High-speed unmanned craft eyed for surveillance role.

• Author: Tiron, Roxana
• Position: Under development for Navy - Brief Article

The U.S. Navy is investing $55 million over six years to develop an unmanned surface craft that would conduct a wide array of missions in various marine environments.

The system, called Spartan, is a high-speed vehicle that can be operated remotely or run autonomously. Its missions would include littoral antisubmarine warfare, mine warfare, torpedo defense, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Research and development work on Spartan has been underway for three years at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center.

Joseph Monti, head of the surface undersea warfare strategic planning and development office, said Spartan will use existing high-speed craft--seven or 11-meter Rigid Hull Inflatable Boats (RHIBs)--and integrate defense and weapon systems into those RHIBs.

Spartan, Monti said during an industry conference, is "only one component of the net-centric battle force that we are going to try to move forward. ... By using USVs [unmanned surface vehicles], we are really trying to take the operator out of harm's way."

Spartan was one of the programs selected by the Defense Department for the Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration, or ACTD program. Monti said he expects to have three or four Spartans, with multiple modules, by the 2006-2007 time frame. The program is sponsored by the U.S. Navy, the secretary of defense and the Singapore navy.

Contractors working on the program include Raytheon and Northrop Grumman.

Monti said the Spartan concept started three years ago. "We really wanted to see what were the requirements for unmanned surface vehicles," he said. "What we were trying to do was look at asymmetric threats--knowing what the UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] programs were developing, knowing what the UUV [unmanned undersea vehicle] programs were developing--and how USVs could fit into the overall picture," he said.

Depending on the length of the RHIB, Spartan can operate anywhere from eight to 48 hours on station with a range of 150-1,000 nautical miles. Its speed varies from 28 knots, up to about 50 knots. "Compared to a manned vehicle, it has a much higher speed and can operate at night," Monti noted. It can carry payloads between 2,600 and 5,000 pounds.

"We've developed the core system, which we call the truck," said Monti. "From that, we added a reconfigurable mission module and we have a plug-and-play environment." The plug-and-play capability would allow a single surface combatant to control one or more USVs, either in...