Commanding the Swarm:

Navy Rethinking How to Command Robotic Forces, CNO Caudle Says - USNI News

The Navy's Quest for Multi-Domain Robotic Force Integration

BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front)

The U.S. Navy is fundamentally rethinking command and control architectures to manage increasingly large fleets of unmanned systems across all domains. Current efforts focus on creating specialized "RAS commanders" capable of coordinating surface, subsurface, and aerial robotic forces as integrated packages, while simultaneously developing the doctrine, organizational structures, and technical interfaces necessary to make these capabilities operationally relevant to combatant commanders. Integration spans traditional warfare missions including logistics and underway replenishment, mine warfare, amphibious operations, base defense, and task force air, surface, and undersea warfare. Success requires solving challenges spanning human-machine teaming, cross-domain coordination, bandwidth limitations, and adversarial AI countermeasures.

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The Command Challenge

The proliferation of unmanned systems across the fleet presents naval commanders with an unprecedented challenge: how to effectively command and control dozens—potentially hundreds—of robotic platforms from a handful of manned vessels while maintaining tactical coherence and operational effectiveness across the full spectrum of naval missions.

"It's a challenge making an ensemble of these types of capabilities in a meaningful way that combatant commanders and Navy component commanders can ask for in a way that solves one of their key operational problems," Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Darl Caudle said at WEST 2026. "We don't want this just to be a gadget."[1]

The Navy's current organizational structure for Robotic Autonomous Systems (RAS) follows traditional domain divisions—surface, subsurface, and air—but the integrated nature of future operations may require a fundamentally different command approach. Caudle has proposed the concept of a dedicated "RAS warfighting commander," analogous to a joint task force commander, specifically responsible for orchestrating unmanned capabilities across all domains to achieve strike group objectives.[1]

This conceptual shift reflects recognition that future naval operations will increasingly depend on coordinated multi-domain robotic forces operating in concert with manned platforms, particularly in contested environments where massing human-crewed assets would be prohibitively risky.

Operational Concepts: From Hellscape to Hybrid Warfare

The Indo-Pacific theater has emerged as the primary driver for unmanned systems integration. The proposed "hellscape" defense strategy against potential People's Liberation Army Navy operations across the Taiwan Strait envisions coordinated swarms of lethal aerial, surface, and subsurface drones creating layered defensive barriers. This concept incorporates loitering munitions, explosive unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), and lethal subsurface platforms designed to attrit amphibious forces before they can establish beachheads.[1]

Beyond Taiwan contingencies, the Navy has been operationally testing integrated unmanned systems in other theaters. Task Force 59, established in 2021 and operating from U.S. Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain, has pioneered real-world integration of unmanned systems for maritime security operations. The task force employs Saildrone Explorer USVs, T-38 Devil Ray underwater drones, and various aerial platforms to enhance maritime domain awareness across the Arabian Gulf, Red Sea, and surrounding waters.[2]

Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, who established Task Force 59, described the operational model: "We're creating a new way of operating at sea by integrating unmanned systems and artificial intelligence with our traditional capabilities... These systems multiply our effectiveness and extend our reach without putting additional sailors at risk."[2]

The Navy's Unmanned Surface Vessel Division One (USVDIV-1), commissioned in 2021 and based in San Diego, serves as the West Coast hub for developing operational tactics and procedures for surface robotics. The division has conducted extensive exercises integrating Saildrones and other USVs with Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, developing protocols for coordinated operations.[3]

The Collaborative Combat Aircraft Evolution

Naval aviation is pursuing a parallel path with Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), representing a more mature near-term approach to human-machine teaming than mass drone swarms. Rather than autonomous operation, CCAs are designed as "loyal wingmen" that extend manned fighter capabilities under direct human supervision.

