The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently announced its No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) program launched the first prototype unmanned surface vessel (USV) designed with no crew accommodations, USX-1 Defiant.
DARPA noted the NOMAS program “has built a ship designed to operate autonomously for long durations at sea,” according to a Tuesday DARPA statement. Construction of the Defiant was completed in February.
In 2022, DARPA chose Serco Inc. to build this NOMARS prototype. At the time, the vessel was expected to sail on a three-month test demonstration period (Defense Daily, Aug. 22, 2022).
DARPA now clarified the USV is 180 feet long and 240-metric-tons and is set to undergo “extensive in-water testing” dockside and at sea. It is scheduled to start its months-long demonstration at sea this spring.
The NOMARS program aims to demonstrate the reliability and feasibility of using a USV to operate autonomously for long missions at sea while expecting zero manning, even during replenishment operations. Other Navy USV test vehicles, like the Ghost Fleet Overlord vessels, are converted for unmanned operations. The Overlord USV can accommodate a small crew to override autonomy and monitor systems.
In December, DARPA noted it and the Navy successfully conducted the first test of a NOMARS program at-sea refueling with the experimental Overlord USVs Ranger and Mariner. In that event, one vessel had a receiving station representative of the system on Defiant while the other vessels carried a refueling mini-station custom-designed by Serco to send fuel (Defense Daily, Jan. 3).
At the time officials underscored no personnel aboard the receiving vessels were involved in operations. Defiant is due to test this refueling operation itself during the upcoming sea trials period in the spring.
DARPA’s latest announcement reiterated NOMARS uses a clean sheet design to challenge the traditional naval architectural models, “designing a seaframe (the ship without mission systems) from the ground up with no provision, allowance, or expectation for humans on board.”
“By removing the human element from all ship design considerations, the program intends to demonstrate significant advantages, to include: size, cost, at-sea reliability, greater hydrodynamic efficiency, survivability to sea-state, and survivability to adversary actions through stealth considerations and tampering resistance,” the agency statement continued
DARPA also argued that, depending on testing, scaled production of this vessel could efficiently and cost-effectively deliver a distributed USV fleet beyond the current Navy USV development efforts.