Leidos has completed the delivery of Seahawk Vessel to U.S. Navy.
Seahawk is a long-range, high-availability autonomous surface vessel
with a composite trimaran hull. This medium-displacement unmanned surface vehicle
(MDUSV) will enhance capabilities for naval operations.
Like Leidos’ MDUSV Sea Hunter, Seahawk is substantially larger than other U.S.
Navy USVs and is much more capable in terms of range, seakeeping and payload capacity.
It is to be noted that the Office of Naval Research awarded Leidos the cost-plus-fixed fee
contract to build the vessel, with an approximate value of $35.5 million, in December 2017.
As per the company, work was principally carried out on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
In this video Defense Updates analyzes how U.S. Navy could use autonomously
operating 'Seahawk' Medium Displacement Unmanned Surface Vehicle to build a 'Ghost Fleet'?
Let's get into the details.
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Seahawk is built as a successor of Sea Hunter.
Sometime back U.S. Navy’s Sea Hunter project had achieved something special.
Sea Hunter which is an MDUSV - 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 or 8368 km.
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, had 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.”
Viewers may note that Leidos is a FORTUNE® 500 science and technology leader.
As per Leidos, Seahawk is designed to operate with little human involvement, thus providing
a forward-deployed and rapid-response asset in the global maritime surveillance network.
Dan Brintzinghoffer, Leidos Vice President for Maritime Solutions,
“We didn’t just put an autonomous navigation system onto an existing ship,
every mechanical and electrical system on Seahawk has unique
configurations designed to run for months at a time without maintenance or a crew.”
The trimaran’s displacement when fully loaded is 145 long tons. This includes 14,000 gallons
of fuel that can power the twin diesel engines for a substantial length of time.
The company has stated that the Seahawk’s upgraded design follows an evaluation of over 300 lessons
learned from Sea Hunter. These upgrades were based on joint evaluations by Leidos and the Navy
and include upgraded electrical systems, a payload mounting system and test operator control station.
U.S. Navy envisions a “Ghost Fleet” consisting of Large Unmanned Surface Vehicles (LUSVs), Medium
Unmanned Surface Vehicles (MUSVs), and Extra-Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (XLUUVs).
U.S. Navy is still charting out long-term plans
on how “Ghost Fleet” could be deployed in the future and there are a lot of possible use cases.
Here are some of them
1. Scout: “Ghost Fleet” could potentially gather lots of intelligence
regarding threats like enemy warships, sea mines, submarines as well as land-based assets.
This will greatly increase 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. “Ghost Fleet”
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. “Ghost Fleet” 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 the enemy’s focus. Also, they can be used to act as a shield in case of eventuality
where these vessels 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 a major advantage in battle.
4. Weapons carrier: “Ghost Fleet” will be used to augment the firepower of the U.S carrier strike
groups. Weapons in “Ghost Fleet” could be cued by different sensors to strike enemy assets.
Rivals are developing asymmetric means to counter U.S. Navy.
This includes deploying A2AD Anti Access Area Denial comprising of long-range
layer Anti Ship missile and Air defense systems. It is paramount that U.S. Navy detects & counter
these threats without the main assets like supercarriers getting exposed.
This is where Ghost Fleet will be crucial as it can form a protective
as well as potentially an offensive layer in the future.
The platform has enormous potential and as AI matures autonomously working crafts like Seahawk
will be able to undertake more complex missions.
This remains to be seen how things pan out,
it is likely to have major ramifications on how future battles are fought at sea.