‘Be uncomfortable’: Navy wants new USV to challenge the ‘status quo’

WASHINGTON — When the US Navy gathered industry earlier this summer to discuss the future of its unmanned surface vessel portfolio, the room was packed. According to one official’s estimate, nearly three times as many contractors asked to join compared to a similar event held the previous year.

They were gathered to discuss a new Navy program to develop the so-called Modular Attack Surface Craft (MASC), a USV envisioned to carry a variety of payloads and be easy to build and repair en masse. Beyond that, however, the Navy was intentional in not overly prescribing requirements about what this new vessel should look like, but rather asked defense firms to offer them the right solution to fill the service’s needs.

For an industry used to pitching vessels based on fairly strict design mandates, the change in approach for some in attendance was not welcomed. But that discomfort, a key Navy official said, was expected.

“I don’t know how many times I said it, at least the first day, probably the second day too: Be uncomfortable. It’s okay to be uncomfortable because we are challenging the status quo,” Capt. Matthew Lewis, the program manager for the service’s office overseeing its unmanned systems portfolio, told Breaking Defense in an exclusive interview last week. 

“We’re asking the Navy to approach things differently to meet the need. And so there will be people or organizations or companies or leaders that will be uncomfortable with what we’re doing,” he added.

For MASC, the Navy is taking a page out of the playbook of the Defense Innovation Unit, the Pentagon agency known for connecting the military to Silicon Valley. DIU strips back overly prescriptive requirements in lieu of a narrative explanation of the problem and gives a broad outline of its desired solutions. 

For example, the Navy in its solicitation said it is seeking “vessel solutions that will address up to three operational needs” and allow for different payload, range and speed limitations depending on which problem industry is addressing.

That change of pace, and the uncertainty around what the Navy is seeking, is a problem for some in industry vying for a contract in what could be a very lucrative program of record. 

Lewis and Dorothy Engelhardt, a senior Navy civilian overseeing unmanned systems, acknowledged they’ve heard pushback and concerns from industry about how the program is structured, but contended now is the time for the Navy to be taking “calculated risks.”

“The agility and timelines that we need to operate at — looking at how we’ve done things before doesn’t satisfy doing that,” said Lewis. Using “Other Transaction Authority and doing this approach… gives us the flexibility of being able to capitalize on the investment that some companies have already made, to put their own [independent research and development], their own funding into this, and I think it supports that ability to flex as we need to, as we go forward.”

A ‘Huge Learning Curve’

MASC is a marked step in a different direction from the service’s previous visions for its future hybrid fleet. At the top of the Navy’s priorities is a vessel that is “non-exquisite,” adheres to commercial standards and will be easy to build and repair in large numbers.

Assuming the necessary funding is approved by Pentagon brass and lawmakers — not a surefire thing with any Pentagon program — the service will assess proposals and have detailed discussions with vendors over the next several months, which could lead to a prototype production contract in early fiscal 2026, according to Lewis.

The market for non-exquisite, unmanned surface vessels has been inundated with fresh competitors this year, Breaking Defense previously reported, sparked by a combination of enthusiastic rhetoric from the Pentagon for unmanned technologies and the significantly lower bar to entry for building drones, compared to frigates and destroyers.

RELATED: ‘Oversaturated’: Can the Navy make good on unmanned vessel demand after industry surge?

Contrast that with programs like the Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vessel (XLUUV) or the Large Unmanned Surface Vessel. Those efforts, which have had their fair share of programmatic bumps, sought highly unique capabilities and requirements that industry was unlikely to produce without a specific request from a customer like the US Navy.

Engelhardt, who has worked on the Navy’s unmanned portfolio since 2015, said the service has faced a “huge learning curve” in bringing its visions with the technology to fruition, referring to older programs such as XLUUV.

There are questions about the “software required, the policy issues that are associated with freedom of navigation,” she said. “The other piece of this that is often lost … [is] the DOTMLPF.”

DOTMLPF is a (tortured) acronym that describes the framework the military uses to ensure its capabilities are not just successful in their isolated mission areas but also work cohesively with the broader force. That holistic adoption of unmanned technologies is what the US Navy has struggled to overcome in recent years while trying to build a hybrid fleet, Adm. Daryl Caudle, the freshly minted chief of naval operations, told reporters earlier this year.