Vice Adm. Douglas Verissimo, Commander of Naval Air Forces, outlined the integration approach: "It may be a surveillance system. It may be a weapons delivery system. It may be some type of specific sensing system that gives those manned platforms with mission orders the ability to understand the battle space and execute based on their authorities."[1]

The Navy has contracted with General Atomics, Boeing, Anduril, and Northrop Grumman for CCA concept studies, while Lockheed Martin is developing ground control stations. These contracts represent the Navy's adaptation of the Air Force's CCA program to carrier operations, with unique requirements for launch, recovery, and shipboard integration.[1][4]

The Air Force's CCA program, further advanced than the Navy's effort, provides insights into integration challenges. The Air Force plans to field its first CCAs by 2028, with General Atomics' XQ-67A and Anduril's Fury competing for Increment 1 production.[5] Key technical challenges include reducing pilot workload, ensuring reliable command links in contested electromagnetic environments, and developing robust automated behaviors when communications are degraded.

Mission-Specific Integration: Manned-Unmanned Teaming Across Naval Warfare

Logistics and Underway Replenishment

The Navy's logistics enterprise faces increasing demands to sustain distributed operations across vast ocean areas while operating under adversary threat. Unmanned systems offer potential solutions to reduce risk to high-value logistics ships and their crews while maintaining supply lines.

The Medium Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MUSV) and Large Unmanned Surface Vehicle (LUSV) programs include concepts for automated logistics delivery. The Navy is exploring several approaches:

Autonomous Shuttle Operations: Medium USVs could transport time-sensitive cargo, spare parts, and supplies between forward-deployed combatants and rear-area logistics hubs, reducing the frequency with which manned replenishment ships must enter contested zones. Initial concepts envision vessels operating on pre-programmed routes with remote monitoring, escalating to human control only when encountering unexpected situations.[6]

Distributed UNREP: Traditional underway replenishment places two large ships in close proximity for extended periods, creating lucrative targets. The Navy is developing concepts for "distributed UNREP" where smaller unmanned vessels shuttle fuel and supplies between manned platforms, allowing the oiler to remain at safer distances. This requires solving complex challenges in station-keeping, line handling, and fuel transfer in open ocean conditions.[7]

Amphibious Logistics: The Marine Corps' Force Design 2030 envisions distributed expeditionary advanced base operations requiring flexible logistics support. Unmanned vessels could deliver supplies to austere island locations without risking large amphibious ships or exposing helicopters to air defense threats. The Navy and Marines have experimented with autonomous landing craft and USVs delivering containerized cargo to remote locations.[8]

However, significant technical challenges remain. Fuel and cargo transfer systems designed for human operators must be adapted for robotic manipulation or completely redesigned. Weather limitations that might delay but not prevent manned UNREP operations could completely preclude unmanned systems lacking human adaptability. Navigation in congested shipping lanes and coordination with commercial traffic require sophisticated collision avoidance capabilities exceeding current autonomous system maturity.

Mine Warfare: The Vanguard of Unmanned Integration

Mine countermeasures (MCM) represent perhaps the most mature application of manned-unmanned teaming, driven by the inherent danger of mine warfare and the technical suitability of robotic systems for these missions.

The Littoral Combat Ship's mine warfare package employs a layered system of unmanned platforms:

Airborne Mine Detection: The MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned helicopter carries the Coastal Battlefield Reconnaissance and Analysis (COBRA) laser line scan system and Airborne Laser Mine Detection System (ALMDS), detecting mines from altitude while the mothership remains outside the minefield.[9]

Surface Mine Hunting: The Navy's Unmanned Influence Sweep System (UISS) and mine hunting USVs like the Common Unmanned Surface Vehicle (CUSV) can be deployed from LCS or other platforms to conduct detailed seabed surveys and identification operations.[10]

Underwater Mine Neutralization: Remotely operated vehicles like the Mk 18 Mod 2 Kingfish and autonomous systems conduct close inspection and neutralization. These systems can be controlled from surface vessels, allowing operators to remain at safe standoff distances.[11]

Recent advances include:

