[Infowarrior] - US plans crewless automated ghost-frigates

[Richard Forno]

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/02/unmanned_frigates/

US plans crewless automated ghost-frigates
Mary Celeste class robot X-ships to prowl seas

By Lewis Page

Posted in Science, 2nd February 2010 14:15 GMT

Those splendid brainboxes at DARPA - the Pentagon's in-house bazaar of  
the bizarre - have outdone themselves this time. They now plan an  
entirely uncrewed, automated ghost frigate able to cruise the oceans  
of the world for months or years on end without human input.

The new project is called Anti-submarine warfare Continuous Trail  
Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV), and is intended to produce "an X-ship founded  
on the assumption that no person steps aboard at any point in its  
operating cycle". The uncrewed frigate would have enough range and  
endurance for "global, months long deployments with no underway human  
maintenance", being able to cross oceans largely without any human  
input - communications back to base would be "intermittent", according  
to DARPA.


In particular, the automated warship would need to avoid crashing into  
other vessels as it prowled the seas on the business of the US  
government, a function normally performed by bridge watchkeeping  
officers. DARPA specifies that the ACTUV must be able to conduct "safe  
navigation at sea within the framework of maritime law" - that is the  
International Rules for Prevention of Collisions at Sea, aka "Rule of  
the Road", which Royal Navy officers have to memorise almost word- 
perfect.

Then, while weaving in and out of other ships, the crewless frigate  
must be able to stay on the trail of a well-nigh silent diesel- 
electric submarine running beneath the waves. Such subs are operated -  
albeit in small numbers - by various minor powers around the world,  
and are considered by some in the major navies to be a very serious  
threat.

DARPA's idea would be that every time such a sub put to sea or was  
otherwise at a known location, an ACTUV would be put onto its tail -  
freeing up hugely expensive manned ships and subs from routine  
shadowing work. The thinking is that following such a submarine is  
fairly easily done compared to finding it in the first place.

That might be true in this case, as DARPA specify that the ACTUV  
should be able to carry out "continuous overt trail of threat  
submarines", as opposed to following them secretly as manned US forces  
might. The robo-frigate would be able to simply get a lock on its prey  
using powerful active sonar, sending loud "pings" of sound into the  
sea and detecting the echoes from the sub.

It could then hang close on the sub's tail where active sonar tracking  
is easy, as it would have "propulsive overmatch" - ie it would be much  
faster. Nuclear submarines can be speedy enough to lose a surface ship  
in some circumstances, but this isn't feasible for a diesel-electric  
boat. Better still, there would be no need for expensive silencing on  
the ACTUV (of the sort seen on British Type 23 frigates, for instance)  
as it would expect to be using active sonar anyway.

But who would give the cocktail parties?
Normally, lurking right on top of a hostile sub making lots of noise  
would be seen as quite a dangerous plan for a frigate captain. Should  
an actual war break out, the sub might well be able to torpedo the  
ship before it could itself be destroyed. But this wouldn't be such a  
disastrous result in the case of an ACTUV. As DARPA puts it: "A low  
cost, unmanned platform creates a disruptive change in ASW operational  
risk calculus."

Or in other words it doesn't matter too much if you lose the odd robo- 
frigate. Particularly as the enemy sub would then have to make a top- 
speed submerged dash away from the burning wreck of its ACTUV  
shadower, in order to avoid getting picked up again and promptly sunk  
by responding ships or aircraft.

Unfortunately for diesel-electric submarine captains, the sub's  
batteries are only good for one such sprint before running almost  
flat: which would leave it out of juice not far from the scene of its  
crime, unable to get further except maybe at a crawl. In theory it  
might put up a snorkel mast to run its diesels and recharge its  
batteries - or flee on the surface - but this would be very dangerous  
with hostile ships and aircraft about, as radar reaches much further  
and more reliably than sonar does.

All in all, quite a cunning idea then. Rule-of-the-road navigation  
should be easy enough to automate (for all that boneheaded officer  
trainees sometimes struggle to master it) and sonar tracking shouldn't  
be too hard when you can go as close in and make as much noise as you  
like. And an unmanned ship should not only be cheaper to run, it might  
be possible to make it much cheaper to build - and yet offer better  
performance:

Conventional naval architecture should be examined in this unmanned  
system context, which in addition to recouping first order crew  
support overhead, may offer second order benefits such as relaxed  
reserve buoyancy margins, dynamic stability limits, and even new  
platform orientation assumptions. The objective is to demonstrate  
disproportionate platform capabilities in terms of speed, endurance,  
sea keeping, and maneuverability.
The program will also maintain a strong focus on exploiting novel  
system architectures and internal arrangements enabled by being  
unmanned to explore new construction methods and maintenance  
approaches to achieve disproportionately low system procurement cost  
and efficient  inter-deployment maintenance.

It certainly tends to bear out the view of those naval personnel who  
aren't frigate sailors by trade: that the only thing frigates really  
do which couldn't be done better by a robot is give show-the-flag  
cocktail parties in foreign ports.

No doubt that's an overly harsh assessment. Even so, with the coming  
crunch on government spending and aspirations to buy new carriers and  
jets to fly from them - not to mention the fact that crewed frigates  
are scarcely a very effective means of dealing with common-or-garden  
thugs with guns (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,260583,00.html)  
either - perhaps the Royal Navy too should be thinking along these  
lines.

Needless to say, it isn't (http://www.warisboring.com/?p=3525).

Meanwhile, it seems to us that there's only one possible name (http://www.smithsoniannetworks.com/site/smithsonian/show_mary.do 
) for the first ghostly, crewless X-ship of the class. ®

Lewis Page spent 11 years in the Royal Navy, largely managing to stay  
out of frigates but not altogether. Most of the time he was a mine- 
clearance diver - another field in which humans' jobs are under threat  
from robots (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/29/talisman_almost_a_miracle/ 
).