Future UUV Considerations
Today's technology has shown the world how autonomy and unmanned systems can be found in nearly every military environment. The last several years, the media has focused on the operations of unmanned aerial vehicles above the battlefields of Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. Recently however, an naval autonomous underwater vehicle has made the news, and with it has raised the question on the future of underwater drones. In early December of 2016, the Chinese Navy seized a US navy UUV (underwater unmanned vehicle). The drone was operating about 50 miles off the coast of the Philippines when it was captured. The hostage UUV was a Slocum glider, a scientific research drone that measures things like salinity of the water.
"Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook claimed the underwater drone was “a sovereign immune vessel of the United States” just like a manned craft, UUVs haven’t been around long enough to create much custom or precedent about their legal status, and the emotions stirred up by drone-napping are nothing like those aroused by detaining human sailors. It’s a murky legal, geopolitical, and military situation that the US is still struggling to find a strategy for."
In addition to not fully understanding the current state of international policy and restrictions on unmanned underwater vehicles, their rapidly evolving technology and capability brings questions as to the future of underwater warfare.
Much of the Navy's current research is devoted towards developing autonomous underwater vehicles with long duration endurance capabilities. "Over the past few years, [Boeing] has been building progressively larger prototypes of unmanned submarines: the 18-foot Echo Ranger, the 32-foot Echo Seeker, and now the 51-foot Echo Voyager. Without a crew, but with a huge fuel fraction, this latest Boeing boat can stay at sea for up to six months, or travel 7,500 miles. These numbers are pretty significant, as any other submarine with that type of endurance would require a nuclear reactor. "It can also dive deeper than any manned military craft. Most importantly, the Echo Voyager does not require a nearby surface ship for launch-and-recovery. In theory, with the right sonar and software, it could trail Chinese surface ships and submarines for weeks."
Unfortunately the Chinese are not far behind in this technology and could likely have their own unmanned submarines trailing our surface ships and manned submarines in the future as well. "As a team at RAND recently wrote, Chinese efforts with autonomous systems have been intensive too. So what happens when both sides have legions of not just ocean gliders, but real robotic submarines? As Bryan Clark of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) wrote in January 2015, undersea military competition may have reached an inflection point, where autonomous systems play a hitherto unseen major role. In a few years, if a Chinese oceanographic “research” vessel tries to inspect an Echo Voyager the way it snatched that Slocum, the thing might bite back. What happens at that point is anyone’s guess."
It will be interesting to see how the future of unmanned underwater vehicles influences international policy. It appears that technology is evolving faster than we can manage regulate it.
http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2016/12/20/future_underwater_drone_warfare_110520.html
http://breakingdefense.com/2016/12/china-seizes-us-underwater-drone-fortifies-disputed-islets/
http://auvac.org/configurations/view/49
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9vPxC-qucw
"Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook claimed the underwater drone was “a sovereign immune vessel of the United States” just like a manned craft, UUVs haven’t been around long enough to create much custom or precedent about their legal status, and the emotions stirred up by drone-napping are nothing like those aroused by detaining human sailors. It’s a murky legal, geopolitical, and military situation that the US is still struggling to find a strategy for."
In addition to not fully understanding the current state of international policy and restrictions on unmanned underwater vehicles, their rapidly evolving technology and capability brings questions as to the future of underwater warfare.
Much of the Navy's current research is devoted towards developing autonomous underwater vehicles with long duration endurance capabilities. "Over the past few years, [Boeing] has been building progressively larger prototypes of unmanned submarines: the 18-foot Echo Ranger, the 32-foot Echo Seeker, and now the 51-foot Echo Voyager. Without a crew, but with a huge fuel fraction, this latest Boeing boat can stay at sea for up to six months, or travel 7,500 miles. These numbers are pretty significant, as any other submarine with that type of endurance would require a nuclear reactor. "It can also dive deeper than any manned military craft. Most importantly, the Echo Voyager does not require a nearby surface ship for launch-and-recovery. In theory, with the right sonar and software, it could trail Chinese surface ships and submarines for weeks."
Unfortunately the Chinese are not far behind in this technology and could likely have their own unmanned submarines trailing our surface ships and manned submarines in the future as well. "As a team at RAND recently wrote, Chinese efforts with autonomous systems have been intensive too. So what happens when both sides have legions of not just ocean gliders, but real robotic submarines? As Bryan Clark of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) wrote in January 2015, undersea military competition may have reached an inflection point, where autonomous systems play a hitherto unseen major role. In a few years, if a Chinese oceanographic “research” vessel tries to inspect an Echo Voyager the way it snatched that Slocum, the thing might bite back. What happens at that point is anyone’s guess."
It will be interesting to see how the future of unmanned underwater vehicles influences international policy. It appears that technology is evolving faster than we can manage regulate it.
http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2016/12/20/future_underwater_drone_warfare_110520.html
http://breakingdefense.com/2016/12/china-seizes-us-underwater-drone-fortifies-disputed-islets/
http://auvac.org/configurations/view/49
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9vPxC-qucw
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