Knifefish UUV: This semi-autonomous underwater vehicle uses low-frequency synthetic aperture sonar to detect and classify buried mines, transmitting data to operators who make engagement decisions. The system has demonstrated the ability to conduct full minefield surveys with minimal operator intervention.[12]

MCM Mission Package Integration: The Navy has tested coordinating multiple unmanned systems simultaneously—aerial reconnaissance detecting suspect areas, surface vehicles conducting detailed surveys, and underwater vehicles performing identification and neutralization. This layered approach, with humans in supervisory rather than direct control roles, significantly increases area coverage rates.[13]

International Cooperation: NATO's Maritime Unmanned Systems Initiative has standardized interfaces allowing allied unmanned MCM systems to share data and coordinate operations. During recent exercises, U.S., U.K., and French unmanned systems operated in coordinated patterns under common command and control.[14]

The mine warfare community's experience provides lessons for other mission areas: the value of standardized interfaces between manned motherships and unmanned systems, the importance of robust communication links, and the necessity of extensive training for operators transitioning from direct platform control to supervisory roles managing multiple autonomous systems.

Amphibious Strike: Distributed Operations and Contested Landings

Amphibious warfare concepts are evolving from concentrated ship-to-shore movements toward distributed operations across multiple axes of advance. Unmanned systems enable this distribution while complicating adversary targeting and defensive planning.

Unmanned Logistics Connectors: Large unmanned surface vessels could supplement or replace traditional landing craft, delivering vehicles, supplies, and equipment to multiple beach sites simultaneously. These vessels could operate through contested waters where exposing manned craft would be unacceptable, accepting higher loss rates for unmanned platforms.[15]

Autonomous Beach Reconnaissance: Before committing Marines to contested landings, small autonomous surface and underwater vehicles could conduct detailed reconnaissance, identifying obstacles, mapping approaches, and detecting defensive positions. This intelligence would be transmitted to the amphibious ready group for assault planning.[16]

Distributed Electronic Warfare: Unmanned aerial and surface platforms carrying electronic warfare payloads could create multiple false signatures, obscuring actual landing locations while suppressing adversary fire control radars. The Navy-Marine Corps team has experimented with deploying expendable electronic warfare drones from amphibious ships to create confusion during simulated assault operations.[17]

Supporting Arms Integration: Loitering munitions and armed UASs launched from amphibious platforms could provide responsive fire support during ship-to-shore movement, engaging targets identified by reconnaissance drones or forward Marine units. This creates a more distributed fires architecture less dependent on traditional gunnery ships.[18]

The Marine Corps' Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) concept heavily leverages unmanned systems. Small Marine units establishing forward operating sites would employ organic unmanned ISR and strike platforms, coordinated from a minimal command element. The USS Miguel Keith (ESB-5) and her sister ships have been modified with expanded command and control capabilities specifically to support these distributed unmanned operations.[19]

Base Defense: Persistent Surveillance and Layered Protection

Naval bases, expeditionary advanced bases, and forward operating locations require defense against diverse threats including small boats, drones, infiltrators, and standoff attacks. Unmanned systems enable persistent perimeter security without the manpower costs of continuous human patrols.

Maritime Approaches: Autonomous surface vessels patrol harbor approaches, using radar, electro-optical sensors, and automatic identification systems (AIS) to detect and classify approaching vessels. The Navy has tested Saildrone platforms augmented with additional sensors conducting continuous patrols of base approaches, with operators at base security operations centers monitoring multiple platforms and investigating suspicious contacts.[20]

Underwater Surveillance: Autonomous underwater vehicles equipped with sonar can patrol harbor entrances and sensitive underwater areas, detecting unauthorized divers, swimmer delivery vehicles, and unmanned underwater threats. These systems create a persistent acoustic barrier complementing topside surveillance.[21]

Aerial Overwatch: Tethered aerostat systems and free-flying UASs provide continuous aerial surveillance of base perimeters and approaches. Recent attacks on Saudi oil facilities and the 2019 drone attack on Russian bases in Syria demonstrate the importance of aerial surveillance for early warning against drone threats.[22]

