[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 114-61]
GAME CHANGERS--UNDERSEA WARFARE
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
OCTOBER 27, 2015
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia, Chairman
K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut
BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia RICK LARSEN, Washington
DUNCAN HUNTER, California, Vice MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam
Chair HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr.,
VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri Georgia
PAUL COOK, California SCOTT H. PETERS, California
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
JACKIE WALORSKI, Indiana GWEN GRAHAM, Florida
RYAN K. ZINKE, Montana SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts
STEPHEN KNIGHT, California
STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma
David Sienicki, Professional Staff Member
Phil MacNaughton, Professional Staff Member
Katherine Rember, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Page
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Courtney, Hon. Joe, a Representative from Connecticut, Ranking
Member, Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces......... 2
Forbes, Hon. J. Randy, a Representative from Virginia, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces................. 1
WITNESSES
Clark, Bryan, Senior Fellow, Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments.................................................... 5
Connor, VADM Michael J., USN (Ret.), Former Commander, Submarine
Forces......................................................... 3
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Clark, Bryan................................................. 46
Connor, VADM Michael J....................................... 37
Courtney, Hon. Joe........................................... 35
Forbes, Hon. J. Randy........................................ 33
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Mr. Cook..................................................... 65
Mr. Langevin................................................. 59
GAME CHANGERS--UNDERSEA WARFARE
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces,
Washington, DC, Tuesday, October 27, 2015.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:45 p.m., in
room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. J. Randy Forbes
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. J. RANDY FORBES, A REPRESENTATIVE
FROM VIRGINIA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND
PROJECTION FORCES
Mr. Forbes. As the members of this subcommittee and our
witnesses are well aware, America's ability to project power
overseas is currently being challenged by the rapid growth of
other nations' military forces and the fielding of novel
capabilities that undermine our freedom of maneuver and action
and threaten to deprive our Nation of the many benefits we
derive from our command of the seas. If we remain on our
present trajectory, I fear we may see our seapower and power
projection capabilities eclipsed and our influence eroded in
critical regions overseas.
In the past, Congress has responded to similar threats by
undertaking great expansions of our air and maritime forces.
Championed by legislators like Carl Vinson, these buildups
reenergized American seapower and projection forces and
sustained them for another generation.
Given the challenges and constraints we face today,
however, I believe a different response from Congress and the
Pentagon is required. Building more things will be part of the
solution, but it is my belief that what we really need at
present are new things, innovative capabilities and concepts
that will, quote, ``change the game'' in the many areas of
military competition where the trends are unfavorable.
Today this subcommittee kicks off a series of hearings
examining potentially game-changing concepts and capabilities
with a look at the undersea domain. This is a domain in which
the United States has for decades been dominant and benefited
immensely from it. Our superiority in this domain has enabled
the United States to collect sensitive intelligence, hold at
risk foreign fleets, attack targets on land without warning,
and maintain the secure second-strike capability that is
essential for deterrence.
While surface ships and forces ashore are coming under
increased threat from anti-access/area-denial [A2/AD]
capabilities and being forced to operate at longer ranges, U.S.
submarines still enjoy freedom of maneuver and the ability to
operate with near impunity under the sea. In the view of many
respected defense leaders and analysts, this provides an
enduring strategic advantage that the United States should
leverage to offset competitors' growing strength in other
areas.
Unfortunately, as with so many elements of our fleet, the
demand for undersea forces currently exceeds the supply, and
the situation is forecasted to grow worse. At present, the U.S.
submarine fleet is able to meet only 65 percent of commanders'
requests for forces. Under current plans, the Navy's submarine
fleet will shrink by 25 percent between now and 2030, with our
fleet of attack submarines shrinking from 53 to 41 boats. Over
that same period, we stand to lose 60 percent of our undersea
payload capacity as our four SSGNs [cruise missile submarines]
are retired from service.
So, at a time when our submarine force will likely be
called upon to do more than ever, it is also going to be at its
smallest size since World War II. At the same time, our
existing sensors and weapons should be expected to decline in
effectiveness as our adversaries' own capabilities improve.
Fortunately, the submarine community is aware of the
challenges and opportunities it faces, and we are privileged to
have two of its leading thinkers here before us to discuss
them: Retired Vice Admiral Michael J. Connor, former commander
of Submarine Forces--Admiral, thank you for being here today--
and Mr. Bryan Clark, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic
and Budgetary Assessments [CSBA].
Bryan, thank you for joining us.
