It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, August 31, 2023
Pentagon Wants "Thousands" of Fighting Drones Built in Just Two Years
A Ukrainian suicide drone boat evades Russian defensive fire as it attempts to approach a warship (Russian Navy)
The Pentagon is planning a major shift in order to counter China's massive investments in military hardware. As China goes big, the Pentagon wants to go small: Its newly-launched Replicator initiative envisions "multiple thousands" of smaller autonomous systems on land, in the air, on the surface and below the sea, all built cheaply enough to be lost in combat, all delivered by 2025.
On Monday, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks outlined the challenge at a defense contractors' conference in Washington, D.C. China's advantage, she noted, is "mass - more ships, more missiles, more people." China has the world's largest standing army and the largest navy by vessel count, and it is modernizing its fleet at a rapid clip. It can hit naval targets from thousands of miles away using anti-ship ballistic missiles, which the United States does not possess.
The U.S. may not be able to make similar claims, but it does have access to the world's most advanced portfolio of R&D projects in unmanned and autonomous warfighting. The challenge, Hicks said, is getting these projects to scale up, and scale fast. She wants to see "thousands" of autonomous drone platforms in the hands of warfighters in just 18-24 months.
"Replicator will galvanize progress in the too-slow shift of US military innovation to leverage platforms that are small, smart, cheap, and many,” said Hicks. “So now is the time to take all-domain, attritable autonomy to the next level: to produce and deliver capabilities to warfighters at the volume and velocity required to deter aggression, to win if we’re forced to fight.”
The focus of the initiative will be to grow "a new state of the art" in less-expensive autonomous systems, creating "mass of our own" to counter China's military might, she said.
Hicks' vision reflects lessons learned from the front lines in Ukraine, where low-cost drones often determine the outcome of combat engagements. Drones spot targets for artillery, drop grenades on enemy positions, and directly target armored vehicles in high-speed suicide runs - all without endangering the drone operator. Properly deployed, an $800 drone with an antitank munition can destroy a million-dollar armored vehicle, and both sides have used these devices to inflict real costs on the battlefield.
On the water, Ukraine has developed a series of unmanned suicide boats with long range and high hitting power. These devices have yet to claim a sinking, but they have damaged at least two warships of the Black Sea Fleet, and have forced the Russian Navy to operate with greater caution. They are also radically less expensive than coastal defense missiles or manned naval vessels, and Ukraine claims to be building them in serial production.
Hicks noted that Russia's mass has not translated into an automatic win on the technological battlefield in Ukraine, and suggested that China should take heed of that lesson.
"We must ensure the PRC leadership wakes up every day, considers the risks of aggression and concludes, 'today is not the day' — and not just today, but every day, between now and 2027, 2035, 2049 and beyond," Hicks said.
The stakes couldn't be higher, according to the top U.S. officer in the Indo-Pacific.
"We ought to look at the Chinese to understand truly where they are and what they're doing: the largest military buildup since World War II, both in conventional forces and in strategic nuclear [forces]," said Adm. John C. Aquilino, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, speaking on the sidelines of the same conference. "They have focused very clearly on delivering a force capable to take on the United States."
The Dreadnought After Next
HMS Dreadnought revolutionized surface warfare (U.S. Navy image circa 1906-7)
This article appears courtesy of CIMSEC and The Royal Navy. It was the first place, Gold Prize-winning essay of the First Sea Lord’s Essay Competition and may be found in its original form here.
[By Chris O’Connor]
In 1906, the battleship HMS Dreadnought was commissioned. An engineering marvel at the time, it completely changed the playing field of naval warfare and made previous classes of battleships and armoured cruisers obsolete overnight. Its advantage was not new technology but using technologies in a new combination that had never been done before. It created such an epochal shift in warship design that the battleships built preceding it were retroactively described as ‘preDreadnoughts.’1 In the next couple of years, a new HMS Dreadnought will go to sea. It will contain technologies that were the realm of science fiction when the battleship Dreadnought was commissioned – leveraging the atom for electrical power and weapons, operating with thinking machines, and using sound and radio waves to detect targets unseen by the eye.
The change of technologies between Sir Jackie Fisher’s Dreadnought of 1906 and its namesake two generations later (with the nuclear-powered attack submarine of the same name in between) did not make warships obsolete, rather, it completely changed the perception of what a warship was. Submarines were not considered ‘warships’ by many in the Royal Navy at the turn of the 20th century – when Sir Jackie experimented with them as the Commander-in-Chief of Portsmouth. Dismissed as ‘Fisher’s Toys,’ they were considered ‘unmanly, unethical, and ‘un-English.’2 If this sounds familiar, it is because this same kind of thinking, a fear of the new technology being so different that it is not ‘right,’ is used today to describe uncrewed platforms and other autonomous systems instead of ships operated by stalwart human sailors. The battleships of today are museums and not the capital ships of nations because they were overcome by new technologies and operational concepts. Warships still exist, but they are markedly different.
