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Unmanned Vessel Plans Need Improvement, Agency Says

By Geoff Ziezulewicz

  While the U.S. Navy is steaming full speed ahead in developing unmanned surface and undersea drones to augment the fleet of the future, the information technology and the artificial intelligence that will drive these platforms remain a work in progress. The sea service needs to better map out its efforts, according to a recent government watchdog report.

  Navy shipbuilding plans call for spending more than $4 billion on such drones over the next five years, but that plan “does not account for the full costs to develop and operate these systems,” a Government Accountability Office report found. 

   Replacing crews requires IT and Al capabilities that the Navy has just begun to examine.

  GAO's audit, which began in October 2020, found that the Navy is “only beginning to assess (unmanned systems”) effects on existing shipbuilding plans.”

  “While the Navy has outlined a plan to spend $4.3 billion on uncrewed maritime systems in its shipbuilding plan, we found that this understates the costs associated with these systems because it does not account for all costs - specifically operations and sustainment, and the digital infrastructure necessary to enable them," the report states.

  Funding unmanned development could also come under pressure from competing shipbuilding demands. The report found that the Navy has yet to stand up criteria for evaluating prototypes or developing better schedules for such prototype efforts. 

  The Navy is looking to introduce several unmanned systems into the fleet in the coming decades, according to GAO, and while some software will be unique to each platform, the Navy also wants to have a lot of common digital infrastructure among these vehicles.

  This digital infrastructure would involve Al capabilities built over time to better help the platforms communicate, sense their surroundings and manage reams of data, the report states.

  Navy officials told GAO that the sea service needs a host of technologies, including simulation software, software for autonomy and mission planning, large datasets for machine learning, as well as commercial tech and software that can be quickly bought and melded into Navy systems.

  Among its recommendations, the report states that the Navy should provide Congress with a cost estimate for the full scope of work that will be required to make unmanned systems part of the fleet, while developing an approach to refine this estimate in the next shipbuilding plan.  

  The service should also establish an “uncrewed maritime systems portfolio” and offer more detail about how it intends to reach its unmanned objectives.

(Adapted from Navy Times. May 2022, p. 15.https://www .navytimes.com/)