These two submariners have been at the forefront of
undersea innovation, and I am eager to hear from them as to
what new undersea concepts and capabilities the Navy is
currently developing and what more might be done to sustain and
exploit our dominance in that critically important domain.
And, with that, I turn to another leading proponent of
America's undersea power, our ranking member, Mr. Joe Courtney
of Connecticut.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Forbes can be found in the
Appendix on page 33.]
STATEMENT OF HON. JOE COURTNEY, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
CONNECTICUT, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND
PROJECTION FORCES
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have a statement, which, again, I am going to have
introduced into the record, and just really summarize really
quickly by saying, you know, over the last 7 or 8 years, with
the help of both of our witnesses here, you know, we actually,
I think, have sort of reasserted the priority of our undersea
force, kick-starting the Virginia-class production program to
two a year, getting the design work on track for the Ohio
Replacement Program. The Virginia Payload Module [VPM], which
the chairman referred to, is, you know, filling a critical
payload gap which is going to occur when the SSGNs go offline.
But the fact is we still have other challenges ahead of us,
as I think we will hear from the witnesses. You know, the rest
of the world has not sort of stayed frozen in the post-Cold War
era. And, again, we can't have two better witnesses to sort of
walk us through about where, you know, this committee should be
focused in terms of trying to have a force multiplier to fill
those gaps that the chairman referred to in terms of the
combatant command [COCOM] and its requests, which are not going
to be met, and that is probably going to get a little tougher
as the fleet size declines in the next few years or so, and
really trying to get, again, Congress focused on this, just
like we were able to with the Virginia program and with the
Ohio Replacement Program.
And that is really, I think, the purpose of this hearing.
And hopefully we are going to get some good ideas in terms of
ways we can improve, you know, our budgeting and authorization
process to make sure that, again, we just don't lose that, you
know, incredibly important edge that our country has in terms
of the undersea domain.
So, again, I want to thank both witnesses for being here
today, and particularly Admiral Connor, who is now, you know,
back where he belongs, in southeastern Connecticut, and,
obviously, though, here today still helping our Nation.
So, with that, I will yield back, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Courtney can be found in the
Appendix on page 35.]
Mr. Forbes. Joe, thank you.
And one of the things that we often say for opening
statements is we tell our witnesses: You don't need to read
your opening statement. You can make it a part of the record
and just talk to us.
But today I want to emphasize how important both of these
opening statements are. They are two of the best that I have
read in a long time. And we are going to be encouraging our
subcommittee members to read both of your statements, because I
think they were just both excellent. So I thank you for the
thought that you put into those statements and for the ideas
contained in there.
And I encourage anybody today who hasn't read them to make
sure you get a copy and read the full text that both of these
gentlemen have put in their statements, because they are both
excellent.
And, with that, Admiral Connor, I think we are going to
start off with you, and we would love to hear your thoughts and
comments. And thank you once again for your service to our
country and for being here today.
STATEMENT OF VADM MICHAEL J. CONNOR, USN (RET.), FORMER
COMMANDER, SUBMARINE FORCES
Admiral Connor. Well, thank you, Chairman Forbes,
Congressman Courtney, and, really, all the members of the
committee and staff. I would like to just briefly thank you for
the support that I saw very clearly during my tenure as
commander of the submarine force, as this committee reversed
the decline of the submarine force, got us back to two a year,
and has us--although the numbers will go down for a while, you
stabilized the situation.
And it is your long-term commitment to Navy shipbuilding
that is allowing things like the Virginia-class program to
deliver such high-quality submarines ahead of schedule and
under budget. It is because we have a fairly predictable
future. Thank you for that.
I have a few suggestions. They are contained in my
statement that I have submitted for the record. I will
summarize them here.
The first point is that, while we talk about game-changing
capabilities, many of which come in the form of vehicles,
manned and unmanned and so forth and things we called payloads,
it is important to keep in mind that those game-changing
capabilities rest on the foundation of superior platforms that
give us an operational advantage when we go head-to-head with
the adversary. And the things that we bring to bear after that
tend, in many cases, to leverage that capability. And it is a
very important part. The other capabilities are not standalone.
The first point I want to make is that, in the game-
changing capability, we need to start thinking in terms of
range--range of weapons that we deliver under the water and
above the water. It is important from the perspective that, as
we look forward into a world where we present asymmetric
challenges to our adversaries, that we take our superior
platforms and then extend the range at which they can impart
their effects across the theater. That is a true quandary for
our adversaries, when they know that a submarine, for example,
that they cannot detect has the ability to strike on short
notice across a very wide area.
