By George Galdorisi
In September 1776 an enormous British armada lay anchored in New York Harbor. A month earlier, British forces under General William Howe had defeated the Continental Army and gained control of New York City and Long Island.
Now this fleet of 400 ships, including 10 ships-of-the-line, 20 frigates, 170 transports and numerous other ships under the command of General Howe’s brother, Admiral Richard Howe, remained ready to continue the attacks on Washington’s Continental Army. Seemingly, the colonists had no answer, save for an innovative invention and the bravery of one Continental soldier.
On the night of September 7, 1776, Continental soldiers left the dock jutting out from Whitehall Battery and towed the Turtle—a tiny submersible manned by Connecticut Sergeant Ezra Lee—toward Admiral Howe’s flagship, HMS Eagle. It is highly likely that Sergeant Lee was understandably nervous cramped into the tiny craft. The Turtle was approximately 10 feet long, 6 feet tall, and 3 feet wide and consisted of two wooden shells covered with tar and reinforced with steel bands.
As they approached HMS Eagle, the rowers cast off their ropes and headed back to Manhattan, leaving Sergeant Lee to pilot Turtle the rest of the way using a hand crank for horizontal movement and foot pedals for vertical movement. His contraption carried an explosive mine to be attached to the ship’s hull.
Sadly for the colonists, the mission failed, as Lee was unable to attach the explosive to the ship’s copper sheathed hull and had to retreat. However, subsequent attempts to deliver these early mines were successful. Not only did they damage and sink a British schooner and kill several British seamen, but the threat caused the British capital ships of the line to retreat to avoid the threat. The Commander of the Continental Army, General George Washington, called the Turtle, “An effort of genius.”
Though not realized at the time, this event presaged 250 years of U.S. Navy innovation, which continues unabated today.
The U.S. Navy’s Innovation Journey
The U.S. Navy has been at the forefront of innovation throughout its history. Whether it was the transition from sail to steam, or the advent of steel warships to replace wooden ones, or the change from the battleship to the aircraft carrier to the centerpiece of the Navy fleet, these changes helped the U.S. Navy dominate at sea.
In the Cold War era, this innovative journey gathered momentum: from the introduction of the first nuclear submarine, USS Nautilus, in 1954; to the first of the Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carriers in 1975; to the first Aegis-class warship, USS Ticonderoga, in 1983. These innovative technological developments kept the Navy at the forefront of warfighting prowess.
These recent innovations occurred while the U.S. was the dominant sea power. However, in 2026, that status is eroding. While the quality of U.S. Navy ships rivals that of any other naval power, that is only half the battle. The saying, “Quantity has a quality of its own,” widely attributed to Joseph Stalin, now hamstrings the ability of the Navy to fulfill its global commitments.
During the Reagan Defense Buildup in the mid-1980s, the number of Navy ships reached 594. That number has declined steadily during the past three-and-one-half decades, and today the Navy has less than half the number of ships than it had then. Indeed, the Navy’s most recent budget submission has almost twice as many ships retiring as being commissioned.
Juxtapose this against the naval forces fielded by the United States’ primary peer competitor. The PLAN (People’s Liberation Army, Navy) now fields over 350 front-line surface ships and submarines, along with hundreds of smaller vessels such as missile boats, gunboats and minesweepers. Based on numerous reports, this naval buildup is unlikely to slow down.
These numbers would not be worrisome if it were not for China’s widely known malign intentions. You don’t have to be a Clausewitz or Sun Tsu to recognize that China is the pacing threat for the United States and its allies today across a wide spectrum—politically, economically and militarily. Indeed, it is well known that President Xi has told his military to be prepared to invade Taiwan this decade and perhaps as early as 2027, according to reporting on U.S. commanders’ warnings.
Some—including the U.S. Congress—have urged the U.S. Navy to build more ships. However, this is easier said than done. The cost of Ford-class aircraft carrier is $13.0B and that an Arleigh Burke destroyer is $2.2B. Indeed, a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office notes that the Navy’s budget plan that seeks to increase the number of battle forces ships to the mid-300s would cost 46 percent more annually than the average amount appropriated over the past five years.
Enlarging the Navy Fleet by Putting More Hulls in the Water: The “Hybrid Fleet”
Much ink has been spilled regarding the U.S. Navy’s Hybrid Fleet, a concept first articulated by CNO Admiral Michael Gilday and embraced by his successor, Admiral Lisa Franchetti. The basics of this initiative were described in the Chief of Naval Operations Force Design 2045 which called for 350 crewed ships and 150 large unmanned maritime vehicles for the “Navy-After-Next.”
