Some reports emerging in the media have claimed America is lagging behind China in Artificial
Intelligence.
But U.S. Navy’s Sea Hunter project has achieved something truly amazing.
Medium Displacement Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MDUSV) - Sea Hunter has become the first
craft to ever sail from San Diego, California to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and back without needing
any onboard crew.
Viewers may note that the round trip is almost 5,200 miles.
On Jan. 31 2019, Leidos, the lead Defense contractor for the Sea Hunter project, announced
this achievement in a press release.
Gerry Fasano, Leidos Defense Group President, said the press release,
“The Sea Hunter program is leading the world in unmanned, fully autonomous naval ship design
and production.
The recent long-range mission is the first of its kind and demonstrates to the U.S. Navy
that autonomy technology is ready to move from the developmental and experimental stages
to advanced mission testing.”
In this video Defines Updates analyses U.S. Navy’s Sea Hunter unmanned surface vessel.
Let's get into the details.
In January 2019, on the sidelines of the annual Surface Navy Association’s main annual conference,
U.S. Navy Rear Admiral John Neagley, the service’s Program Executive Officer for Unmanned & Small
Combatants offered some insight to Breaking Defense.
He told “Part of the value of having unmanned surface vehicles is you can get capacity at
a lower cost.”
As of now, the US Navy is looking at Sea Hunter as an unmanned platform packed with sensors
that can roam around the oceans autonomously with the ability to act as decoys, scouts
and an EW vessel.
This concept is named as “Electromagnetic Maneuver Warfare” by the service.
The Sea Hunter project was initiated by DARPA.
It was initially called Anti-submarine warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV).
In 2016, Oregon Iron Works, now called Vigor Works, built Sea Hunter.
In January 2018, DARPA turned the vessel over to the Office of Naval Research.
To start with, Leidos was involved only with providing the navigation system for the vessel.
But later on, it took over the full project.
The company has headquarter in Virginia.
The company has already secured a contract to build a second MDUSV, which will be an
upgrade over this and is being named as Sea Hunter II.
During the trip, Sea Hunter had manned escort throughout.
As per Leidos, personnel did board the vessel to perform regular checks.
It is not clear if any repairs were required during the long journey.
US Navy is still charting out long term plans on how the vessels of this kind can be deployed
in the future as there are a lot of possible use cases.
Presently MDUSVs like the Sea Hunter is being envisioned for 3 kinds of missions.
Let's check them one by one.
1. Scout: A group of MDUSVs working together could potentially gather lots of intelligence
regarding threats like enemy warships, sea mines, submarines as well as land-based assets.
This will greatly increase the situational awareness and help in making tactical decisions.
Since they are much more cheaper to operate and need no crew, these can be deployed extensively.
MDUSVs could travel ahead of US Navy’s Carrier Strike Groups looking for various types of
threats.
2. Decoy: Large warships like cruisers, destroyers, and aircraft carriers can be targeted by high-speed
boats, missile-firing fast-attack craft, small submarines, sea mines, and land and air-launched
anti-ship missiles.
The MDUSVs could be used as decoys that could shield the more valuable assets.
They could emit signals making them look like a proper warship and divert enemy’s focus.
Also, they can be used to act as a shield in case of eventuality where these crafts
could come in between a warship and enemy’s missile & torpedoes.
3. Electronic Warfare: The unmanned vessels could be equipped with Electronic Warfare suits.
These systems could be used to jam enemy radars and sensors.
They could work in conjunction with other platforms to overwhelm adversaries with electronic
warfare giving American forces major advantage in battle.