In recent years, unmanned technologies are no longer surprising. The first unmanned vehicles, for example, the models of the American company Tesla, entered the roads. In many countries, unmanned models of public transport are being prepared. In 2019, Russian Railways is going to test an unmanned train on the Moscow Central Circle (MCC), and in Germany in September 2018, an unmanned tram was tested. At the same time, unmanned technologies also descend to the household level, penetrating into our apartments, a fairly simple example is a robot vacuum cleaner.
Like many other modern technologies, they enter our daily life from the military sphere. The armies of many countries have been using various unmanned systems for a long time and quite successfully. The most famous and massively presented example is unmanned aerial vehicles, which are changing the picture of modern combat. And we are talking here not even about large models of attack drones, but about the simplest small reconnaissance vehicles, which greatly increase the awareness of units and subunits about the situation in the combat area, allowing in real time to control the movement of enemy personnel and equipment and adjust artillery Fire. Unmanned sapper robots are also widely used in modern armies and police. In recent years, more and more information has appeared on the creation of various sea-based drones, not only surface-based, but also underwater. The most famous example now heard by the citizens of Russia is the Poseidon underwater drone.
There is also a fairly extensive program for the creation of marine drones in the United States, while we are talking about the creation of both surface and underwater unmanned vehicles. And here the legend of the Flying Dutchman involuntarily comes to mind, which has a lot of different versions. In general terms, the Flying Dutchman is a collective image of a sailing ghost ship, which is still sailing, but already bereft of its crew. In modern realities, this legend is becoming quite a reality, since naval drones can do without sailors and the help of the "damned crew", while they do not terrify anyone, but attract the attention of the top naval leadership of potential adversary countries.
DARPA Surface Drone Concept
In mid-March 2019, new information appeared in the media about the American program to create large robotic surface ships. The veil of secrecy over American military projects was dispelled by the publication of the US defense budget for the 2020 financial year, according to the American authoritative publication Defense News. So it turned out that the US Navy requested $ 400 million, which is planned to be spent on the development and construction of two large robotic unmanned surface ships. In the future, by the end of 2025, this order may be increased to 10 unmanned vehicles. In total, the US Navy is ready to invest $ 2, 7 billion in this direction in the next five years.
The publication notes that the project, on which the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Research is working, is receiving significant support from the US Navy. In the future, it may end with the creation of the planet's first large unmanned combat ship, a carrier of various weapons. The main goal of the Office of Strategic Research under the US Department of Defense is to add new qualitative improvements to existing weapons and military equipment. Until recently, the main management projects were a swarm of strike UAVs and the option of transforming the ship-based missile system SM-6 into a long-range anti-ship missile. At the same time, some developments in the field of creating unmanned surface ships were much less known.
According to Defense News journalists, the design and construction of new unmanned surface ships will be carried out as part of the Large Unmanned Surface Vessel project, or LUSV for short (large unmanned surface ship). In turn, the basis for the implementation of a new ambitious project can serve as the groundwork that the US military has already received by implementing the Overlord project, the first information about which appeared in the public domain only in 2017. As part of the Overlord project, the US military expects to create an unmanned combat ship, which will be, in terms of functionality, equal to larger ships with a crew. The drone ship will have to independently determine the route to follow, comply with all international shipping rules, maintain communication with other ships in the group (both with and without crews), doing all this with the minimum possible interaction with people.
Possible design concept for a medium surface drone
According to information about the Overlord project, presented in 2017, it was about the creation of medium and large surface drones in displacement, which could function for a long time at sea without intervention and maintenance from people. At the same time, it was stipulated that the ships must carry on board at least 40 tons of payload. The seaworthiness of the ships was to be up to 5 points (wave height 2, 5-4 meters), the autonomy of sailing far from native shores - up to 90 days. At the same time, the cruising range of the drone ships was to be at least 4500 nautical miles. At the same time, the program is initially developed for the possible integration and testing of different sets of payloads: electronic warfare means, means for strikes against ground targets, anti-ship warfare means. It is reported that the new submitted LUSV project retains the indicated requirements, but future serial robotic ships will clearly surpass them.
It is known that the process of creating unmanned ships will take place in two stages. During the first one, with a duration of one year, the collection of proposals from various American shipbuilding companies will be carried out, at the second stage - the selection of the most promising projects. It is also known that the development of the second stage will be classified as classified. At the same time, Rear Admiral Randy Creets, who was present when the Navy's fiscal 2020 budget was presented, told the media that the US large unmanned surface ships would become part of the so-called ghost fleet. According to him, the finished LUSV-class ships will have to have a length of about 200-300 feet (61 to 91 meters) and a displacement of about a third of the promising American frigate FFG (X). Since the displacement of these frigates is known and is estimated at 6,000 tons, we can say that future large unmanned surface ships will have a displacement of up to 2,000 tons, which equates them to the class of modern corvettes.
The Pentagon considers the creation of a large number of unmanned ships of various classes and purposes as one of the options for the development of the country's navy. It is believed that such drones will be able to resolve the issue with a significant increase in the capabilities of the US fleet against the background of a gradual increase in the combat capabilities of the Chinese and Russian fleets. In addition, the American defense department is confident that the construction of unmanned ships will reduce the cost of maintaining the fleet. Earlier it was said that the US Navy expects to receive unmanned ships of four different classes in the future. According to the American admirals, this will make it possible to put into practice the concept of distributed maritime operations (DMO - Distributed Maritime Operations). It is believed that the concept will help the United States to contain the growing influence of Beijing in the East China and South China Seas by dispersing a large number of attack surface ships of the American fleet, including unmanned ones, in different parts of the oceans, which will entail the dispersion of surveillance and intelligence from China and will provide the US Navy with the opportunity to launch offensive strikes.
UAV Sea Hunter
There are already successful projects for the creation of surface unmanned ships in the United States. Last November, the US Pacific Fleet revealed that the Sea Hunter, a naval surface drone, had arrived at the Pearl Harbor naval base. US naval officials emphasized the fact that the arrival of the unmanned ship at Pearl Harbor is living proof that such unmanned vessels are capable of sailing thousands of miles in the open ocean and can be at sea for months. It was the Sea Hunter surface drone that became the first ship of this class in the US Navy. It is known that previously the new development has already interacted with submarines, destroyers, cruisers and aircraft carriers of the American fleet. This took place as part of the Trident Warrior exercises in 2017 and 2018.
By its design, the demonstrated apparatus is a classic trimaran, such a design allows to achieve increased seaworthiness and stability. The Sea Hunter's hull is 40 meters long and has a maximum speed of 27 knots (50 km / h). The ship is viewed by the American naval command as a kind of springboard for the future transition to unmanned medium displacement surface ships (MUSV). The main purpose of the ship at this stage is anti-submarine operations. The cost of the novelty was estimated at $ 23 million, which is significantly less than the cost of an ordinary warship with a trained crew. In the future, American strategists are going to place as many of these "pawns" as possible on the marine chessboard, as well as smaller marine drones.
