U.S. Navy surface drones visit Japan
Two Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV) pulled into Fleet Activities Yokosuka, becoming the first USVs to visit Japan. These USVs were a part of the Integrated Battle Problem exercise that the Navy conducts. These exercises help the Navy get a feel of how to integrate naval maritime drones with manned naval ships, as well as to work out kinks to ensure smoother operations with these and with other platforms.
From The Navy Times:
The vessels, assigned to Unmanned Surface Vessel Division 1, have been taking part in the Integrated Battle Problem 23.2 exercise, which aims to test and advance concepts and capabilities for medium and large USVs in the Indo-Pacific. The exercise is the first to use USVs in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations.
“Unmanned and autonomous technologies are key to growing our distributed maritime operations framework,” said Rear Adm. Blake Converse, deputy commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, in a Navy news release. “By proliferating our presence in the Pacific and increasing the fleet’s situational awareness and lethality, we give ourselves more options to make better decisions at all levels of leadership.”
The Navy stood up USVDIV-1 in May 2022 to help expedite the integration of unmanned vehicles into the Navy’s fleet. Along with the Mariner and Ranger, the command also includes medium unmanned surface vessels Sea Hunter and Sea Hawk, which participated in the 2022 Rim of the Pacific exercise.
Integrated Battle Problem 23.2, which kicked off in August, is the third multi-domain unmanned capabilities exercise under Pacific Fleet’s experimentation plan, the Navy said. The exercise aims to facilitate the development of USV concepts as USVDIV-1 works in conjunction with type commanders.
The Navy Times provides additional information here.
Category: Navy
USV… all well and good until a glitch of some kind renders the command and control part inop and it crashes into something that shouldn’t have been crashed into.
On an unrelated story last night on NBC national news, how long, on average, does it take to do ship repairs. They did an article where one ship had been out of commission for repairs for 8, count em, 8 years. Is this the equivalent of take off the radiator cap, install new everything and reinstall radiator cap?
The Congressman or senator they were interviewing didn’t visibly show a deer in the headlight look, but I’m sure his brain was working overtime to prevent that and not give a definitive answer at the same time.
Word is one of the unmanned ships screwed up while on liberty and was brought back to the pier by the local police. No word yet on what sort of NJP it might face, but it is currently chipping it’s own paint.
Ha! 🙂
And if one of these USVs has a computer glitch and decides to zig instead of zag, and hits a manned ship is the Navy going to still blame the Commander and fire them?
Make
USAF Retired
Can a non-sentient object be said to have “visited” anything?
If the neighbor’s drone flies through my window and lands on the kitchen table, is it “visiting” me?
No, but it’s now yours to sell back for a sum of money, yet to be determined.
You reckon the artist formerly known as hunter has already made sure the Chinese Communist Navy have the specs for these ships?