Speakers highlight importance of collaboration for developing, integrating unmanned maritime systems

January 14, 2020 | AUVSI News

As the U.S. Navy continues to develop and integrate unmanned maritime systems into its repertoire, members of the government and the unmanned systems industry agree they will need to continue relying on each other to make these systems a regular part of the armed forces.

“What I really appreciate is industry’s willingness to get on board with the Navy’s vision for the family of systems that can be upgraded throughout their life,” said Capt. Pete Small, USN, program manager, PMS 406, on a government panel during the Unmanned Systems Integration Seminar, presented by the Naval Submarine League and AUVSI.

To leverage the full potential of these systems, Small said the Navy needs to be able to buy the platforms, learn about them, and make the necessary changes so they meet the Navy’s stringent requirements.

“We have to be able to take advantage of the learning that we do as we go through our platform acquisition efforts and make improvements and upgrade them as we move along,” Small said.

According to Brad S. Neff, SES, deputy director of the Undersea Warfare Division in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, N97, N97 views the UUV as a “truck.” Specifically talking about the Snakehead Phase 2 UUV, Neff said while the Navy might not know every sensor and every payload they want on that vehicle for the foreseeable future, industry could help fill some of those gaps.

“What we would value is the ability to upgrade that with other payloads and other sensors in an open architecture, collaborative fashion,” Neff said, “so that once we buy the truck, we can continue to upgrade this capability over time, which will require collaboration across the industry partners as opposed to only the one that made the original truck.”

One specific area of interest where the government would like industry’s help in is autonomy, because that, according to Small, will be the “exponential multiplier in advancing the capabilities” of these platforms the Navy is just now starting to buy.

“I think as we continue to learn how we’re going to acquire autonomy — we’re still very platform centric in describing our capabilities — I think as we get more mature on this journey, we’ll be able to talk more about behaviors and autonomy. And we will need your [industry’s] continued support to put together an infrastructure and process to go develop and deliver autonomy and behaviors that we can then deploy to those platforms,” Small said.

“And the extent that they are upgradeable, modular and founded in similar architectures, will be essential to that future state where we can buy or acquire or incorporate the best autonomous behaviors. That’s our combat system.”   

Craig Perciavalle, president of shipbuilder Austal USA, said “autonomy’s a gamechanger for the Navy,” adding that “it’s going to be the gamechanger for our nation’s defense.”

Affordability, risk aversion

Building and operating this technology is no small or easy task, so why bother with at all, asked Rear Adm. Nevin Carr, USN (ret.), vice president and Navy strategic account executive at Leidos. A few variables stuck out for him that made this technology valuable to the Navy, one being risk.

“It will allow us to alter the risk equation, not tomorrow, but eventually, and when we do this right, we’ll be able to alter the risk equation and take risks in ways and places where we would not have wanted to put people,” he said.

The other variable that makes this technology worthwhile is cost, Carr said.

“It only is relevant so far in that we can do more of something that we had to do before, if we can do it in a more affordable way,” Carr said. “The more affordable we can make them, the more we can afford to have, the more numbers will have out there. It also gives us more capability and allows our ships to go out and do other things.”

Rear Adm. Mark Kenny, USN (ret.), president and general manager of L3Harris Unmanned Maritime Systems, said affordable does not equal cheap, and that other factors have to be taken into consideration when thinking about the affordability of these systems.

“Cheap doesn’t give you the reliability, the redundancy, the ability to operate in harsh environments,” Kenny said. “We’re looking at the trucks right now, but we’re looking at capability to our warfighters that has to last 60 to 90 days in automation, autonomy, reliability.

“When you start operationalizing these trucks so that they’re going to be in the hand of the warfighter, there is a cost to that, and we are driven in industry by the budget numbers in the budget. We think there’s going to be another level when you take these vehicles out forward, not just to the demos and things that we’re doing today, but forward in the warfighter’s hands, there’s a cost that’s potentially not reflected in just the model of building the trucks. So, we’re watching that closely.”

Lessons learned

Part of getting these vehicles out to sea is testing and validating that the technology works the way it is designed to. While these vehicles undergo their fair share of testing, that testing falls short in comparison with other industries, such as the automobile industry, speakers said.

“I think what keeps me up at night is that what we’re really lacking is a significant amount of relevant testing,” said Brian McKeon, director of development and chief scientist at the Fleet Support Group, Huntington Ingalls Industries — Technical Solutions Division.

McKeon said the automotive industry is regularly testing autonomous vehicles to validate technology and collect swaths of data. Instead of being envious of the industry, however, McKeon said those working with unmanned maritime systems could actually follow their example.

“The examples from the automotive industry and others is, they’re setting up ecosystems,” McKeon said. “Michigan is setting up ecosystems where companies can have the data and have the comms to come try out their stuff in an environment, and they don’t have to do years of proof that it’s going to work.”

McKeon also pointed to Norway, which has established a “play field” of sorts for the USV industry, where government and industry can trial their technologies.