SAN DIEGO— The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) this week expressed confidence that the Navy will start reaching an integrating manned-unmanned fleet within about a decade.
“The promise of unmanned is actually here and right at our doorstep,” Adm. Lisa Franchetti said Tuesday here at the WEST 2024 conference hosted by the U.S. Naval Institute and AFCEA.
The CNO said she sees the Navy’s unmanned fleet approach divided into three five year Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) periods.
“The first FYDP where we are right now is prototyping, experimenting, learning. I think the other part about unmanned is that it’s not really unmanned, the actual platform may be unmanned, but we also need to set up all the infrastructure, all of the networks, everything that can enable the unmanned technology to actually work and the people to operate it. So in this first FYDP those are some of the things that we’re learning and putting into place these enablers.”
She said the second FYDP will entail the procurement of the unmanned platforms and, by the third FYDP, “they’ll be operating at speed and at scale. And I know, we’re going to see that.”
Franchetti said she is optimistic this timeline is right because in 2024 the Navy will continue building on recent work developing unmanned systems via Task Force 59 in 5th Fleet, 4th Fleet work that began last year in the Caribbean Sea, and integrated battle problems in the Pacific Fleet.
She underscored the integrated battle problems have been “very successful in teaching us all we can have a long transit, and what is it that we need to do to be able to enable that to even be expanded in the next go-round.”
Franchetti confirmed there is another integrated battle problem coming up this year to continue to test and push further unmanned surface vessel (USV) ranges and capabilities.
The CNO also said she is seeing growing interest from her international counterparts in unmanned maritime systems, so there is an increasing opportunity to work with U.S. allies and partners on these capabilities.
Franchetti underscored aside from unmanned surface vessels the Navy has MQ-4C Triton unmanned aerial vehicles flying out of Guam and the next detachment of them will stand up in Naval Air Station Sigonella, Italy, “pretty soon,” with another detachment following that based in Bahrain.
The CNO also confirmed the MQ-25A Stingray carrier-based unmanned aircraft tanker is on schedule to reach initial operational capability (IOC).