Counter-UAS Integration: Base defense requires integrating multiple counter-drone systems—radar detection, radio frequency sensors, electronic warfare jammers, kinetic interceptors, and directed energy weapons. The challenge is coordinating these systems under unified command while minimizing false alarms and ensuring rapid engagement of confirmed threats. The Navy is developing automated sensor fusion and engagement coordination systems that present operators with recommended response options rather than requiring manual monitoring of multiple independent systems.[23]

Anti-Submarine Warfare: Expanding the Underwater Battlespace

Anti-submarine warfare presents unique challenges and opportunities for unmanned systems integration. The vast areas requiring coverage, the physics of underwater sound propagation, and the complexity of the undersea environment demand innovative approaches to manned-unmanned teaming.

Distributed Acoustic Arrays: The Navy is exploring concepts for deploying large numbers of small, low-cost autonomous sensors across broad ocean areas, creating persistent acoustic barriers. These expendable systems could supplement traditional ship-towed and submarine-mounted sonar arrays, providing early warning of submarine movements through choke points.[24]

Extra-Large UUVs for Prosecution: The Orca XLUUV, based on Boeing's Echo Voyager design, represents a significant capability leap. With displacement around 50 tons and diesel-electric propulsion providing endurance measured in months, Orca can conduct extended independent operations carrying substantial payloads. Concepts of operation include:

• Autonomous Patrol: Pre-programmed patrol areas where the XLUUV conducts persistent surveillance, transmitting contacts to the operational commander for prosecution by manned platforms.[25]

• Cued Search: Deployment to areas where intelligence suggests submarine activity, conducting intensive search operations without exposing manned submarines or surface ships to counterdetection.[26]

• Weapon Delivery: Although controversial, XLUUVs could potentially deliver torpedoes or mines to contested areas, expanding the undersea battlespace without additional submarine construction.[27]

Cooperative ASW: The most promising approach combines manned and unmanned platforms in coordinated search patterns. A surface ship or submarine serves as command platform, controlling multiple UUVs operating in distributed formations. This creates a much larger effective sensor aperture while concentrating human judgment and weapon employment authority in the manned platform. The challenge is maintaining reliable communications with submerged autonomous systems given acoustic channel limitations and the need for covertness.[28]

Multistatic Operations: Advanced concepts employ separated transmitters and receivers, with unmanned platforms serving as passive receivers for active sonar pulses from other platforms. This provides detection range advantages while making the source location less vulnerable to counter-detection. Coordinating these geometries requires sophisticated command and control algorithms.[29]

The Undersea Warfighting Development Center has conducted extensive wargaming exploring ASW force mixes. Preliminary findings suggest that even modest numbers of unmanned systems properly integrated with manned platforms provide disproportionate effectiveness gains, but only if communications and coordination challenges are adequately addressed.[30]

Anti-Air Warfare: Extending the Defensive Perimeter

Carrier strike groups and surface action groups face increasingly capable air and missile threats requiring defense in depth. Unmanned systems can extend detection ranges and complicate adversary attack planning, but integration with existing air defense architectures presents significant challenges.

Forward Sensor Pickets: Large USVs equipped with advanced radars could operate ahead of the main body, providing early warning of incoming raids and cueing shipboard weapon systems. This extends the defensive bubble while avoiding risk to manned vessels. However, these pickets become priority targets themselves, raising questions about their survivability and cost-effectiveness.[31]

Decoys and False Targets: Unmanned surface vessels could be employed as radar decoys, presenting signatures similar to high-value units and forcing adversaries to expend weapons against false targets. The challenge is making these decoys convincing enough to waste precision weapons while keeping costs low enough to be expendable.[32]