This historical perspective of maritime warfare innovation calls for a rephrasing of ‘will warships be obsolete?’ Instead, we should ask ourselves ‘What will make current warships obsolete?’ That way, we can examine the technologies that are just coming to the fore and begin thinking now about how warships will evolve, and yes, their form and function will not look like anything before.
Modern missiles and Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) alone will not bring about this change. New anti-ship missiles with longer ranges, smarter seeker heads, and hypersonic speeds will certainly force operational changes and necessitate new countermeasures for warships on the surface (and eventually below the surface). DEW will be part of every physical domain of warfare, as laser and microwave weapons will be employed from everything from satellites to Marines on the ground. These weapons will lead to an evolution in warship design to add magazines and launchers for the new missiles and increased power generation for the DEW. These ideas are all rolled into the ‘Dreadnought 2050’ concept that was publicised in 2015,3 but in the intervening years between then and now, a new forcing function has emerged that will cause a drastic rethink about the concept of a ‘warship.’
The new paradigm in naval warfare will be triggered by the simple fact that a warship of any size will no longer be able to hide on the surface of the oceans. Persistent multispectral sensing from space with military and commercial satellites already complicate efforts to create uncertainty for potential adversaries. Imagery taken daily of bases and harbours can discern with ever greater clarity the readiness and deployment schedules of navies. This pales in comparison to the ramifications of when these constellations of satellites are aided by deep learning algorithms that will be able to provide daily positions of warships at sea. In just the past year, Russian military equipment aiding the Kremlin in its invasion of Ukraine and a Chinese spy balloon were both tracked by these revolutionary means – satellites from the commercial company Planet feeding their image sets to generative artificial intelligence.4
When surface warships can be tracked this way, they will be constantly targeted and will most likely lose the element of surprise. Submarines are safe from this technology, for now. Even if a ship was able to develop some sort of countermeasure to hide itself and its various signatures (to include its wake), modern ships still rely on fuel for their engines, parts for their systems, and food for their crew. A carrier strike group (CSG) or surface action group (SAG) will give away its location simply through the replenishment ships they require to operate. To win the fight in this sensing environment, the warship will not be over a hundred metres long with scores of people onboard, it will have to be altogether different.
A warship is nothing more than a cluster of capabilities working in concert to fight. Sensors, weapons, propulsion, command and control, communications, and decision-making processes all linked together with a common set of missions and its embedded tasks. Modern warships have all of most of these functions physically located in one hull, but they do not have to be. Instead of a large ship that has offloaded weapons and sensors (like an aircraft carrier), a warship of many small optionally crewed systems would replace that big ship altogether. If hit with a hypersonic missile or fried with a microwave pulse, the ship would be able to reconstitute with varied components.
The crew and command structure would look very different, too:
“A small crew would embark a ship, or series of ships, serving in a variety of modalities as expert controllers, emergency maintainers, and expeditionary operators…moving from independent expeditionary command with a manned crew, to embarking on a mothership or series of motherships supporting unmanned operations.”5
These smaller distributed ships will build up to units that will have humans on the loop but will have to rely on autonomy to do a lot of the fighting. In doing so, a navy will be built of units that are closer to an aviation squadron with one commander, whose span of control is over many smaller assets. These together will be the ‘warship’ that will adapt every time they are employed, as the systems learn from past operations and enemy activity and will swap out with others of different payloads. The evolving capability would be akin to changing the battleship HMS Dreadnought’s turrets every underway – that is how integral these smaller vessels will be to the coherent whole of the unit. There are two benefits to this model; one, the ‘distributed force will pose a vast array of interlocking firepower, making it less clear to the adversary which elements… pose the most pressing threat,’ and two, ‘impos[ing] more kill chains for the adversary to manage.’6 This way of fighting at sea will be the only way to manage when larger warships will be rendered obsolete by their signatures.
When Sir Jackie Fisher recognised the disruptive potential of submarines he did not care if they were cowardly or underhanded, he only cared that they worked.7 He had the clarity of vision to examine warfare from the undersea while working on a super battleship that would be revolutionary in its own right. He was quoted as saying “I don’t think it is even faintly realised that the immense impending revolution with which submarines will effect as offensive weapons of war.” The crewmembers of the two submarines named Dreadnought realised this revolution. How soon will we realise the revolution of autonomous systems that will lead to a warship of the future – the Dreadnought after next?
