Latest news with #NOMARS
Asia Times
10-03-2025
- Business
- Asia Times
US hopes robo-ships can outwit China's superior naval numbers
The US Navy's USX-1 Defiant unmanned surface vessel (USV) promises cost-effective, high-endurance fleet expansion while raising critical questions on survivability, cyber vulnerabilities and whether sea drones will be enough to counter China's overwhelming shipbuilding advantage. This month, Naval News reported that Serco, under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) program, launched the USX-1 Defiant, a 180-foot-long, 240-ton USV, at Nichols Brothers Boat Builders. The unmanned vessel, coined by some media as a 'ghost' warship, is designed from inception to exclude any crewed features, epitomizing a revolutionary naval architecture focused on cost efficiency, reliability and expanded payload capabilities for long-duration missions. Unlike retrofitted alternatives like Nomad and Ranger, Defiant omits human-oriented systems. This innovation is critical amid growing demands for cost-effective USVs capable of countering strategic threats, including a potential US conflict with China in the Taiwan Strait or South China Sea. The vessel features DARPA's advanced hydrodynamic and stealth technologies. It aims to ensure 90% operational reliability over a year, and its autonomous refueling capabilities have been demonstrated in prior tests. This project aligns with US naval modernization efforts to bolster unmanned operations, particularly in Indo-Pacific theaters. Ryan Maatta, Serco's Marine Engineer Manager, highlighted Defiant's scalability and affordability, addressing historical cost barriers in unmanned systems. USVs present a paradigm shift in naval warfare, offering significant tactical advantages and notable vulnerabilities. Their cost-effectiveness enables cash-strapped navies to deploy swarms of autonomous attack boats, as evidenced by Ukraine's successful use of USVs against Russian warships. These drones, with low profiles and AI-driven evasive maneuvers, can evade detection and overwhelm advanced naval defenses. However, USVs are not a naval warfare panacea. The maritime environment accelerates mechanical degradation while increasing autonomy, making them prime cyber targets. Their reliance on external communication links exposes them to jamming and hacking, particularly in a GPS-denied or electronic warfare-heavy environment. Additionally, they lack the sustained endurance, firepower and adaptability of crewed warships, which will remain essential for prolonged naval engagements for the foreseeable future. In a March 2023 Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC) article, Kyle Cregge highlights the potential role of USVs in future naval operations. Cregge says USVs embody the 'Every Ship a Surface Action Group (SAG)' model, augmenting manned combatants with scalable missile firepower and distributed lethality. He mentions that USVs used as force multipliers enhance fleet survivability by complicating adversary targeting while offering economical Vertical Launch System (VLS) expansion when the US Navy may face a firepower gap with China. He notes that integrated with manned-unmanned teams (MUM-T), these systems ensure flexible operational responses and rapid adaptability, embodying a cost-effective, strategically robust solution for deterring aggression and preserving maritime dominance in increasingly contested environments like the Taiwan Strait. Paul Lushenko mentions in a July 2024 Proceedings article that the US Navy's framework for unmanned systems at sea emphasizes integration across domains to enhance distributed maritime operations (DMO) and information warfare. Lushenko says that key methods such as picket, distribution and mass offer advantages from early warning and situational awareness to overwhelming adversaries with coordinated strikes. He also adds that MUM-T, leveraging AI, optimizes decision-making and shortens sensor-to-shooter timelines. Highlighting the critical importance of ship numbers in naval operations, Sam Tangredi mentions in a January 2023 Proceedings article that historical evidence shows fleet size often trumps technological superiority in naval warfare, as demonstrated by 28 analyzed conflicts from ancient times to the Cold War. Tangredi points out that in 25 cases the larger fleet prevailed, with technological advantages proving short-lived and outweighed by mass. He says superior numbers facilitate better scouting, operational flexibility and striking capacity, as seen during the Napoleonic and World War II eras. He mentions that US Navy expansions, like the 600-ship Cold War strategy, embraced these principles. Conversely, Tangredi mentions that a smaller, technologically advanced force rarely overcame its numerical disadvantage. According to the US Department of Defense's (DOD) 2024 China Military Power report, China's People's Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN) is the world's largest navy with 370 ships, including 140 major naval combatants. Underpinning China's numerical advantage, an August 2024 US Congressional Research Service (CRS) report mentions that China has 230 times the US shipbuilding capacity, emphasizing that the gap is a significant liability for the US in competing with China. Further, in a February 2025 Perry World House article, Bradley Martin mentions that the US Navy faces a complex web of challenges ranging from force design, persistent production delays, chronic cost overruns and dwindling shipbuilding capacity. Martin says that despite ambitious targets like the 373-ship fleet supported by 150 unmanned vessels under the Force Design 2045 plan, execution often falters due to misaligned priorities and aging infrastructure. He points out that the US Navy struggles with manpower shortages, service-life extensions of older combatants and a reliance on legacy technology. He adds that the US Navy's short-term crisis responses often exacerbate long-term readiness gaps, creating a vicious cycle of deferred maintenance and stretched resources. USNI News recently reported that the Trump administration has unveiled an ambitious plan to overhaul the US shipbuilding industry to counter China's dominance in global maritime production. Central to the initiative is creating a new maritime industrial base office within the National Security Council. This office will develop a comprehensive maritime action plan within six months. The plan includes imposing tariffs on imports arriving on Chinese-made ships, establishing a Maritime Security Trust Fund and offering tax incentives to revitalize domestic shipbuilding, Reuters reported citing a White House document. The Trump administration also seeks to address procurement inefficiencies and increase wages for nuclear shipyard workers, signaling a strategic push to bolster national security and economic resilience. However, Brian Clark and Michael Roberts mention in a December 2024 Hudson Institute report that it is not realistic for the US to match China hull-for-hull, and it is unfeasible for the US to offset China's huge cost advantages while making US shipyards internationally competitive. Clark and Roberts also argue that while getting ahead of the technology curve (i.e., nuclear and hydrogen propulsion, modular construction) is important, attempting to close the gap by massively investing in a particular set of technologies underestimates China's capacity for technological innovation and cost-cutting. As the US Navy bets on unmanned ships to bridge its numbers gap with China, the real battle may not be at sea—but in shipyards, supply chains and technological dominance, areas where China currently holds decisive advantages.
Yahoo
04-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Mysterious Naval Vessel Spotted In Washington State Is A New DARPA Drone Ship
A slender, partially covered naval ship that recently emerged in Washington state is the Defiant, a new medium-sized uncrewed surface vessel (USV) designed from the keel up to operate without any humans ever onboard. Developed under the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) program, Defiant could be an important stepping stone for the U.S. Navy's ambitions to add larger and more capable USVs to its fleets. DARPA confirmed to TWZ that construction of the Defiant, also known by the hull code USX-1, was completed earlier this month. As noted, the first indications that the vessel had been launched came from residents in Washington state who spotted it being pushed by a tug through the Saratoga Passage in Puget Sound north of Seattle. This area of the Sound is also just a few miles from the U.S. Navy's Naval Air Station (NAS) Whidbey Island. User @IntelWalrus on X was first to bring this to our attention. The 180-foot-long, 240-metric ton Defiant is now set to 'undergo extensive in-water testing, both dockside and at sea' and 'is scheduled to depart for a multi-month at sea demonstration in spring 2025,' according to DARPA. It is unclear where exactly the vessel is currently docked. Serco Inc. is the primary contractor for the USV, which it has been developing since 2020. The company has told TWZ in the past that the core Defiant USV without any add-on mission systems has an approximately $25 million price tag. The U.S. military has historically categorized uncrewed vessels like Defiant with lengths under 200 feet and displacements under 500 tons but that are larger than ones with speedboat and jetski-type designs, as medium USVs (MUSV). Large USVs (LUSV) have been defined as ones up to 300 feet long and that displace up to 2,000 tons. A picture of Defiant in the Puget Sound, as well as additional images DARPA has now released, show much of the vessel literally still under wraps. However, the overall hullform, along with the mast at the center sporting various commercial navigation radars and other antennas, is in line with models and computer-generated renders of the design shown in the past. An additional smaller mast with more radars and other antennas is also present on the bow. Other details about Defiant as it exists now are limited and TWZ has also reached out to Serco for more information. NOMARS program requirements DARPA released in the past