U.S. expands use of underwater unmanned vehicles.

• Author: Martin, Antoine
• Position: Undersea Warfare - Geographic overview

There are today an estimated 450 underwater unmanned vehicles in the U.S. military inventory.

They range in size, although most are small UUVs that are aimed at gathering oceanographic data, such as glider or hand-launched drones used to survey the seafloor in search of mines.

One of the more significant recent procurements has been a contract award to Bluefin Robotics--as a subcontractor to General Dynamics--to provide countermeasure systems that can detect and identify undersea mines in cluttered environments for the Navy's Littoral Combat Ships.

The Office of Naval Research, meanwhile, has received proposals for a "large displacement UUV" to navigate the seas up to 60 days at a time. The craft would be launched and recovered by surface combatant ships and submarines.

And the Navy's Undersea Defensive Warfare Systems Program Office is procuring the SeaFox mine disposal systems from Atlas North America, the U.S. subsidiary of Germany's Atlas Elektronik Group, a supplier of maritime defense electronics.

The Navy released a UUV "master plan" in 2004, and it is still relevant. Nine missions are identified: Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; mine countermeasures; anti-submarine warfare; inspection/identification; oceanography; communication/navigation network nodes; payload delivery; information operations; and time-critical strike.

Several recommendations from the master plan have been initiated. Among them is the development of four UUV classes including one that weighs less than 100 pounds, a lightweight vehicle at 500 pounds, a 3,000-pound heavy weight submersible and large submarine at around 20,000 pounds.

The plan also called for the development of standards and modularity, increased experimentation in the technology, coordination with other unmanned vehicle programs, and the fielding of systems in the fleet.

Those recommendations have not been executed yet, which might explain why an updated roadmap has not been made public.

One reason for the delays is there is no major threat at hand for which underwater drones are needed, such as roadside bombs that drove the rapid procurement of ground robots, or the demands for intelligence gathering that fueled purchases of aerial surveillance drones.

The Defense Department's "Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap Fiscal Years 2011-2036" said that all systems will continue to expand their roles and numbers across the U.S. military. Unmanned underwater vehicles are folded into the unmanned maritime...