Surface Drones Will Be Key to DMO

The Navy’s top ship construction priority is the Columbia-class submarine. The estimated price for these 12 ballistic missile submarines exceeds $100 billion. Understandably, many naval strategists and budget hawks are concerned about the impact this program will have on the Navy’s ability to fund other types of ships. Moreover, to ensure a total of 66 fast-attack submarines (SSNs) remain in service, the Navy’s fiscal year (FY) 2020 30-year shipbuilding plan includes construction of additional Virginia-class SSNs.

The submarine force is receiving the highest priority in the Navy’s force-structure calculus. This begs the question of what prospects lie ahead for the remainder of the fleet, particularly when the Navy is determined to reassert sea control in an era of great power competition. Surface ships historically assert sea control; so, one must ask how the Navy expects to have both sea control and the desired submarine force.

The Navy evidently intends the attack submarine force to supplant surface combatants in the execution of primary anti- submarine and antisurface warfare efforts, particularly at the outset of conflict. Far less vulnerable to discovery and attack than surface ships, submarines will be expected to clear a safe space, after which surface ships may operate without suffering heavy, early attrition.

The shape of the surface force is necessarily about to change. The Navy’s new strategy of Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) is designed to disperse and closely integrate forces into an operational-level, unitary, combat management system. Think of DMO as an enormous grid of sensors and weapons, dispersed across the theater, and controlled at, for example, a Maritime Operations Center (MOC). In DMO, it doesn’t matter where the sensor or weapon is—or to what platform either is attached. If it is integrated, it can be exploited as needed. For that matter, if the MOC is destroyed, another node can assume theater control. Unmanned surface vessels (USVs) have the potential to be inexpensive and simple; automated and integrated; either a sensor or a shooter. This is how DMO will be operationalized with fewer manned ships.

The USV fleet will allow the remaining, manned surface fleet to range widely in response to fleet-level needs, rather than being tied in place. Today, to execute a land-attack strike or ballistic-missile defense mission, a ship must be stationed in a small, precisely designated box. To defend an expeditionary strike group (ESG), multiple ships are locked down for the duration of the effort. USVs could relieve this pressure. A large USV—essentially a floating magazine— could be stealthily positioned to provide Standard Missiles (SM-3s or SM-6s) or Naval Strike Missiles in defense of an ESG. Likewise, a medium-sized USV with sensors could be deployed at a key point, increasing awareness and enabling engagement at increased ranges.

The Navy’s 30-year ship plan states: “Unmanned systems continue to advance in capability and are anticipated to become key enablers through all phases of warfare and in all warfare domains. Significant resources were added . . . to accelerate fielding the full spectrum of unmanned and optionally manned capabilities. . . . These systems are now included in wargames, exercises and limited real-world operations. They are funded in . . . [R&D] investments.”

USVs are not yet counted toward the goal of 355 battle force ships, even though the large USV was included in the ship construction plan, and the Navy will use shipbuilding funds to pay for construction beginning in 2021.¹ Many questions remain, including how, or even if, USVs will be defended. And, in a larger sense, what is the exact path to fully realize DMO? The Navy must keep USVs cheap enough to build many and consider them disposable. It must avoid what happened to the “Streetfighter” concept—which slowly morphed into the much more expensive Littoral Combat Ship—whose “requirements creep” led to a high-cost platform that tries to do too many things and is master of none.