iscover
The US Navy’s surface warfare requirements director, Rear Admiral William Daly, has raised serious questions about the future of Large Unmanned Surface Vessels (LUSV) in the make-up of the fleet, leaving similar questions given Australia’s proposed focus on the platforms.
Speaking to an audience at the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium, RADM Daly, the man responsible for guiding investments into the service’s future surface warfare capabilities, including high-profile programs such as the Medium and Large Unmanned Surface Vessels, stressed that he remained “sceptical” of the widespread deployment of Large Unmanned Surface Vessels.
This comes at a time when Australia and the United States are seeking to leverage developments in automation and uncrewed systems to scale the technology up and integrate the technology as a means for building up their respective surface fleets in a cost-effective and time-sensitive manner.
“Instead of different large and medium designs, we need one craft that is affordable, non-exquisite, and can come off multiple production lines in an identical manner and go towards one of two payloads – either the envisioned magazine payload of the Large USV or the envisioned ISR-related Medium USV payloads,” RADM Daly told the audience, according to US-based Breaking Defense.
Unpacking this further, RADM Daly told journalists, “The Large USV has a great purpose, but it has it has walked that path towards exquisite, expensive [and] unpalatable ... I’m sceptical about that landing in the fleet.”
This gradual lurching towards an exquisite and expensive platforms flies in the face of what was originally envisaged at the origins of the program to provide a cost-effective, easy to mass produce platform to add further hulls and, importantly, missile payloads away from an emphasis on billion-dollar surface combatants like guided missile destroyers and frigates.
As part of his role and a shift away from the seemingly inevitable lurch towards large, expensive platforms, RADM Daley detailed his focus, saying, “So now I’m getting back to the threshold levels of what the previous Large USV was envisioned to carry. It’s a very appropriate, inexpensive, feasible, producible, elegant solution to two problems that can come at speed.”
In the Australian context, this raises significant questions about the development of our own LUSVs or as the Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles described them, Large Optionally Crewed Surface Vessels (LOSV), particularly given the emphasis on joint development with the United States in order to assure high degrees of interoperability with the US Navy.
The decision to integrate optionally crewed surface vessels into the fleet reflects a broader strategic shift towards leveraging cutting-edge technologies to enhance operational flexibility, expand surveillance capabilities and reduce risks to personnel. These vessels, which can operate either autonomously or with a reduced crew, offer a cost-effective and scalable solution to meet the demands of modern naval warfare.
Their advanced systems can perform a wide range of missions, from intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to force protection and precision strike, providing a significant boost to Australia’s maritime defence posture.
A central pillar of Australia’s push towards the development and acquisition of the LOSV/LUSV was the apparent broader trend among allied and partner nations, including the United States and the United Kingdom, who are similarly exploring autonomous and optionally crewed naval platforms.
So the question becomes, given an apparent pivot by the US, we have to ask, how does Australia proceed, or do we risk our own LOSVs evolving into equally costly and exquisite platforms, particularly when our planned crewed platforms fall short on lethality metrics themselves?