Collaborative Combat Aircraft for Air Defense: Naval CCAs could carry air-to-air missiles extending the fighter CAP line forward, engaging threats before they reach inner-zone defenses. Under this concept, F/A-18s or F-35Cs would control multiple CCAs, directing them to investigation points while the manned fighters remain in more defensible positions. The CCAs would provide sensor data and weapons magazines without risking pilots.[33]

Cooperative Engagement: The Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) already allows networked platforms to share sensor data and coordinate engagements. Extending this to unmanned platforms creates a truly distributed air defense architecture. However, this requires addressing critical questions: What level of authority should unmanned platforms have to engage targets? How are deconfliction and positive identification maintained? What happens when communications are disrupted?[34]

High-Altitude Persistent ISR: Long-endurance UASs operating at high altitude can provide over-the-horizon surveillance cueing surface-to-air missiles and fighters to investigate and engage threats. The MQ-4C Triton already performs this mission, with integration to the Navy Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air (NIFC-CA) architecture enabling sensor-to-shooter links between Triton, Aegis ships, and aircraft.[35]

Recent exercises have demonstrated coordinated air defense involving Aegis destroyers, F-35Cs, and unmanned platforms with simulated CCA functionality. While successful, these tests occurred in permissive electromagnetic environments without realistic jamming or cyber attacks—challenges that must be addressed before operational deployment.[36]

Anti-Surface Warfare: Distributed Lethality and Magazine Depth

The Navy's Distributed Maritime Operations concept envisions spreading combat power across many platforms to complicate adversary targeting while concentrating effects against enemy forces. Unmanned systems are central to this vision, serving as both sensors and shooters.

Over-the-Horizon Targeting: Small and medium USVs deployed in dispersed patterns can provide detection and tracking of surface contacts beyond the radar horizon of manned combatants. These forward sensors enable over-the-horizon anti-ship missile engagements while the launch platform remains undetected. The Navy has successfully demonstrated this concept with Saildrone platforms equipped with radar and electro-optical sensors providing targeting data for simulated missile shots.[37]

Large USV as Magazine Ship: The most discussed application of LUSV involves equipping these platforms with vertical launch systems carrying significant numbers of anti-ship and land-attack missiles. Operating in coordination with manned combatants, LUSVs could effectively multiply the strike group's magazine depth without the cost and manpower requirements of additional manned ships.[38]

This concept faces important questions:

• Command and Control: Will LUSVs require human authorization for each engagement, or can they be pre-authorized to engage specific target types under defined conditions? The former creates communications bottlenecks and delays; the latter raises legal and policy concerns about autonomous weapons.[39]

• Survivability: LUSVs lack the defensive systems, damage control capabilities, and redundancy of manned combatants. How do they survive in contested environments? Do they stay in relative sanctuary launching standoff weapons, or must they close with enemy forces?[40]

• Logistics: VLS cells require reloading, usually performed pierside with specialized equipment. Can LUSVs be reloaded at sea, or must they return to port? If the latter, what is the operational deployment model?[41]

Swarming Attacks: Lower-cost expendable USVs carrying anti-ship payloads could be launched in coordinated swarms to overwhelm defenses through mass. Ukraine's attacks on Russian naval forces demonstrated this concept's potential. However, U.S. Navy implementation requires solving command and control challenges to ensure swarms engage intended targets while avoiding fratricide.[42]

Mine Laying: Unmanned submarines like the Orca XLUUV can covertly deploy mine fields in contested waters, creating area denial without risking manned vessels. This represents a significant capability for sea control operations and chokepoint defense, though it raises questions about escalation dynamics and mine warfare conventions.[43]

Technical and Doctrinal Challenges

Command and Control Architecture

Current Navy command systems were designed for coordinating dozens of manned platforms, not potentially hundreds of unmanned systems with varying levels of autonomy. The challenge extends beyond communications bandwidth to include decision-making authority, rules of engagement, and accountability frameworks.