“We’re really talking about how we’re going to adapt the fleet to understand, maintain, control, implement and employ [this tech] in all domains — air, surface and undersea — and make sure that they are a cohesive unit,” said Engelhardt. “So, it’s not just the singular thing doing a particular mission, but they are working as a collective for whatever the operation or the mission set may be for the week, the month, the year.”

Manning, Classifications, And The Precedents Going Forward

The kinds of policy choices Engelhardt alluded to, and the ones the Navy has grappled with during its earliest unmanned systems programs, stand to have outsized influence both on new programs moving forward and broader choices among industry.

One example is the notion of “optional manning,” constructing a vessel so that it can safely accommodate sailors, while still being capable of operating autonomously. It’s an idea that previous Navy programs ostensibly embraced, but Pentagon observers and analysts often contend that having to spend money on habitability requirements at least partly defeats the benefit of a vessel being unmanned.

As demonstrated by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s vessel, Defiant, building a ship that doesn’t accommodate human life returns significant cost savings. Amenities such as berthing, living spaces, a galley and bathrooms can be completely discarded. It also allows engineers to take risks in places where they otherwise might not be willing to if they had to consider a sailor’s safety. 

The drawback being that, without a crew to monitor equipment, the ship must have enough redundant systems that problems can be resolved with only remote human intervention, if any.

RELATED: No Sailors In Sight: DARPA Launches Warship Designed ‘From The Ground Up’ To Be Truly Unmanned

Asked about the service’s current stance on optional manning, Lewis said the Navy is “driving toward” vessels that have no one aboard, but balancing the pros and cons of allowing for human habitability is an issue the service is still working through.

Engelhardt added that while a ship being truly “unmanned” is the end goal, optional crewing may be a necessary steppingstone or a desired flexibility depending on the concepts of operation developed for unmanned vessels.

As for MASC, the solicitation requires “organic accommodations onboard for eight personnel for up to 14 days” for the applicable vessels — the third solution should be designed to be embarked on a larger ship, and therefore separate manning is unnecessary.

But another requirement from the solicitation that seems to already be sending ripples through the unmanned community is a Navy request that proposed vessels are “constructed to an American Bureau of Shipping standard.”

ABS is an international certification agency that inspects and approves commercial ships as being built to operate safely, and is well regarded by the sea services, maritime-focused government agencies and industry. But, like the Navy, it too has spent recent years grappling with autonomous technologies and its implications for sea-going vessels.

Not long after the release of the Navy’s MASC solicitation, industry announcements started popping up.

Take Austin-based USV maker Saronic. The startup is led by Navy veterans who have been vocal about their intent to establish a “next-generation shipyard” focused squarely on building the kinds of unmanned vessels the service says it wants.

Following the industry day and subsequent solicitation, Saronic announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding with ABS to “work toward ABS certification for Saronic’s autonomous capabilities… Through this process, ABS will review and evaluate Saronic’s larger [autonomous surface vessels] against rigorous safety, reliability, and performance standards.”

Meanwhile, California-based USV maker Saildrone recently announced its Surveyor-class USV “received full classification” from ABS, which the company said has not previously been granted to an unmanned vessel. In a social media post amplifying Saildrone’s announcement, ABS stated Surveyor is “the world’s largest classed USV!”

During an interview with Breaking Defense, Saildrone CEO Richard Jenkins said his company has been working with ABS for several years to obtain the certification in anticipation that ABS’s stamp of approval will become the norm for fully autonomous unmanned vessels.  

Jenkins added he thinks the Navy’s inclusion of the ABS requirement into its new USV solicitation is playing a role in why numerous unmanned systems vendors are suddenly talking about their relationships with the classification agency.

The technology’s proliferation, the precedent-setting policy decisions and the change of how the Navy does its business of buying unmanned and autonomous ships, in Lewis’ view, is all part of a confluence of events that he hopes will make the new program a success. 

“There’s this nexus of technology [that] is at the right level. There is industry energy or support or interest that is … definitely growing,” he said. “There’s an operational need that we’ve heard, probably for a long time, from the combatant commanders, and now we’re having funding that is all coming together to make it an environment where we can do this [at] some level of scale that’s meaningful.”