By Robbin Laird
I had a chance to follow up with Jennifer Parker on her excellent presentation at the 26 September 2024 Sir Richard Williams seminar which focused on the evolving threat environments in the littorals and insights to be gained from operations in the Black Sea, Red Sea and the Philippine’s Sea.
She argued in that presentation that new capabilities, notably USVs and UAVs used by the Ukrainians and the Houthis posed new challenges to capital ships in the littorals. And that capital ships clearly can still be effective but ongoing modernization of their defensive systems in the new context on an ongoing basis was critical.
In our discussion, she underscored that the threat from land systems was of enhanced range, and new threats posed by unmanned maritime systems introduced additional threats to capital ships as well.
What this meant for her was the absolute importance of ongoing modernization of the combat systems aboard surface ships. Rather than viewing updates as occurring in long periods of block upgrades, there needs to be an ability to weave in upgrades based on the rapid evolution of offensive threat systems from various operational theaters.
It is crucial to have very credible threat information from a diversity of deployments by the Royal Australian Navy and its allies, and to be able to weave that information into ongoing upgrade efforts of combat systems.
She referred in the seminar presentation to her recent paper she published in the Australian Naval Review concerning the USVs used in Ukrainian operations against the Russian Black Sea Fleet. In that article, she made the important point that these were NOT autonomous systems but remotely piloted ones.
Earlier in the week I met with one of the ADF’s leading practitioners of the art of unmanned and autonomous systems and he reinforced her point by underscoring that far too often the ADF or the Australian government referred to remotely piloted systems as autonomous systems. And the core point is that significant manpower is involved in operating remotely piloted systems – such as with Triton – compared to a very different con-ops involved with autonomous systems.
She called for precision in analysis of any lessons to be learned from Black Sea operations. This is how she put it in her article:
The USVs employed by Ukraine are what this article would consider light (less than 5 tonnes), remotely controlled attack USVs. This is important, as the lessons from the Black Sea are not necessarily scalable to large USVs (greater than 1,600 tonnes) or even small USVs such as the United States’s Sea Hunter (approximately 500 tonnes).
The USVs employed by Ukraine are not autonomous, which is often misunderstood. The ease at which Ukrainian USVs have targeted some surface ships through remote control using electro-optical and infrared sensors cannot be scaled to supposed developments in autonomy.
The lessons from Ukraine’s employment of light attack USVs are different from the lessons you would learn regarding employment of light USVs such as a sail drone, Bluebottle or similar USVs that are being trialed for intelligence and surveillance capabilities.
The significant effects which the Ukrainians have had using their USVs in the Black Sea clearly showed that countries without much of a capital ship force could still pack a punch in the littorals.
But actions in the Black Sea also demonstrated that the Russian fleet was not prepared with proper defence systems and training against such a threat. And this means that viability for capital ships operating in such waters clearly need to have such systems and such training.
But then we focused on the significant question of how capital ships can be combined with autonomous ones in shaping new combined arms capabilities at sea for a maritime force. It simply makes little sense to send our most advanced destroyers into harm’s way into the littorals to fight the Houthis.
She expressed her concern that both the U.S. Navy’s LUSV program and its RAN counterpart were not perhaps the most credible addition. It is in effect an optionally manned arsenal ship with launch tubes to add to the strike capability of the fleet.
Frankly, I am very skeptical that such a program is going to change the nature of the fleet anytime soon given the concern one has over firing authorities and defensive systems. Precisely the concern which Parker raised regarding the need to upgrade defensive systems on capital ships would apply to an LUSV as well.
We then focused on how UUVs and USVs as autonomous systems could enhance the manned maritime fleet.
In my view, the way ahead is shaping a maritime kill web force. And UUVs and USVs are not platforms but really payloads encased in a carrying system. Or put in other terms, what specific mission capabilities do they add to the manned force? Or how can they work as part of a combined arms maritime operation?
Parker added that it has been overstated what small numbers of these systems can bring to the fight. And clearly, from an operational perspective these systems need to be put in the hands of operators to determine how to use what additive or replacement capabilities these systems can provide.
The software nature of AI maritime systems requires operators and the company/government team writing the code to work closely together in the evolution of desired and effective capability. By taking a combined arms perspective rather than a manned-unmanned teaming perspective, the focus is specifically on what a specific payload carried by an autonomous carrier contributes to a specific operation and operational capability.
But then we closed by focusing on a key organizational barrier to this route. The RAN and the U.S. Navy are focused on distributed maritime operations, but hierarchies in the defence bureaucracy have made it increasingly difficult for local decisions to be made by the operational force.
In an interview I did with a senior U.S. Admiral last year, he put this challenge bluntly: “When I do mission rehearsals, I find gaps that need to be filled. We can identify gap fillers we should be able to buy to make the distributed fleet more lethal and survivable.”
But of course. he cannot do so given the policy and acquisition hierarchy blocking the innovation which the ready force can discover and implement readily.
If this is not remedied, the promise of autonomous systems for rapidly improving the lethality and survivability of the ready force will not be fulfilled.
Featured graphic: From Jennifer Parker, “An Evolution or Revolution in Naval Warfare in the Black Sea,” Australian Naval Review (Issue No.1, 2024).
See also the following:
How Does the Ready Force Deal with a Rapidly Changing Operational Environment?
Royal Australian Navy Explores Autonomy and Optional Crewing: Eyes LUSV as Potential LOSV Solution