The US Navy’s efforts to build a fleet of unmanned ships are faltering as the Pentagon remains attached to major shipbuilding projects, according to officials and company executives, exposing a weakness as maritime drones reshape naval warfare.
The lethal effectiveness of maritime drones has been demonstrated in the Black Sea, where Ukraine has deployed remote-controlled speedboats packed with explosives to sink Russian frigates and minesweepers since late 2022.
Yemen-backed Houthi rebels have used similar vessels against merchant ships in the Red Sea in recent months, though without success.
Those tactics have caught the attention of the Pentagon, which is incorporating lessons from Ukraine and the Red Sea into its plans to counter China’s growing naval power in the Pacific, Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon told Reuters.
In a signal of the Pentagon’s intent, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks announced in August an initiative — dubbed the Replicator — to deploy hundreds of small and relatively inexpensive aerial and maritime drones over the next 18-24 months to meet the growing military threat of China.
This public show of commitment masks years of reluctance by the U.S. Navy to build a fleet of unmanned ships, despite repeated warnings that this is the future of maritime warfare, according to interviews with several people with direct knowledge of U.S. plans on maritime drones, including Navy officers, Pentagon officials and executives of maritime drone companies.
Two Navy sources and three executives from maritime drone manufacturers said the biggest impediment to progress has been the Department of Defense’s (DoD) budget process, which prioritizes large ships and submarines built by traditional defense contractors, reports Reuters.
“At some point you hit the DC problem,” said Philipp Stratmann, chief executive of Ocean Power Technologies (OPT), a New Jersey-based firm that supplies the US Navy with the WAM-V, an autonomous surface drone.
“You’re running into the fact that there is a military industrial complex that has the best lobbyists and knows exactly how the money flows and how the contracts work within the Department of Defense.”
A Navy spokesman said it “acquires capabilities based on fleet demand signals,” referring to messages the headquarters receives from commanders at sea.
The Navy has a budget of $172 million this year for small and medium-sized submarine maritime drones, which will drop to $101.8 million in 2025, the spokesman said. That’s a tiny fraction of the $63 billion Navy procurement budget proposed by President Joe Biden’s administration for 2025.
Military maritime drones can range from missile-armed speedboats to miniature mine-hunting submarines and solar-powered sailboats equipped with high-definition spy cameras, underwater sensors and loudspeakers used to shout warnings to enemy ships.
But when the Navy has deployed maritime drones on reconnaissance missions in recent years, it hasn’t always had the fleet expertise to use them, said the two Navy sources, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
There aren’t enough Navy sailors trained to fly the drones or analyze the vast amounts of data sent back by the craft’s cameras and sensors, the sources said.
The spokesman said the Navy is in the process of improving the collection and analysis of sensor data.
Pentagon spokesman Pahon said the Defense Department has been “laser-focused on accelerating innovation over the past three years,” including the use of maritime drones. Acknowledging the budget challenges, Pahon said the Pentagon is using innovative methods to cross the “valley of death,” a term used to describe the grueling approval process new inventions go through to be purchased in large quantities.