This innovative concept was born out of necessity. The concept of Hybrid Fleet evolved due the U.S. Navy’s ongoing challenge of building enough crewed ships to adequately meet the Navy’s global commitments. The Chief of Naval Operations Navigation Plan for America’s Warfighting Navy put it this way: “We cannot manifest a bigger traditional Navy in a few short years.” In 2026, the concept of a Hybrid Fleet has gained purchase within the Navy and with U.S. Combatant Commanders.
For example, in an article in U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, the U.S. Pacific Commander, Admiral Samuel Paparo, explained the Navy’s emphasis on scaling robotic and autonomous systems in order to achieve a Hybrid Fleet, noting:
The CNO is focusing on rapidly developing, fielding, and integrating UxSs. These systems will augment the multi-mission conventional force to increase lethality, sensing, and survivability. Project 33 [part of the Navigation Plan] will allow the Navy to operate in more areas with greater capability. Unmanned systems provide the ability to project fires and effects dynamically, at any time, from multiple axes, and with mass.
But this begs the question of just how this will happen. It is one thing to have an aspiration to put more hulls in the water by building 150 large unmanned maritime vessels, but another to put a process in place to do so. Fortunately, the U.S. Navy’s research and development enterprise has been proactive in finding a solution.
A report by the Department of the Navy Science and Technology Board entitled The Path Forward on Unmanned Systems, written as a Memorandum to the Secretary of the Navy, promises to help accelerate the path to a Hybrid Fleet by offering a path forward to design, develop and field unmanned systems—especially unmanned maritime systems—in order to achieve the Navigation Plan’s goal of: “Scaling robotic and autonomous systems to integrate more platforms at speed.”
Unpacking The Path Forward on Unmanned Systems
Established by the Secretary of the Navy in September 2023, the U.S. Navy’s Science and Technology Board is charged with providing independent advice and counsel to the Department of the Navy on matters and policies relating to scientific, technical, manufacturing, acquisition, logistics, medicine and business management functions.
The quest to achieve a Hybrid Fleet will depend on the same level of innovation that has sustained the U.S. Navy for the past 250 years. That is why The Path Forward on Unmanned Systems will prove useful to help guide the Navy’s leadership turn “aspiration” into concrete actions. The Path Forward on Unmanned Systems is already gaining traction within the Department of the Navy.
The report noted that the Navy can achieve a Hybrid Fleet with a strategy of focusing on experimentation, prototyping and learning during the current Future Years Defense Program (FYDP), working on building the infrastructure to support uncrewed systems in the next FYDP and procuring uncrewed systems in numbers during the following FYDP.
Recognizing that the United States is in an “AI arms-race” with our peer adversaries, The Path Forward on Unmanned Systems urges the Navy to fully leverage AI-technologies, noting: “As they design, develop and acquire new systems, DON will want to take advantage of rapidly changing technology such as AI and autonomy.” This builds on the Navy’s desire to lower total operating costs by moving beyond the current “one UxS, multiple joysticks, multiple operators” paradigm that exists today.
Man-Machine Teaming: The “Secret Sauce” in The Path Forward on Unmanned Systems
It would be easy to read The Path Forward on Unmanned Systems and focus almost exclusively on the unmanned maritime vessels themselves, given that just developing and fielding these emerging platforms is a tall enough order for Navy and industry professionals given the nascent stage of development of large and medium-sized unmanned surface vessels.
When people think of unmanned surface vessels they put them in the context of replacements for manned ships. This is unhelpful in understanding the advantages unmanned surface vessels bring to the Navy. As the author of the book, Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Paul Scharre, puts it: “Humans versus machines is a false choice. The best systems will combine human and machine intelligence to create hybrid cognitive architectures that leverage the advantages of each.”
This will involve integrating manned ships and unmanned maritime vessels. This means that both will need to operate as a synergistic fighting force, not merely all steaming together to perform a mission.
In order to achieve this goal, scientists and engineers will need to evolve a new paradigm. Unmanned systems—and especially their utility, not as stand-alone entities, but as warfighter partners in what has been dubbed “man-machine-teaming”—as a foundational tenet of the United States “Third Offset Strategy.”