Cdr. Chris O’Connor is a U.S. Naval Officer at NATO Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe and Vice President of CIMSEC.
These views are presented in a personal capacity and do not necessarily represent the official views of any government or department.
References
1. Jesse Beckett, ‘The Enormous Early 20th Century Pre-Dreadnought & Dreadnought Battleships’, War History Online, 25/03/2021, https://bit.ly/3pRpS6K.
2. Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War (New York: Random House Publishing Group, 1991).
3. Franz-Stefan Gady, ‘Dreadnought 2050: Is this the Battleship of the Future?’, The Diplomat, 07/09/2015, https://bit.ly/45iFgJL.
4. Patrick Tucker, ‘A “ChatGPT” For Satellite Photos Already Exists’, Defense One, 17/04/2023, https://bit.ly/3IqtGTa.
5. Kyle Cragge, ‘Every Ship a SAG and the LUSV Imperative,’ CIMSEC, 02/03/2023, https://bit.ly/3Mpb32X.
6. Dmitry Filipoff, ‘Fighting DMO, Pt. 1: Defining Distributed Maritime Operations and the Future of Naval Warfare’, CIMSEC, 20/02/2023, https://bit.ly/42Vj0Ea.
7. Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War (New York: Random House Publishing Group, 1991).
Featured Image: ATLANTIC OCEAN (Sept. 23, 2019) Royal navy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08) transits the Atlantic Ocean, Sept. 23. (Photo courtesy of HNLMS De Ruyter)
[This article was originally published in 2019, and it is reprinted here in recognition of the 40th year of the Marine Electric's loss.]
At midnight on February 12, 1983, the 605-foot cargo ship Marine Electric was sailing northward 30 miles off Virginia's eastern shore, plowing slowly through the gale-force winds and waves stirred up by a winter storm.
An able-bodied seaman relieved the watch and peered forward, noticing for the first time that the ship's bow seemed to be riding unusually low in the water. Dense curls of green ocean rushed over the bow, some of them arching 10 feet over the deck before crashing back down. The crew had been battling 25-foot waves for hours, but until now, the bow had bucked and dipped as normal.
Now it seemed only to dip.
Over the next two hours, the waves intruded with increasing vigor. The entire foredeck was swallowed in six feet of water. The main deck was completely awash.
At 02:30, the ship's master, Phillip Corl, summoned his chief mate, Robert Cusick, to the bridge and shared his fears: the bow was settling, they were taking on too much water, and the crew was in real trouble.
At 02:51, the captain made the first radio distress call to the Coast Guard.
"I seem to be taking on water forward," Corl said. "We need someone to come out and give us some assistance, if possible."
By the time assistance arrived, the Marine Electric had listed, rolled violently to starboard, and capsized, hurling most of its 34 crew into the 37-degree water.
Chief mate Cusick surfaced with a gasp, managed to get his bearings, and spotted a partially-submerged lifeboat nearby. After swimming through towering waves for 30 minutes, he pulled himself into the swamped boat and started thrashing his legs to stay warm. "All the time I kept looking out and yelling out, 'lifeboat here,' just continually yelling out to keep myself going," the chief mate said. "Then I waited and prayed for daylight to come."
The Coast Guard had long since dispatched an HH-3F Pelican helicopter crew from Air Station Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and directed the crews of several cutters to the Marine Electric's position, but the tumultuous weather conditions slowed the rescuers' progress.
Naval Air Station Oceana had to recall available personnel before launching a helicopter crew, including rescue swimmer Petty Officer 2nd Class James McCann.
At 05:20, the Coast Guard helicopter crew was the first to arrive on scene. They had expected to find the Marine Electric's sailors tucked into lifeboats and rafts, but instead, they found a blinking sea of strobe lights, empty lifeboats and bodies.
The Navy aircrew arrived and deployed McCann, who swam through the oil-slicked waves, searching for survivors. He managed to recover five unresponsive sailors before hypothermia incapacitated him.
The Coast Guard crew scoured the southern end of the search area and discovered one man, Paul Dewey, alone in a life raft. They dropped the rescue basket so he could clamber inside then hoisted him into the helicopter. About 30 yards away, they spotted Eugene Kelly, the ship's third mate, clinging to a life ring, and lowered the basket to retrieve him.
Cusick remained huddled in his lifeboat until the sailors on board the Berganger, a Norwegian merchant vessel whose crew was helping search the area, sighted him and notified the Coast Guard. The helicopter crew retrieved him in the rescue basket, then took off for Salisbury, Maryland, to bring the three survivors to Peninsula Regional Medical Center.
