The U.S. Navy is investing $55 million over six years to develop
an unmanned surface craft that would conduct a wide array of missions
in various marine environments.
The system, called Spartan, is a high-speed vehicle that can be
operated remotely or run autonomously. Its missions would include
littoral antisubmarine warfare, mine warfare, torpedo defense, and
intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Research and development
work on Spartan has been underway for three years at the Naval Undersea
Warfare Center.
Joseph Monti, head of the surface undersea warfare strategic planning
and development office, said Spartan will use existing high-speed
craft—seven or 11-meter Rigid Hull Inflatable Boats (RHIBs)—and
integrate defense and weapon systems into those RHIBs.
Spartan, Monti said during an industry conference, is “only
one component of the net-centric battle force that we are going
to try to move forward. ... By using USVs [unmanned surface vehicles],
we are really trying to take the operator out of harm’s way.”
Spartan was one of the programs selected by the Defense Department
for the Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration, or ACTD program.
Monti said he expects to have three or four Spartans, with multiple
modules, by the 2006-2007 time frame. The program is sponsored by
the U.S. Navy, the secretary of defense and the Singapore navy.
Contractors working on the program include Raytheon and Northrop
Grumman.
Monti said the Spartan concept started three years ago. “We
really wanted to see what were the requirements for unmanned surface
vehicles,” he said. “What we were trying to do was look
at asymmetric threats—knowing what the UAV [unmanned aerial
vehicle] programs were developing, knowing what the UUV [unmanned
undersea vehicle] programs were developing—and how USVs could
fit into the overall picture,” he said.
Depending on the length of the RHIB, Spartan can operate anywhere
from eight to 48 hours on station with a range of 150-1,000 nautical
miles. Its speed varies from 28 knots, up to about 50 knots. “Compared
to a manned vehicle, it has a much higher speed and can operate
at night,” Monti noted. It can carry payloads between 2,600
and 5,000 pounds.
“We’ve developed the core system, which we call the
truck,” said Monti. “From that, we added a reconfigurable
mission module and we have a plug-and-play environment.” The
plug-and-play capability would allow a single surface combatant
to control one or more USVs, either in remote or autonomous mode.
Core subsystems will include surface search radar and advanced communications.
The surface search radar, required for navigation, can also detect
incoming threats. The communications system is designed to allow
any USV to act as a node for over-the-horizon communications. The
truck also has a line-of-sight antenna. All the technologies on
the core system, Monti said, are off-the-shelf products. “There
are really no developments in those pieces, the development will
be integration modules and signals we sent back to the mother ship,”
he noted.
Mission Modules
The mission modules may include more robust communications equipment
to support the high bandwidth required for data transmission and
relay. Mission-specific modules would include intelligence, surveillance,
reconnaissance, force protection, mine warfare and precision strike.
Spartan would inspect all incoming vessels and “sniff”
for explosives, chemicals or other threats, said Monti. “With
the force protection capability, you can not only watch it [the
USV] from a ship, but you should be able to watch it from land,
from a port or harbor.”
For the mine warfare module, the program office is planning to
take existing technologies and figure out how to integrate them
onboard the platform, according to Monti. “When you start
to peel off the onion and look at the concept, it starts to become
clear that if you want to do any kind of [mine] search, you need
multiple USVs,” he said.
For precision strike, the idea is to integrate the surveillance
and reconnaissance sensors with a missile system, said Monti. At
this point, the Hellfire missile appears to be the likely choice.
The U.S. Army has also expressed interest in a USV with precision
strike capability for riverine operations.
The littoral antisubmarine warfare module “is constantly
evolving,” said Monti. It would have a LHT/MK54 torpedo, dipping
sonar and sonobuoy, among other subsystems. Later in the development
cycle, Spartan may get rolling airframe missiles, 5-to 20-mm guns
or the Avenger air-defense system, as well as mine neutralization
packages.
However, figuring out how to swap one module for another is still
an unanswered question for the program. So is affordability.
“If we can get to a point when a Spartan unmanned vehicle
with sensors and weapons can get into a core figure of a million
dollars or less, then if a sea-level combatant loses that asset
it is not a major mishap,” he said. “We drive the cost,
no doubt, of the sensors and weapons that we put on board.”
One concept being discussed is to launch USVs from the DD-X surface
combatant, which the Navy plans to start buying next decade. The
USV could itself deploy smaller UUVs or even UAVs depending on the
need. Monti said that the biggest challenge would be to get all
types of unmanned vehicles to coordinate their actions with each
other.