Will USVs make our seas safer?
Will USVs make our seas safer?
Will unmanned systems make our seas safer?
During the night of Monday August 29th, the US Navy Fifth Fleet scrambled to respond to the action of one of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy's support ships, which had begun towing away a U.S. Navy unmanned surface vessel (USV). Not even three days later, an Iranian Moudge-class frigate seized two more U.S. Navy USVs, this time from the southern area of the Red Sea. All USVs were recovered, but the two incidents must be raising some awkward questions among the Navy's top brass. Will unmanned systems ultimately make our seas safer, or will they create more opportunities for conflict?
Last September, the U.S. Navy formed its first special task force to accelerate the integration of AI and unmanned systems with maritime operations, based out of the Navy's Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. Named 𝗧𝗮𝘀𝗸 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗰𝗲 𝟱𝟵, the new team began a number of sea trials of unmanned systems in the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Arabian Gulf. Less than six months later, the U.S. Navy and 60 different allied nations held the largest unmanned maritime exercise in the world IMX 2022, which took place in February across the Fifth Fleet's theatre of operations.
This string of successes, led to the Fifth Fleet firming up plans for a new fleet of maritime unmanned systems, with a goal of creating a joint fleet of 100 unmanned vessels together with partner nations by summer 2023. The Navy expects the new unmanned systems fleet to dramatically multiply the surveillance capacities of the 5th Fleet, putting more 'eyes and ears on the water' than possible with traditional craft alone.
Unmanned surface vessels (USVs), unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) and hybrid surface/underwater unmanned craft offer clear advantages compared with traditional naval forces. Unmanned vessels are less expensive to make and run than naval ships that can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build, and millions per year to operate. For this reason, USVs are cheaper, faster and easier to deploy than manned vessels.
The USVs involved in last week's incidents were all 23ft-long, wind- and solar-powered Saildrone Explorers, manufactured by U.S.-startup Saildrone Inc. The USVs are designed to collect high-resolution ocean datasets and are able to perform autonomous, long-range missions, for months at a time. Obviously, the more Saildrones in operation, the greater the area of real-time coverage and data gathering.
The logic therefore, seems to be that extending the U.S. Navy's reach via the use of USVs will allow it to ensure greater levels of safety for maritime traffic, across a very wide area, with perhaps far less human resources. However, last week's incidents highlight the fact that unarmed USVs, operating remotely far away from other fleet resources are not only vulnerable, but have the potential to require urgent assistance from traditional naval forces.
The U.S. Navy has been careful to communicate that Saildrones are available commercially and do not store sensitive or classified information, so the detaining of the USVs would never result in compromising military intelligence. However, the apparent targeting of these USVs by Iran's navy begs the question, how much additional resource and pressure on existing naval forces could a growing fleet of remote USVs demand? If an urgent joint military air and sea operation is required every time the cat's tail get's tweaked, then when do these USVs become inpractical to operate? Similarly, assuming that the U.S. does not want to create a new naval conflict, then how many such incidents can be tolerated before a line is drawn?
Although the deployment of more and more unmanned maritime systems by both military and commercial operators seems to be enevitable, we can be sure that these questions and many others are going to be the subject of debate for sometime to come.
Find out more about this story:
Read the Reuters report on the last Thursday's incident: https://lnkd.in/dfCUKymV
See last week's Middle East AI News: https://lnkd.in/dJnrHqnN
See Middle East AI News 24-Feb-22 for more on the U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet's unmanned systems plans: https://lnkd.in/eXB3wc6A