Meanwhile, more Coast Guard and Navy rescue crews converged on the scene to search for survivors.
Coast Guard Captain Mont Smith, the operations officer at Air Station Elizabeth City, had piloted a second Pelican helicopter through turbulent headwinds for over an hour in order to reach the site. He and his crew scanned the debris field below for signs of life. The people they saw were motionless, and it was difficult to determine whether they were simply too hypothermic to move or deceased. Smith spotted one man and hovered over him, squinting through the whipping snow, trying to decide what to do.
"We all felt helpless," Smith said. "There was no way to know if the man was dead or alive. We had to try something."
Petty Officer 2nd Class Greg Pesch, the avionics electrical technician aboard the helicopter, volunteered to go down on the hoist cable. After some deliberation, Smith agreed.
Pesch's descent in the rescue basket was a harrowing one. "The whole world seemed to be churning," Smith said. "I struggled to maintain a smooth hoist, but I know it was erratic."
Once in the water, Pesch grappled with the basket, trying to hold it steady as he guided the unresponsive man inside. It took several attempts, and then he scrambled into the basket himself and ascended back to the helicopter alongside the victim.
The aircrew spotted another potential survivor, and although Pesch attempted to descend again, the hoist cable spooled back on itself on the drum. The crew was forced to abort their mission and departed for nearby Salisbury Airport, where the man they had pulled from the water was pronounced dead on arrival by paramedics.
Dewey, Kelly and Cusick were the only men pulled from the ocean alive that morning. Their 31 shipmates had either succumbed to hypothermia or drowned.
All told, Coast Guard, Navy, and merchant vessel crews recovered 24 bodies from the scene of the capsizing. Seven were never found. It is likely the ship's engineers were trapped belowdecks when the vessel capsized.
"Throughout Coast Guard history, the missions of the service have been written in blood," said Dr. William Thiesen, historian, Coast Guard Atlantic Area. "Such was the case with the loss of the Marine Electric."
While the incident itself served as the catalyst for the major changes to the Coast Guard and maritime community at large, the rigorous efforts of Coast Guard Captain Domenic Calicchio brought the necessity for such changes into sharper focus.
Calicchio was one of the three marine safety officers charged with investigating the capsizing and sinking of the Marine Electric. The board of inquiry launched their investigation on July 25, 1984, and examined every aspect of the WWII-era cargo ship, its upkeep, the events leading up to its demise, and the Coast Guard's rescue efforts on that morning.
The investigation revealed that although the Marine Electric had been recently inspected several times by both the American Bureau of Shipping and the Coast Guard, marine inspectors had failed to note several discrepancies or recommend needed repairs. Investigators concluded that the casualty had most likely been caused by inadequate cargo hatches and deck plating, which allowed the crashing waves to flood the vessel's forward spaces.
Calicchio felt the Coast Guard needed to revamp its marine safety procedures and demand more of maritime companies, but more importantly, that the Coast Guard needed to demand more of itself.
His push for reform resulted in several additions to the Coast Guard's marine safety protocol, including guidance on hatch cover inspections, and new requirements for enclosed lifeboats and their launching systems, for ships' owners to provide crews with cold water survival suits and for flooding alarms to be installed in unmanned spaces on vessels.
The Coast Guard also tightened its inspections of 20-year or older ships, which led to the near-immediate scrapping of 70 similar WWII-era vessels.
"Calicchio embodied the service's core values of honor, respect, and devotion to duty," said Thiesen. "He championed marine safety and pursued the truth even at the risk of his career of a Coast Guard officer."
The Marine Electric shipwreck served as the genesis of another crucial development: the Coast Guard rescue swimmer program, which was established in 1984. The program's physical fitness standards, training and organizational structure were developed over a five-year implementation period, and in March of 1985, Air Station Elizabeth City became the first unit to receive rescue swimmers.
The first life was saved two months later.
Story and artwork by U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class Corinne Zilnicki.
Salvage Team Departs FSO Safer After Completing Oil Transfer Project
FSO Safer sits high in the water after the offload was completed (David Gressly/Twitter)
The salvage team in the UN-led effort to remove the oil from the dilapidated FSO Safer departed the site on Monday, August 29, marking the completion of the project. UN officials thanked the team from Boskalis’ SMIT Salvage for completing the complex task which adverted a potential environmental disaster.
After completing the transfer of approximately 1.1 million barrels of oil that had been stored aboard the Safer since 2015, the team undertook a final series of tasks. The transfer was declared over on August 11, two and a half weeks after it began on July 25. The salvage team had prepared the machinery aboard the Safer for the transfer and stabilized the storage tanks which had not been properly vented in years. Equipment was standing by in case of a spill but they were able to complete the transfer without a serious incident.