DARPA's ongoing programs provide potential solutions. The Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment (CODE) program has demonstrated distributed collaborative behaviors among multiple UAVs with reduced operator control.[44] The Offensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) program has shown swarms of up to 250 platforms operating with collaborative autonomy in urban environments.[45]

However, translating these experimental successes to operational naval environments presents additional challenges. Maritime operations span vast geographic areas with limited communications infrastructure, platforms must operate through severe weather, and underwater systems face fundamental bandwidth constraints due to acoustic propagation limitations.

Doctrinal Integration

Caudle's new Fighting Instructions, released in early 2026, directly address integration requirements: "The Navy must address the associated doctrinal shortfalls, organizational seams and process gaps, including determining how we will allocate RAS in service decisions like strategic laydown, dispersal and global force management. For us to integrate RAS into our standard force delivery model, RAS capabilities must be describable in standard terms, interfaces and outcomes."[1]

This standardization requirement is critical for fleet planning. Without common taxonomies and performance metrics, operational commanders cannot effectively request specific unmanned capabilities or integrate them into existing force packages. The Navy is developing what it calls a "RAS lexicon" to enable coherent force allocation decisions.[46]

Human-Machine Teaming

The optimal division of labor between humans and machines remains contested. Full autonomy for lethal decision-making raises legal and ethical concerns under international humanitarian law, yet requiring human approval for every engagement negates many advantages of unmanned systems in time-critical scenarios.

The Defense Science Board's 2016 study on autonomy emphasized the importance of "appropriate levels of human judgment" rather than blanket requirements for "humans in the loop" or "humans on the loop."[47] The study recommended task-specific analysis to determine where human cognition provides essential value versus where it creates bottlenecks.

Recent Navy experimentation suggests a tiered approach: strategic and operational decisions remain with manned platforms and higher headquarters, while tactical execution within defined parameters can be delegated to unmanned systems with automated collaborative behaviors. This preserves human judgment on critical decisions while enabling machine-speed responses to tactical developments.

Mission-specific analysis suggests different optimal teaming approaches:

• Mine Warfare: High autonomy acceptable for detection and survey; human decision required for neutralization
• Logistics: High autonomy for routine cargo delivery; human oversight for UNREP operations
• ASW: Autonomous search acceptable; human decision required for weapon employment
• AAW: Machine speed required for engagement; human establishes rules of engagement and monitors execution
• ASuW: Autonomous targeting and tracking; human authorization for weapon release against surface combatants

Integration of Effects Across Domains

True multi-domain operations require coordinating effects across surface, subsurface, and air simultaneously. A Taiwan Strait scenario illustrates the complexity:

• Aerial CCAs and loitering munitions saturate air defenses
• Surface USVs conduct distributed attacks on amphibious formations
• UUVs deploy mines at embarkation points and transit routes
• Manned submarines prosecute high-value targets
• Surface combatants coordinate overall operations and provide magazine depth

Orchestrating these effects requires automated coordination tools that deconflict platforms, sequence attacks, assess battle damage, and dynamically re-task assets based on evolving situations. Current command systems lack this capability. Development efforts are underway, but operational fielding remains years away.[48]

Force Structure and Organizational Questions

The Navy's force structure plans reflect increasing emphasis on unmanned systems. The FY2025 shipbuilding plan projects significant growth in both large and medium unmanned surface vessels, with plans to field over 100 USVs across various size classes by the mid-2030s.[49]

Large Unmanned Surface Vehicles (LUSVs) are envisioned as magazine ships carrying substantial vertical launch system capacity to augment manned combatant firepower. Medium Unmanned Surface Vehicles (MUSVs) would perform intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions, mine countermeasures, and electronic warfare. Small unmanned systems would provide local surveillance and potentially expendable effects.

Subsurface systems present unique opportunities and challenges. Extra-Large Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (XLUUVs) like the Orca can conduct long-duration missions including mine laying, intelligence gathering, and potentially strike missions. Smaller UUVs can perform surveillance and reconnaissance in contested littoral areas too risky for manned submarines. However, underwater communications limitations severely constrain real-time command and control, necessitating higher degrees of autonomous operation.[50]

The organizational question of how to structure these forces remains open. Options include:

Domain-Specific Approach: Maintain separate surface, subsurface, and air unmanned units assigned to respective type commanders (SURFOR, SUBFOR, AIRFOR). This preserves expertise and existing organizational structures but may impede cross-domain integration.

