Another Navy Unmanned System Pet Project...

Some very good - and very interesting - reporting by Dan Taylor for Inside the Navy (subscription only) regarding the development of UUVs. Some comments quoted from Capt. Paul Siegrist, program manager for unmanned maritime vehicles.

“The decision had been made early on to pursue 21-inch-diameter vehicles primarily based on the fact that the interface for the submarine force was the 21-inch-diameter tube,” he said. “With the advent of the Block III Virginia class large bow tubes, that provided an opportunity for us to reexamine large-diameter UUVs.”

The large-diameter UUV would do similar missions meant for the MRUUV, primarily mine countermeasures and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions. A larger size would allow for a more capable vehicle, as bigger is better when it comes to UUVs, Siegrist said.

“In UUVs, the diameter is critical,” he said. “The larger the diameter, the more internal volume you have and therefore you have more room for energy and payload.

“So the decision was reexamined with regard to what types of vehicle to pursue,” he continued. “Based upon the changed circumstances and the advent of a platform group that will be able to accept a larger diameter vehicle, [it] gave us the opportunity to take those lessons [ from the MRUUV], place it in a larger vehicle envelope to provide better capability to the fleet, and so we’re pursuing the large-diameter solution at this point.”

However, such a UUV is not yet a program of record, the captain noted.

“We’ve taken a step back -- I’ll call it a strategic pause -- to look at how best to take those lessons learned and incorporate them into a large-diameter vehicle,” he said. “Do I have a program of record on the street right now for a large-diameter UUV acquisition program? No. Are we interested in pursuing that and going down that path? Yes, and we are in the early stages of examining how best to do that.”

Funny thing about all this unmanned systems talk by various uniformed Navy folks lately, either the product being discussed is not a program of record, or the product being fielded is being fielded absent its own command organization. When talking about UCAS the other day, I thought NavHist made a great point.

What is needed now is the creation of an unmanned aviation community that is invested in a successful future. Right now the BAMS platform is nested in the P-3 community, and Firescout is lodged within the SH-60 community, neither of which wants to see these platform's mission expand and compete with the manned aircraft's missions or flight dollars. The only unmanned platform that has seen real budget growth over the past few years is STUAS (small tactical unmanned aerial system) which is actually owned and resourced by SurFor, who actually wants to see small UAS's providing eyes for his ships.

It is a great point, because SurFor is who is pushing the ScanEagle (the STUAS with the most funding) into the field, not the aviation community. For all the happy talk on unmanned systems, it always comes back to the various systems being discussed not actually being a program of record, or if it is, the system has no community to call its own.

Something else catches my attention. The Virginia class Block III is being discussed in the context of a modular system, as the SSGN often is. Why are these modular systems being treated different than the LCS, who have dedicated crews for its modular system? Will future Virginia's also have dedicated module crews? It may be efficiency demands are different for the platforms, certainly a likely possibility, but the lack of priority for mission modules for the LCS has already been evident in the budget the last few years. Will the same be true for the Virginia class in the future? If modular crews had their own communities, would the new systems they are developing be better represented in the budget cycle? Is this a big topic, or a non topic? I haven't decided, the similarity between modular surface and submarine crew functions in the future may be there, and I do wonder how this will all shake out over time.

I think large-diameter UUVs are very important to the future Navy, but I admit I am skeptical right now as to how seriously the Navy is taking unmanned systems in general. Until I see programs of record and the development of communities that can institutionalize unmanned systems as part of the larger unified naval force, I don't believe any momentum towards the promise of unmanned systems is actually being made. It is going to be very interesting to see how BAMS comes out in the QDR.

If the NECC, a 40,000 strong community, is used as an example; established as a command just over three years ago we see how far NECC still has to go before it gets institutionalized into the Navy. The NECCs momentum is slow today despite various capabilities in NECC being in very high demand by every Combatant Commanders, and despite some of those capabilities being unable to meet the Combatant Commanders demands due to lack of priority. Assuming the NECC doesn't get pushed to SOCOM (not making that up, it is being discussed), it will be years before the NECC is able to break into the budget competition the rest of the fleet dominates leadership of right now.

It is hard to believe that unmanned systems will fair better in budgets anytime soon relative to the NECC, having no unified community yet and competing against traditional systems from within the same communities the traditional systems have leadership dominance of.

Bottom line, I think there are some organizational issues that need to be worked out before the Navy evolves towards a 21st century force, and unmanned systems represents a very visible example of these organizational challenges yet ahead.