In explaining the technological elements of the Third Offset Strategy, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work emphasized the importance of emerging capabilities in unmanned systems, artificial intelligence, machine learning and autonomy. He pointed out that these technologies offer significant advantage to the Joint Force, enabling the future force to develop and operate advanced joint, collaborative human-machine battle networks that synchronize simultaneous operations in space, air, sea, undersea, ground, and cyber domains. Artificial intelligence will allow new levels of autonomy—the limited delegation of decision-making authority—within joint battle networks, leading to entirely new opportunities for human-machine collaboration and combat teaming.
As explained in The Path Forward on Unmanned Systems, central to the success of this effort will be the collective contributions of the Naval Research Enterprise under the leadership of the Office of Naval Research. This will mean harnessing the collective talent of the Navy’s laboratory community, as well as established and emerging industry partners.
Providing Concrete and Achievable Recommendations
Subsequent to the issuance of The Path Forward on Unmanned Systems, Navy officials have provided more granularity regarding how this report is gaining purchase within leadership circles.
Importantly, The Path Forward on Unmanned Systems injects a sense of urgency if the Navy is going to field a Hybrid Fleet in time to address aggressive moves by peer adversaries, noting: “We see these steps as critically important to a future hybrid fleet, but believe they should be taken in parallel rather than in sequence. In the face of potential conflict, we must move as fast as the relevant supporting technologies generate opportunities rather than at a pace that is bureaucratically comfortable.”
The Path Forward on Unmanned Systems does not shy away from “naming names” regarding why the fielding of these systems is urgent. It states: “The development and integration of unmanned systems into war planning is particularly imperative because it offers the promise of relatively low-cost deterrence or, if necessary, warfighting in the event of conflict in the Taiwan Straits or South China Sea.”
In a presentation at a Center for Strategic and International Studies/U.S. Naval Institute forum, Vice Admiral Jimmy Pitts, deputy chief of naval operations for warfighting requirements and capabilities (N9), put the focus on uncrewed maritime systems in these terms: “We are leading the way with unmanned systems. We are leveraging the success of the Navy’s unmanned task force as well as the disruptive capabilities office. Our goal is to get unmanned surface system solutions to the Fleet within the next two years.” Admiral Pitts went on to ask the questions: “What will unmanned systems do operationally? How will they get to the war at sea and littoral operating areas? How will they stay in those areas and remain ready for conflict?”
Developing a Concept of Operations for Leveraging Uncrewed Systems
Admiral Pitts addressed important considerations. Juxtaposed against the Navy’s plans to accelerate its fielding of uncrewed maritime systems is the fact that the U.S. Congress has been reluctant to authorize the Navy’s planned investment of billions of dollars in USVs until the Service can come up with a concept of operations (CONOPS) for using them. Congress has a point. The Navy has announced plans to procure large numbers of uncrewed systems—especially large and medium uncrewed surface vessels—but a CONOPS has not yet emerged.
An evolving concept of operations is to marry various size uncrewed surface, subsurface and aerial uncrewed vehicles to perform missions that the U.S. Navy has—and will continue to have—as the Navy-After-Next evolves. The Navy can use a large, uncrewed surface vessel like the Navy’s MARTAC T82 Leviathan as a “truck” to move smaller USVs, UUVs and UAVs into the battle space to perform a number of important Navy missions such as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and mine-countermeasures (MCM).
How would this CONOPS for a hybrid fleet evolve? Consider the case of an Expeditionary Strike Group comprised of several amphibious ships underway in the Western Pacific. This Strike Group includes three large, uncrewed surface vessels (LUSVs). Depending on the size that is ultimately procured, the LUSV can carry several medium uncrewed surface vessels (MUSVs) and deliver them to the intended area of operations.
These vessels can then be sent independently to perform the ISR mission, or alternatively, can launch one or more smaller USVs to perform this mission. For the MCM mission, the LUSV can deliver several MUSVs equipped with mine-hunting and mine-clearing systems (all of which are commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) platforms such as the MCM-USV, T38 Devil Ray, Shadow Fox and others tested extensively in Navy exercises). These vessels can then undertake the “dull, dirty and dangerous” work previously conducted by Sailors who had to operate in the minefield.
To be clear, this is not a platform-specific solution, but rather a concept to team the crewed ships of a Hybrid Fleet with capable uncrewed maritime systems in order to realize the vision of The Path Forward on Unmanned Systems.
When fleet operators see a capability with different size uncrewed COTS platforms in the water working together and successfully performing a number of missions, they will likely press industry to produce even more-capable platforms to perform these missions and thereby accelerate the fielding of a hybrid fleet.
Note: The article was first published 1 September 2026 by The Center for Maritime Strategy and is republished with the author’s permission.