adversary A2/AD systems. Small and medium USVs, UAVs and UUVs need a ‘truck’ to deliver them to an area near the battlespace. The Navy envisions LUSVs as being 200-300 feet in length and having full load displacements of 1,000-2,000 tons. Depending on the size that is ultimately procured, the LUSV can carry a number of T38 Devil Ray unmanned surface vehicles and deliver them, largely covertly, to a point near the intended area of operations. The T38 can then be sent independently to perform the ISR mission, or alternatively, can launch one or more T12 MANTAS USVs to perform the ISR mission. For the MCM mission, the LUSV can deliver several T38s equipped with mine-hunting and mine-clearing systems, all of which are COTS platforms tested extensively in Navy exercises. These vessels can then undertake the ‘dull, dirty and dangerous’ work previously conducted by sailors who had to operate in the minefield. Given the large mine inventory of peer and near-peer adversaries, this methodology may well be the only way to clear mines safely. This scenario and CONOPS is built around an Expeditionary Strike Group that is underway in the Western Pacific. This Strike Group includes three LUSVs under supervisory control from a large amphibious ship. CNO Admiral Michael Gilday suggested this CONOPS in early 2022 when he noted that he: “Wants to begin to deploy large and medium-sized unmanned vessels as part of carrier strike groups and amphibious ready groups in 2027 or 2028, and earlier if I can.” Supervisory control of these three LUSVs is provided from a control station on a single ship. The supervisory control station includes seating for a single operator who controls multiple USVs. The LUSV will then be further configured with multiple smaller USVs, UUVs and UAVs. Each of the three LUSVs are carrying three or more T38 Devil Ray craft configured with small USVs, UAVs, and UUVs for specific missions. An Operational Scenario for Unmanned Maritime Systems The Expeditionary Strike Group in the Western Pacific is on routine patrol five hundred nautical miles from the nearest landfall. An incident occurs in its operating area and the strike group is requested to (1) obtain reconnaissance of a near-shore littoral area, and (2) determine if the entrance to a specific bay has been mined to prevent ingress. The littoral coastline covers two hundred nautical miles. This area must be reconnoitered within twenty-four hours. Command staff decides to dispatch the three LUSVs for the mission. Two LUSVs are each configured with four T38-ISR craft and the third LUSV is configured four T38-MCM vessels. The single supervisory control station for the three LUSVs remains manned in the mother-ship for the initial transit to the MUSV departure point, at which time two other control stations will be manned to provide further supervisory control. The three LUSV depart the strike group, steaming together in a preset autonomous pattern for two hundred and fifty nautical miles to a waypoint that is central to the two hundred nautical mile ISR scan area, two hundred and fifty nautical miles from the shore. At this waypoint, the LUSV will stop and dispatch the smaller T38 craft and then wait at this location for their return. Steaming at a cruise speed of twenty-five knots, the waypoint is reached in about ten hours. Two T38-ISR craft are launched from each of the two LUSVs carrying the ISR craft. Waypoints are fifty nautical miles apart from each other, indicating that each of the four T38 craft will have an ISR mission of fifty nautical miles to cover. Two T38-MCM craft are launched from the third LUSV. The autonomous mission previously downloaded has them transit independently along different routes to two independent waypoints just offshore of the suspected mine presence area where they will commence mine-like object detection operations. Each of the six craft will be transiting independently and autonomously to its next waypoint, which will be the mission execution start point. Transit from the LUSV launch point, depending on route, will be about two hundred and fifty to three hundred nautical miles to their near-shore waypoints. Transit time is between four and five hours. The plan is for each of the T38-ISR craft to complete their ISR scan in four to five hours each, and for the two T38-MCM craft to jointly scan the bottom and the water column for the presence of mine-like objects in four to five hours. The MANTAS and Devil Ray craft transit to the objective area and conduct their ISR and MCM missions and complete their work in under twenty-four hours. Even with the Expeditionary Strike Group five hundred nautical miles from shore, the strike group commander had the results of the ISR and MCM scan of the shoreline littoral area in a timely manner. The Future of Unmanned Surface Vehicles This ‘nested dolls’ approach can accelerate the effort to reach a USN goal of 500 ships. Readers of MilTech might could easily think of many additional CONOPS for ways that USVs can perform missions that are important for the Navy. This one should be treated as just a starting point for further dialogue. To be clear, this is not a platform-specific solution, but rather a concept. When Navy operators see a capability with different size unmanned COTS platforms in the water, working together and successfully conducting the missions presented above, they will likely press industry to produce even more capable platforms to prosecute these tasks. While evolutionary in nature, this disruptive capability, delivered using emerging technologies, can provide the US Navy with near-term solutions to vexing operational challenges, while demonstrating to a skeptical Congress that the Navy does have a concept-of-operations to employ the unmanned systems it wants to procure. From the Bridge MT 5/2022 · 37 T38 Devil Ray at speed.
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