During the last two weeks, the tanks aboard the Safer were scrapped and cleaned to remove as much residue as possible. The material was also transferred to the replacement tanker Nautica which had been acquired from Euronav and was renamed Yemen by the local government after the UN transferred the ship to Yemen.
Replacement tanker was repositioned in one of the final tasks in the salvage operation (Boskalis/SMIT)
The tanker was repositioned on Sunday evening, August 27, to remain a safe distance from the FSO Safer. The older tanker, which was built in 1976 and had been functioning as a storage and transfer point approximately four miles off the coast of Yemen since 1988, has been prepared for recycling. The UN is responsible for arranging for the recycling of the vessel while the replacement tanker will take its place holding the oil which is claimed by the Houthi faction which controls that area of Yemen.
The Boskalis vessel Ndeavor, which had been alongside the FSO Safer since the end of May accommodating the SMIT team, departed Yemen on August 28. It is sailing to Djibouti where the salvage team will disembark and the vessel will then continue on its trip back to Rotterdam.
“The completion of the work marks the end of a pivotal chapter in the UN-led operation to address the threat of a major oil spill that have been caused by a leak in or destruction of the Safer tanker,” said UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric during his daily briefing on Monday. “The United Nations and the broad group of partners that support the Safer project have so far succeeded in preventing the worst-case scenario of a massive oil spill in the Red Sea which with obvious potential catastrophic environmental, humanitarian and economic repercussions.”
UN officials highlighted that they still need to raise an additional $22 million beyond the $120 million already committed to the project. They are awaiting the delivery of a new mooring buoy that will be installed for the Yemen. They also need to arrange for the towing and scrapping of the FSO Safer. Experts working with the UN previously determined that the Safer was beyond repair and in imminent danger of a structural failure. The vessel had only received minimal maintenance since operations were suspended eight years ago during the civil war.
The execution of the project lasted nearly 13 weeks. Officials highlighted that the project required years of planning with many world leaders acknowledging the UN was the only organization that could have undertaken the task, dealing with the political sensitivities of the Yemen civil war.
FSO Safer on May 31 fully loaded when the salvage team arrived (Boskalis)
FSO Safer offloaded and prepared for recycling on August 28 (Boskalis)
Maersk’s First Methanol Boxship Arrives in Europe
Maersk's new feeder ship completed the first green methanol bunkering in Rotterdam (OCI Global)
The first methanol-fueled containership, Maersk’s new feeder ship, arrived in Europe making more firsts on its record-setting maiden voyage. Completing final preparations for its upcoming naming ceremony and festivities centered on the decarbonization of the shipping industry, the vessel is set to usher in a new era for container shipping and the maritime industry.
A.P. Moller – Maersk ordered the world’s first methanol dual-fuel containership in 2021 and took delivery of the vessel from its builders in South Korea early in July. Since that first order, Maersk has entered into contracts for 24 additional dual-fuel vessels due to start entering service next year and continuing till 2026. The container shipping segment as a whole has rapidly moved to the adoption of methanol as a next-generation fuel with DNV calculating that there are now 144 methanol-fueled containerships on order, representing 80 percent of the total orders for methanol-fueled ships due for entry into service in the next five years.
Arriving in Rotterdam on August 28, the new Maersk ship is on the last leg of a more than 13,000 nautical mile maiden voyage. The ship will go on to Copenhagen, where Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, will have the honor of officially naming the ship on September 14. Maersk is also hosting a week of festivities between September 18 and 21 marking the ship’s entry into service.
Maersk has not yet confirmed the name of the vessel, but her AIS signal shows Laura Maersk. Designed to operate in the Baltic, the vessel is 564 feet long. It has a capacity for 2,100 TEU including reefer boxes. Maersk has said the vessel will provide a critical real operation experience for its crew as they learn to handle the new engines and using green methanol as a fuel. Similarly, OCI Global which supplied fuel for the trip said the green methanol bunkering provided an opportunity to develop and share bunkering guidelines among global ports as the industry prepares for the fuel transition.
Bunkering the vessel required nearly six hours during the port call in Egypt (SCZONE)
As part of the port call in Rotterdam, the ship completed the port’s first green methanol bunkering, the last on its maiden voyage. The first methanol bunkering took place in the Port of Ulsan, South Korea, and then again in Singapore. The containership arrived in East Port Said, Egypt on August 15 where they undertook another methanol bunkering. SCZone reported it took nearly six hours for the ship to be loaded with 500 tons of green methanol which was supplied from the barge Lara S. Fuel supplier OCI Global made arrangements to supply green methanol to the vessel during each leg of its maiden voyage to demonstrate the potential of reducing carbon emissions by adopting the new technology and fuel.