Integrated Robotics Command: Establish a dedicated numbered fleet or task force commanded by a flag officer responsible for all Navy unmanned systems. This would facilitate integrated operations but requires building entirely new organizational structures and expertise.

Organic Integration: Assign unmanned systems directly to existing strike groups and battle forces as organic capabilities. This maximizes tactical integration but may limit specialized expertise development and create redundant support structures.

Mission-Specific Task Organization: Create temporary task units combining manned and unmanned platforms for specific missions (MCM, ASW, base defense) under functional commanders, similar to current maritime patrol and reconnaissance force organization.

The Navy appears to be pursuing a hybrid approach, with specialized units like USVDIV-1 and Task Force 59 developing tactics while increasingly attaching unmanned systems to traditional formations for operational deployments.

International Developments and Competitive Pressures

The U.S. Navy does not operate in isolation. China's People's Liberation Army Navy has rapidly expanded its unmanned capabilities, fielding large numbers of surveillance USVs and developing armed underwater vehicles. Russian naval forces have deployed Poseidon nuclear-powered underwater drones and various surface systems. Even smaller naval powers are investing in asymmetric unmanned capabilities.[51]

Ukraine's naval operations in the Black Sea demonstrate the tactical effectiveness of relatively unsophisticated unmanned systems. Ukrainian forces have employed commercial-derived USVs modified to carry explosive payloads, successfully damaging or destroying Russian Navy vessels. These operations highlight both the potential and vulnerabilities of unmanned systems in actual combat.[52]

The proliferation of adversary unmanned systems creates mirror-image challenges. U.S. forces must develop counter-UAS, counter-USV, and counter-UUV capabilities while simultaneously fielding their own robotic forces. This includes kinetic and non-kinetic defeat mechanisms, deception techniques, and cyber capabilities to disrupt adversary command and control.

Technical Enablers and Limitations

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Advances in AI and machine learning enable increasingly sophisticated autonomous behaviors. Computer vision algorithms can now reliably identify and classify surface vessels, aircraft, and other objects of interest. Natural language processing allows more intuitive human-machine interfaces. Reinforcement learning enables systems to adapt behaviors based on operational experience.

However, AI systems also present vulnerabilities. Adversarial machine learning can deceive recognition algorithms through carefully crafted inputs. AI systems trained on peacetime data may behave unpredictably in combat conditions. The "black box" nature of some machine learning approaches raises concerns about predictability and accountability.

The Navy's approach emphasizes "human-centered AI" that augments rather than replaces human judgment on critical decisions. As outlined in the Department of Defense AI Ethical Principles, Navy systems must be responsible, equitable, traceable, reliable, and governable.[53]

Communications and Networking

Multi-domain unmanned operations require robust, resilient communications networks capable of operating through adversary jamming and in denied electromagnetic environments. The Navy is pursuing multiple approaches:

Link 16 Extension: Adapting existing tactical data links to include unmanned platforms, providing integration with current command systems but with limited bandwidth.

Fifth-Generation Communications: Developing advanced waveforms with low probability of intercept/detection characteristics and cognitive spectrum management.

Acoustic Networking: Improving underwater communications through advanced acoustic modems and networking protocols, though fundamental physical constraints limit bandwidth and range.

Autonomous Operations: Enabling continued mission execution during communications disruption through pre-planned behaviors and distributed collaborative autonomy.

The challenge is providing sufficient control authority for humans to direct operations while enabling enough autonomy for systems to function effectively when communications are degraded—balancing responsiveness with resilience.

