The U.S. military must continue to aggressively develop unmanned systems or risk losing its advantage to other countries that are pursuing the technology, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus warned April 30.
“If we don’t keep up in this, if we don’t lead in this, we will very certainly be bypassed in this because we’re not the only ones working on this,” Mabus said in remarks at the National Press Club.
Mabus defended his recent comment that the Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-35 should be the Navy’s last manned strike fighter. He noted that “one of the big selling points” of the F-35 “is it makes decisions so fast that the pilot is not involved in a lot of those decisions.” To have the endurance, payload and stealth that will be needed in the future, “unmanned is the only way you’re going to get to a lot of places,” he added.
Mabus said the Navy has been making great strides in unmanned systems. He touted the service’s X-47B unmanned aircraft, which on April 22 became the first unmanned aircraft to be refueled in flight by another aircraft. The X-47B’s earlier accomplishments include becoming the first unmanned aircraft to catapult launch from a carrier, and the first unmanned aircraft to complete an arrested landing on a carrier.
“Nobody’s flying that thing,” he said. “It’s programmed to go find the carrier, land, take off [and] go find the tanker. That’s the future of warfare, whether under water, [on the] surface or in the air.”
The secretary’s comments came just a little over two weeks after he announced the creation of an office and senior civilian position to coordinate and champion unmanned systems.
“The technology cuts across all sorts of platforms and all sorts of realms, and we were simply running too many one-off programs doing this,” Mabus said.
In other comments, Mabus defended the Navy’s recent decision to buy 44 Bell Helicopter Textron [TXT]-Boeing [BA] V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft to replace its C-2 Greyhound cargo aircraft. He called the Osprey a “phenomenal aircraft” that “proved its worth” in Afghanistan “in terms of how fast it could get in, how much protection it gave [and] how quickly it got people in and out of the danger zone.”
Turning to alternative energy, Mabus said the Navy is on track to begin deploying the “Great Green Fleet” next year. Ships and aircraft accompanying a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier will use a 50/50 blend of biofuel and petroleum-based marine diesel or aviation fuel.