OCI Global is preparing to launch its green methanol bunkering operation in Rotterdam starting next year. The company recently reached an agreement with Unibarge that will see them develop the world’s first dual-fuel bunker barge to be deployed in Rotterdam.
Maersk has emblazoned the phrase “All the Way to Zero,” on the hull of the first methanol dual-fuel ship to highlight its commitment to decarbonization. The company has stated that it aims to transport a minimum of 25 percent of ocean cargo using green fuels by 2030, compared to a 2020 baseline. Maersk’s target is net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.
Digital Horizon: Proving the Value of Unmanned Naval Surface Vehicles
Capt. Michael Brasseur, then-commander of Task Force 59, briefs Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Dr. Colin Kahl in Bahrain, Nov. 2022 (USN)
The international community has been tremendously proactive in undertaking operations, exercises, experiments, and demonstration to accelerate the development and fielding of unmanned surface vehicles, reflecting the real importance of these systems to world navies. Much of this work has occurred in and around the Arabian Gulf under the auspices of Commander U.S. Fifth Fleet and Task Force 59.
These ambitious exercises throughout the course of 2022 provided a learning opportunity for all participating navies. These culminated in the capstone unmanned event, Exercise Digital Horizon, a three-week event in the Middle East focused on employing artificial intelligence and 15 different unmanned systems: 12 unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) and three unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
A key goal of Digital Horizon was to speed new technology integration across the 5th Fleet, and to seek cost-effective alternatives for Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) missions. As Carrington Malin described the importance of Digital Horizon:
“Despite the cutting-edge hardware in the Arabian Gulf, Digital Horizon is far more than a trial of new unmanned systems. This exercise is about data integration and the integration of command and control capabilities, where many different advanced technologies are being deployed together and experimented with for the first time.
The advanced technologies now available and the opportunities that they bring to enhance maritime security are many-fold, but these also drive an exponential increase in complexity for the military. Using the Arabian Gulf as the laboratory, Task Force 59 and its partners are pioneering ways to manage that complexity, whilst delivering next-level intelligence, incident prevention and response capabilities.”1
Digital Horizon brought together emerging unmanned technologies and combined them with data analytics and artificial intelligence in order to enhance regional maritime security and strengthen deterrence by applying leading-edge technology and experimentation.2 Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, U.S. 5th Fleet and Combined Maritime Forces introduced the exercise and highlighted its potential: “I am excited about the direction we are headed. By harnessing these new unmanned technologies and combining them with artificial intelligence, we will enhance regional maritime security and strengthen deterrence. This benefits everybody.”3
Click to expand. Graphic illustration depicting the unmanned systems that participated in Digital Horizon 2022. (U.S. Army graphic by Sgt. Brandon Murphy)
Captain Michael Brasseur, then-commodore of Task Force 59, emphasized the use of unmanned maritime vehicles to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, including identifying objects in the water and spotting suspicious behavior.4 He noted: “We pushed beyond technological boundaries and discovered new capabilities for maritime domain awareness to enhance our ability to see above, on and below the water.”5
During Digital Horizon, Task Force 59 leveraged artificial intelligence to create an interface on one screen, also called a “single pane of glass,” displaying the relevant data from multiple unmanned systems for watchstanders in Task Force 59’s Robotics Operations Center (ROC). Reviewing what was accomplished during this event, Captain Brasseur marveled at the pace of innovation: “We are challenging our industry partners in one of the most difficult operational environments, and they are responding with enhanced capability, fast.”6
One of the features of Digital Horizon, and in line with the first word of the exercise, “Digital,” was the ability of one operator to command and control five unique drones, a capability long-sought by U.S. Navy officials.7 The Navy is acutely aware of the high cost of manpower and is dedicated to moving beyond the current “one UXS, multiple joysticks, multiple operators,” paradigm that has plagued UXS development for decades.
Digital Horizon was a unique exercise from the outset. Task Force 59 worked with the Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) in order to leverage that organization’s expertise as a technology accelerator. Additionally, given the U.S. Navy’s ambitious goals to rapidly test and subsequently acquire USVs to populate the Fleet, CTF-59 used a contractor-owned/contractor operated (COCO) model to bring a substantial number of unmanned systems to Digital Horizon, well beyond those already in the inventory. This approach sidestepped the often clunky DoD acquisition system while providing appropriate oversight during the exercise and gaining operational experience with new systems.
