Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) provide a capability that Western navies must both capitalise on and counter.
In the maritime domain, the underwater world is a primary focus in developing unmanned capabilities. Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) emerged initially as a tool for mine counter-measures (MCM) operations, with navies seeking to remove operators from harm’s way. The MCM requirement has become increasingly significant, in the context of the Russo-Ukraine war and its strategic effect on Europe’s maritime domain.
The UK Royal Navy (RN) is meeting an emerging, urgent operational requirement (UOR) to counter mine-based threats in coastal and offshore waters with the rapid acquisition and delivery into service of RFA Stirling Castle (formerly a commercial offshore support vessel). The vessel arrived in January, and has completed conversion work prior to conducting trials. When the ship arrived, the RN said in a statement that underlined the significant nature of the threat that its “capability will assure freedom of access for UK ships and submarines (including the continuous at-sea deterrent)”.
In a further statement issued in April as Stirling Castle readied for trials, the RN explained that the ship will “harness … technology using a series of unmanned systems (the joint French-UK Maritime Mine Counter Measures (MMCM) system, the Combined Influence Sweep (SWEEP) system and Medium Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (MAUVs)) to locate, identify and neutralise mine threats.”
In parallel with providing MCM capability, UUVs are playing another increasingly significant role in the underwater domain in anti-submarine warfare (ASW), to help counter the growing threat from peer competitor submarine capability. AUVs, for example, feature centrally in operational and technological concepts for building ASW barriers designed to picket maritime choke points.
UUVs’ MCM and ASW capabilities are also key in countering risks to critical underwater infrastructure. In other words, conducting seabed warfare.
US Navy Assesses Orca
To date, using UUVs in these contexts primarily provides defensive capability. However, navies such as the US Navy (USN) are assessing how UUVs can be used in offensive contexts. The USN is developing its Boeing-built Orca extra-large UUV (XLUUV) capability to conduct clandestine mine-laying operations in forward-deployed locations. One Orca is already in the water, conducting sea trials. Such offensive capability will be brought together in ‘teaming’ constructs between crewed and unmanned systems.
Speaking at the ‘West 23’ AFCEA conference in San Diego in February, USN Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Michael Gilday noted that crewed/unmanned teaming will be integral to building UUVs’ offensive capability, particularly given that crewed and unmanned platforms will be operating increasingly in a distributed network. Part of the navy’s development process here will involve constructing command-and-control (C2) architectures for integrating crewed and unmanned systems, CNO explained. “This is manned and unmanned teaming …. Whether they’re under the sea, on the sea, and in the air, … we’re going to have to bring that orchestra together.”
In April, when speaking at the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space symposium in National Harbor, Maryland, CNO said the navy is “moving very, very rapidly” to deliver offensive capability for UUVs, highlighting their role in key offensive tasks like ASW and electronic warfare.
Growing Threat
The United States is increasingly concerned over the threat that adversary unmanned systems could pose to the security of its own submarines. In March, in testimony to the US House Armed Services Committee on Strategic Forces, General Anthony Cotton, Commander US Strategic Command, stated: “The advancement of unmanned surface and underwater vehicles may soon emerge as a threat to our SSBNs [nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines] and supporting infrastructure, requiring a comprehensive force protection system to defend both pier-side and in-transit SSBNs.”
While the implication of this statement is that USN SSBNs on deterrent patrol in the deep expanses of the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans remain relatively secure, maritime choke points surrounding port access present a potential vulnerability. In similar geostrategic contexts, Western naval forces may be able to use forward-deployed UUVs to provide sensing or other capabilities to restrict adversary SSBN operations in times of conflict.
UUVs sit centrally in emerging US conceptual thinking about offsetting adversary submarine capability. In a speech at the Royal United Services Institute’s (RUSI’s) Seapower conference on 27 April, Bryan Clark, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and a former USN submariner, pointed to how Russia is developing much quieter SSBNs and nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs), along with deploying different types of UUVs, while China is producing nuclear boats in numbers. “The challenge of scale, as well as more sophisticated and quieter undersea threats, is going to challenge our traditional ways of doing ASW,” said Clark.
UUVs can provide mass to support traditional ASW concepts, for example providing presence at ASW barriers across key choke points like the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap. This offers capability to detect, harass, and prospectively attack adversary boats trying to transit such choke points.
Clark also explained how, in the new ASW environment, UUVs can play key roles in offensive operations. “When it comes to offensive undersea operations … the undersea environment is becoming more contested.” Here, he explained, Western attempts to push SSNs forward into adversaries’ submarine bastions will need to overcome the seabed sensors, submarines, surface ships, and maritime aviation that will be deployed as a layered response.
“This … has created the need for suppression of undersea defences, just like we do suppression of air defences when we conduct strike operations,” Clark explained. “The bastions are now something you’ve got to fight your way into rather than just make your way into …. You’re going to have to use unmanned systems increasingly to conduct attacks against undersea infrastructure like undersea sensors … and you’re going to have to use decoys and jammers to confuse undersea sensors so you can protect your submarine operations and prevent them from being degraded.”
How to suppress undersea defences is something Western forces must think about, Clark continued. “How do we get those [UUVs] in there, how are they going to operate with the manned platforms they’re going to be deploying with or protecting, and how do we manage this operation from a C2 perspective?” Clark asked. “These are all challenges we’re working through.”
by Dr. Lee Willett