Energy and Endurance

Platform endurance directly determines operational utility. Surface platforms can be diesel-powered for extended operations or electrically powered for quieter signatures at the cost of endurance. Subsurface systems face severe energy constraints, with battery technology limiting current UUV operations to days or weeks. Long-duration subsurface surveillance requires nuclear propulsion, dramatically increasing cost and complexity.

The Navy is exploring alternative energy sources including solar panels for surface platforms, wave energy harvesting, and advanced battery technologies. However, energy limitations will likely remain a fundamental constraint on unmanned system employment for the foreseeable future.

The Path Forward

The Navy's approach to unmanned systems integration represents evolutionary rather than revolutionary change. Rather than wholesale restructuring, the service is incrementally building capability through operational experimentation, developing doctrine alongside technology, and integrating lessons learned into force planning.

Key initiatives include:

Exercise Integration: Every major fleet exercise now includes unmanned systems, from Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) to Large Scale Exercise (LSE), providing realistic operational experience. RIMPAC 2024 featured coordinated operations involving manned ships, submarines, aircraft, and over 20 different unmanned platforms across all domains.[54]

Rapid Prototyping: The Unmanned Systems Directorate works closely with industry to field capabilities quickly, accepting higher technical risk in exchange for faster learning cycles.[55]

International Partnerships: The Navy is working with allies including Japan, Australia, and the United Kingdom on interoperable unmanned systems, recognizing that coalition operations will require compatible capabilities and procedures. The AUKUS partnership explicitly includes unmanned systems cooperation as a pillar of trilateral naval collaboration.[56]

Wargaming and Simulation: Extensive modeling and simulation explores alternative concepts of operation before committing resources to hardware development. The Naval War College's Unmanned Systems Wargaming Series has explored force mix alternatives, command and control architectures, and operational concepts across multiple scenarios.[57]

The timeline for widespread deployment of coordinated multi-domain unmanned forces extends across the next decade. Near-term efforts focus on ISR platforms and mine warfare systems with less autonomy and lower operational risk. Medium-term development emphasizes CCAs, magazine ships augmenting manned forces, and logistics automation. Long-term visions of largely autonomous swarms conducting independent strike operations remain aspirational pending resolution of technical, legal, and policy challenges.

Conclusion

The Navy's pursuit of integrated multi-domain unmanned capabilities reflects recognition that future naval operations will increasingly rely on coordinated robotic forces operating alongside manned platforms across all mission areas. The vision of specialized RAS commanders orchestrating swarms of unmanned systems represents a logical evolution of naval warfare, but achieving this vision requires solving fundamental challenges in command and control architecture, human-machine teaming, cross-domain coordination, and adversarial AI resilience.

Mission-specific analysis reveals varying readiness levels: mine warfare is already operationally mature with unmanned systems performing primary detection and neutralization roles under human supervision; logistics and base defense show promise but require additional technical development; complex warfare missions like ASW, AAW, and ASuW demand continued experimentation to establish optimal manned-unmanned force ratios and command relationships; amphibious operations present unique opportunities for distributed unmanned operations but face significant integration challenges.

Success demands not just technical innovation but doctrinal development, organizational adaptation, and sustained investment in experimentation. The Navy that emerges will be fundamentally different from today's fleet—more distributed, more resilient, and capable of operating across vast areas with reduced risk to human sailors. However, the transition will be measured in years or decades, not months, as the service methodically develops the capabilities, concepts, and organizational structures necessary to command the swarm across the full spectrum of naval operations.

As Admiral Caudle emphasized, the goal is not technology for its own sake but operationally relevant capabilities that solve real problems for combatant commanders. By that standard, the Navy's journey toward integrated robotic forces has just begun, but the direction is clear: future naval power will depend on commanders' ability to orchestrate combined manned-unmanned forces across all domains and missions with unity of purpose and effect.

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References and Sources

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Scharre, P. (2018). Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War. W.W. Norton & Company.

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Work, R. O., & Brimley, S. (2014). 20YY: Preparing for War in the Robotic Age. Center for a New American Security.