MANAMA, Bahrain (Nov. 19, 2022) Various unmanned systems sit on display in Manama, Bahrain, prior to exercise Digital Horizon 2022. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Brandon Murphy)
Another distinctive feature of Digital Horizon involved launching and recovering small UAVs from medium-size USVs. This lash-up leveraged the capabilities of both unmanned assets, enabling the long-endurance USVs to carry the shorter-endurance UAVs to the desired area of operations. This “operationalized” a CONOPS that emerged from the U.S. Navy laboratory community years ago.8
The results of Digital Horizon lived up to the initial hype. During a presentation at the 2023 Surface Navy Association Symposium, here is how Vice Admiral Cooper described what was accomplished during Digital Horizon:
“We are creating a distributed and integrated network of systems to establish a “digital ocean” in the Middle East, creating constant surveillance. This means every partner and every sensor, collecting new data, adding it to an intelligent synthesis of around-the-clock inputs, encompassing thousands of images, from seabed to space, from ships, unmanned systems, subsea sensors, satellites, buoys, and other persistent technologies.
No navy acting alone can protect against all the threats, the region is simply too big. We believe that the way to get after this is the two primary lines of effort: strengthen our partnerships and accelerate innovation…One of the results from the exercise was the ability to create a single operational picture so one operator can command and control multiple unmanned systems on one screen, a ‘Single Pane of Glass’ (SPOG)…Digital Horizon was a visible demonstration of the promise and the power of very rapid tech innovation.”9
The results of Digital Horizon could change the way the world’s navies conduct maritime safety and security. Having multiple unmanned systems conduct maritime surveillance, with the operations center then using big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning to amalgamate this sea of data into something that commanders can use to make real-time decisions, enables navies to “stretch” their crewed vessels and use them for more vital missions than merely conducting surveillance.
As one example of how Digital Horizon brought together COTS unmanned surface vehicles with COTS systems and sensors, the T-38 Devil Ray was equipped with multiple state-of-the-art COTS sensors to provide persistent surveillance. The T-38 provided AIS, full motion video from SeaFLIR-280HD and FLIR-M364C cameras, as well as the display of radar contacts on a chart via the onboard Furuno DRS4D-NXT Doppler radar. These were all streamed back to Task Force 59’s Robotics Operations Center via high bandwidth radios and SATCOM.
These exercises and initiatives are important if the Navy is to convince a skeptical Congress that its plans for unmanned systems are sound, and represent an important course change in the way the Navy intends to communicate with Congress, by “showing, not telling” what its unmanned systems can do.10 This approach is vital, for as long as Congress remains unconvinced regarding the efficacy of the unmanned systems the Navy wishes to procure; it is unlikely that funding will follow.11
Secretary of the Navy, Carlos Del Toro, explained this new “show, don’t tell,” philosophy built on an ongoing series of exercises, experiments and demonstrations, further indicating that he believes the Navy is “on the same page as Congress:”
“The Navy has a responsibility to be able to prove that the technology that Congress is going to invest in actually works and it meets what we need to address the threat. I think that’s the responsible thing to do…I don’t see it as a fight between Congress and the Department of Navy. I think we’re aligned in our thinking about what has to be done.”12
Indeed, in remarks at the Reagan National Defense Forum, Secretary Del Toro said the Navy intends to stand up additional unmanned task forces around the globe modeled after what Task Force 59 accomplished during Digital Horizon, noting:
“We’ve demonstrated with Task Force 59 how much more we can do with these unmanned vehicles—as long as they’re closely integrated together in a [command and control] node that, you know, connects to our manned surface vehicles. And there’s been a lot of experimentation; it’s going to continue aggressively. And we’re going to start translating that to other regions of the world as well. That will include the establishment of formal task forces that will fall under some of the Navy’s other numbered fleets.”13
Secretary of the Navy Del Toro continued this drumbeat during the U.S. Naval Institute/AFCEA “West” Symposium in February 2023. In a keynote address describing the Navy’s progress and intentions regarding integrating unmanned systems into the Fleet, he emphasized the progress that CTF-59 had made, especially in the area of successfully integrating unmanned systems and artificial intelligence during Digital Horizon.14
A Marine Advanced Robotics WAM-V unmanned surface vessel operates in the Arabian Gulf, Nov. 29, during Digital Horizon 2022. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Brandon Murphy)
Importantly, the U.S. Navy has now created the infrastructure to accelerate the testing and evaluation of unmanned surface vehicles. In 2019, the Navy stood up Surface Development Squadron One to provide stewardship for unmanned experimentation and manned-unmanned teaming.15 In 2022, seeking to put additional emphasis on unmanned maritime vehicles, the Navy established Unmanned Surface Vessel Division One (USVDIV-1), under the command of Commander Jeremiah Daley.16
This new division oversees medium and large unmanned surface vessels out of Port Hueneme Naval Base in Ventura County.17 Unmanned Surface Vessel Division One is engaged with the Fleet to move the unmanned surface vessels further west and exercise autonomy, payloads, and hull, mechanical and electrical (HM&E) systems to ensure that future programs of record (LUSV and MUSV) are successful from inception, and that they provide lethality and combat effectiveness for future naval and joint forces.
