Navy Anticipates Abundance of Technology for Unmanned Maritime Systems, But Infrastructure Also Needed

WASHINGTON —
The Navy may attract more unmanned technology than can handle and deploy as it
develops its unmanned surface vehicles and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs),
a Navy official said, noting that industry also has opportunities to provide
the supporting infrastructure.

“We’re going
to have way more technology available than we’re going to be able to field in
an operational manner until we build up infrastructure, Sailor training, pier
space, supply network, spare parts, the transportation systems, the logistical
support networks or all of the stuff,” said Capt. Pete Small, the Navy’s
program manager for Unmanned Maritime Systems. speaking last week at the
Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International’s Unmanned
Systems—Defense. Protection. Security. Conference in Washington.

“I am focused
on that and would put out that industry consider that not all of the investment
needs to be in cutting-edge machine learning and autonomy,” Small said. “I’m
not implying that we don’t need that, but if we just focus on that without all
of the more mundane logistics trails, there’s a whole giant assumption of a
logistical infrastructure network to get to the warfighter where the capability
is needed, to do a lot to bridge that gap to deploy the system at that far
forward point.

“There’s
absolutely an industry role in doing that as well,” he said. “We’re going to
need help to get all of that stuff.”

He also
mentioned the need for infrastructure such as piers, cranes and test ranges to
support unmanned vehicle development and deployment.

Small said
the Navy does not need to re-learn lessons from the UAV [unmanned aerial
vehicle] community with regard to providing enough bandwidth and other
infrastructure requirements.

“We envision
lots of unmanned vehicles providing the capacity that we need,” he said.

The Navy has established
one UUV squadron and a surface development squadron on the West Coast. Small
anticipates that the Navy will need to establish a second UUV squadron on the
East Coast.