called for designs capable of long-duration open-ocean operation with distributed hybrid power generation, podded propulsors, and high-capacity batteries, as well as a high-degree of hydrodynamic efficiency. The NOMARS program has also put an emphasis on a concept called 'graceful degradation' wherein 'individual equipment to fail over time by having enough system-level redundancy to meet full system requirements at speeds of at least 15 knots after one year at sea.' As designed, Defiant has large open spaces on top of its deck in front of and behind its main mast for add-on payloads. Secro has shown models loaded with standard shipping containers, which could hold an array of different mission systems, as well as general cargo. The company has also shown how the USV might be armed using what BAE Systems is now marketing as the Adaptable Deck Launching System (ADL). The ADL is a modular angled launcher designed to fire missiles from the same canisters used with the Mk 41 Vertical Launch System (VLS) found on many U.S. and foreign warships. As such, ADLs can launch a variety of surface-to-air, anti-ship, and land-attack missiles, as well as anti-submarine rockets. Defiant, at least initially, is intended primarily as a testbed to demonstrate the ability of such a vessel to operate autonomously for extended periods without any humans ever being onboard, even just to monitor systems and provide extra margins of safety. 'The NOMARS program aims to challenge the traditional naval architecture model, designing a seaframe (the ship without mission systems) from the ground up with no provision, allowance, or expectation for humans on board,' DARPA says on its website. '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.' Last year, DARPA, in cooperation with the U.S. Navy, conducted a successful test of an at-sea refueling system developed to support the NOMARS mission. Two Navy USVs, the Ranger and the Mariner, which are converted offshore support vessels that retain the ability to operate in crewed mode, were used to demonstrate the refueling system. 'Fueling at sea (FAS) for USVs presents a problem that needs to be solved as current FAS solutions use personnel to handle lines and hoses on the platform being refueled,' according to a press release DARPA put out in December. 'Requiring personnel on the USV for the operation adds significant constraints on USV design and operations, as the vessel must then be designed with considerations for safety of the humans on board, even if for a short period of time. It can also be risky and sometimes dangerous to transport personnel to a USV in rough seas or high winds.' 'For the recent test, USV Ranger carried a receiving station representative of the system that will be on the NOMARS USV Defiant, and USV Mariner carried a refueling 'mini-station,' custom-designed by NOMARS prime contractor Serco Inc,' the release added. 'While there were personnel aboard both vessels during the event, no people were involved with operations on the receiving side.' However, Serco has already been actively pitching Defiant as at least a pathway to a range of operational capabilities, including new armed USVs and ones capable of acting as uncrewed logistics platforms. The company has already been working on a larger USV concept called Dauntless leveraging the work done under NOMARS, which could be armed with up to four ADLs, as well as carry other payloads. Defiant was also designed with ease of production in mind and Serco has previously told TWZ that the USVs could be produced outside of traditional shipyards, including by railworks, if needed. This could make the design, or future variants or derivatives thereof, very attractive to the U.S. Navy, which has been facing increasingly worrisome struggles to acquire traditional crewed warships. That has come amid broader concerns about U.S. shipyard capacity, or the lack thereof, for building new naval vessels and maintaining existing ones. The U.S. shipbuilding industry continues to be grossly outpaced by that of China, America's current chief global competitor, despite efforts to narrow the gap in recent years. Earlier this year, the Navy announced plans to simplify its USV acquisition strategy to focus on smaller, simpler, and more interchangeable designs rather than larger and exquisite ones. The service had previously been working toward fielding distinct fleets of MUSVs and LUSVs. 'The designs already exist, and we must not over-spec this,' Rear Adm. William Daly, head of the Navy's surface warfare division (N96), told an audience, including TWZ, at the Surface Navy Association's annual symposium in January. 'We've also had sufficient funding and experimentation to date to know what we need.' 'Many of the payloads are ready and tested. [Concepts of operation] are coalescing,' Daly added. 'Let's move faster. This is efficient, this is effective, and this is scalable.' DARPA's NOMARS program, especially now with Defiant about to head off for its first at-sea demonstrations, looks set to be another important part of the U.S. military's uncrewed naval future. Contact the author: joe@