Digital Horizon presages a new paradigm in the way navies will think about uncrewed assets, no longer as “vehicles” but rather as “systems” that are nodes in a web of assets delivering far greater capability than the sum of the parts. World navies will conduct ambitious unmanned exercises, experiments and demonstrations throughout 2023 and beyond, and the lessons learned from Digital Horizon will no doubt inform those efforts.
Captain George Galdorisi (USN – retired) is a career naval aviator whose thirty years of active duty service included four command tours and five years as a carrier strike group chief of staff. He began his writing career in 1978 with an article in U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings. He is the author of 15 books, including four New York Times best-sellers. The views presented are those of the author, and do not reflect the views of the Department of the Navy or the Department of Defense.
This article appears courtesy of CIMSEC and may be found in its original form here.
References
1. Carrington Malin, “A Testbed for Naval Innovation,” Middle East AI News, December 1, 2022.
2. Aaron-Matthew Lariosa, “US Navy Highlights TF 59 Contributions to Fleet’s Unmanned Vision,” Naval News, January 23, 2023.
3. “U.S. Launches New Unmanned & AI Systems Integration Event,” U.S. Naval Forces Central Command Public Affairs, November 23, 2022, accessed at: https://www.cusnc.navy.mil/Media/News/Display/Article/3226901/us-launches-new-unmanned-ai-systems-integration-event/.
4. J.P. Lawrence, “Navy’s ‘Influx’ of Aquatic and Aerial Drones Tested in the Middle East,” Stars and Stripes, December 1, 2022.
5. “Digital Horizon Wraps Up: Task Force 59 Perspective, Second Line of Defense, December 22, 2022.
6. Geoff Ziezulewicz, “New in 2023: Here Comes the First-Ever Surface Drone Fleet,” Navy Times, January 3, 2023.
7. Justin Katz, “Accenture Demos Data Vis, C2 for Multiple USVs During Navy’s Digital Horizons Exercise,” Breaking Defense, December 16, 2022.
8. Vladimir Djapic et al, “Heterogeneous Autonomous Mobile Maritime Expeditionary Robots and Maritime Information Dominance,” Naval Engineers Journal, December 2014.
9. Audrey Decker, “5th Fleet Commander Details ‘Digital Ocean’ After TF-59 Reaches FOC,” Inside the Navy, January 16, 2023.
10. See, for example, George Galdorisi, “Catch a Wave: Testing Unmanned Surface Vehicles Is Becoming an International Endeavour,” Surface SITREP, Winter 2022.
11. “Navy Failing to Make ‘Critical Pivot’ In Unmanned Investment,” Inside the Navy, October 10, 2022.
12. Justin Katz, “Show, Don’t Tell: Navy Changes Strategy to Sell Unmanned Systems to Skeptical Congress,” Breaking Defense, March 10, 2022.
13. Jon Harper, “Navy to Establish Additional Unmanned Task Forces Inspired by Task Force 59,” Defense Scoop, December 4, 2022.
14. Remarks by the Honorable Carlos Del Toro, Secretary of the Navy, at the U.S. Naval Institute/AFCEA “West” Symposium, February 16, 2023.
15. Meagan Eckstein, “Navy Stands Up Surface Development Squadron for DDG-1000, Unmanned Experimentation,” USNI News, May 22, 2019.
16. “Navy to Stand Up New USV Command This Summer,” Inside the Navy, January 13, 2022.
17. Joshua Emerson Smith and Andrew Dyer, “Navy Ramps Up Efforts on Unmanned Vessels,” San Diego Union Tribune, May 16, 2022, and Diana Stancy Correll, “Navy Creates Unmanned Surface Vessel Division to Expedite Integration of Unmanned Systems,” Navy Times, May 16, 2022.
The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.
MANAMA, Bahrain (Nov. 19, 2022) Various unmanned systems sit on display in Manama, Bahrain, prior to exercise Digital Horizon 2022. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Brandon Murphy)
A Marine Advanced Robotics WAM-V unmanned surface vessel operates in the Arabian Gulf, Nov. 29, during Digital Horizon 2022. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Brandon Murphy)