), now referred to as the MCM-USV, features a modular, open architecture design. • The Maritime Tactical Systems Inc. (MARTAC), catamaran hull, unmanned surface vehicles (USV) includes the MANTAS T12 and the Devil Ray T24, T38 and T50 craft. All four of these USVs feature a modular and open architecture design. • The Vigor Industrial Sea Hunter is the largest of the three. The Sea Hunter is a 132-foot-long trimaran (a central hull with two outriggers) with twin screws. In harbour operations – in surveillance, detection/monitoring or security mode – the small size and relatively high tactical speed of USVs are significant operational advantages. All three of these MUSVs are viable candidates to be part of an integrated unmanned solution CONOPS. A focus on the MANTAS and Devil Ray craft is proposed for a number of reasons. First, they come in different sizes with the same HME attributes. Second, the Sea Hunter is simply too large to fit into the LUSVs the Navy is considering. Third, the CUSV is the MUSV of choice for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) MineCountermeasures Mission Package, and all CUSVs scheduled to be procured are committed to this program. Part of evolving an operational concept for employing unmanned surface vehicles involves placing them in the environment where they can perform their missions of ISR and MCM. This is not a trivial task, especially since the United States must be prepared to deal with peer and near-peer adversaries with robust anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) capabilities. If the USN seeks to keep its multi-billion-dollar capital ships out of harm’s way, it will need to surge unmanned maritime vehicles into the contested battlespace while its manned ships stay out of range of A T12 FLIR USV configured for the ISR role. 36 · MT 5/2022 From the Bridge
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