So, in the area of torpedoes, we are looking at, as the
Navy restarts heavyweight torpedo production, they do that with
a mind to increase the range of those weapons and then increase
the ability to communicate with those weapons when they are
far, far from the ship that launched them, even to the point
where another aircraft or satellite relay may actually
determine the final homing of that weapon.
The next point is that we need to get back into the
business of submarine-delivered anti-ship missiles that can
strike at very long ranges. This presents a huge quandary for
our adversaries, who have to maintain an air defense posture if
they are concerned that there might be a submarine in the area
even if they can tell that there are no surface ships in the
area. That is a true tax on their system. It changes their
weapon load-out, it changes their radar posture, and it
significantly helps our ability to track them.
The next point is, as we look at how in this world going
forward where we have many, many commitments to know what is
going on under the water in more areas than ever before, we
have to change the way that we do that. We have to shift from
relying on a small number of highly capable but fairly
relatively expensive platforms to do it in a much more
pervasive way with large numbers of smaller, less expensive
things.
The good news is that the technology that we have today
will allow us to do that. The advancements that have been made
in robotics and autonomy and propulsion, in harvesting ocean
power, have opened the door for those who are creative to make
major, major improvements in how we sense what is going on in
the ocean.
And my last major point is that, if we are going to
leverage this type of opportunity, we have to be able to move
much faster in the future on the technological front than we
did in the past. And we will certainly need the help of the
Congress in doing that.
We live in a world where the technology cycle is about 2 to
3 years long, and we also live in a world today with a typical
program cycle, from inception of idea to funding and
production, that can be 3 to 5 to 7 years. We cannot live in
that world and keep pace with the technology of today. We will
need your help in that, and we can talk about that later.
That summarizes my statement. I am ready for your
questions, Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Connor can be found in
the Appendix on page 37.]
Mr. Forbes. Admiral, thank you so much.
And, Mr. Clark, you are not a stranger to this
subcommittee. We thank you for being here again and look
forward to your comments.
And, with that, we yield you the floor.
STATEMENT OF BRYAN CLARK, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC
AND BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS
Mr. Clark. Thank you, Chairman Forbes and Congressman
Courtney, for inviting me to testify today. And I am honored to
be here with Admiral Connor, who is my former boss and a
visionary leader in undersea warfare. It is truly a great honor
for me to be here with him today.
This is a terrific topic for the first in the series of
game-changing warfare area examinations, because today undersea
warfare is something that the United States depends upon
fundamentally for a lot of its war plans and a lot of its
defense strategies as our way to get access to places that
enemies with growing anti-access capabilities want to keep us
out of. So we have to be able to sustain our level of dominance
that we currently have in the undersea.
That dominance is likely to be challenged here in the
coming years, with the advent of new technologies and the
advent of more visionist powers. And you have heard of
deployments of Russian submarines out of their normal bastions
or out of their normal local areas, deployments of Russian
ships that are, you know, potentially looking at undersea
cables, and the growing Chinese submarine fleet.
So, clearly, there are competitors to the United States in
the undersea domain that are going to look to take advantage of
emerging technologies to establish their own capabilities to
either deny us the ability to use the undersea or to use it to
their own advantage.
So we can look at opportunities here, some game-changing
opportunities, to sustain our undersea advantage that we enjoy
today and then to, going forward, establish an enduring
advantage against those new competitors.
I think there are three major areas where these
technological changes are coming that our adversaries might be
able to leverage, with the leveling of the technological
playing field, but that we can also take advantage of ourself
and that we need to.
The first one is new capabilities to detect submarines and
also in technologies that would prevent detection of
submarines. So you will see a competition ensue between
detection and counter-detection, which wouldn't be dissimilar
to what we see above the water when it comes to radar and
electronic warfare that we are sort of familiar with.
The second area is in the power and autonomy of unmanned
systems, so unmanned undersea vehicles as well as unmanned
systems that you would deploy on the sea floor, like sensors or
modules that would contain weapons and other payloads.
The third major area--and this gets to something Admiral
Connor just talked about--is in the area of payloads, so in the
kinds of things that you would carry on an undersea platform or
on a ship that would deploy things undersea, so advancements in
communications technology for under the water, advancements in
the capability of weapons to be able to go long distances and
to also be able to find targets undersea, and then also in the
ability of these systems to communicate with one another and
network with one another and coordinate their operations
undersea.
So those three main areas of technology development offer
opportunities for us as well as to our adversaries. These new
technologies, though, will not make the oceans transparent in
the near term or anytime in the future, probably, and they are
not going to erode our dominance overnight. So we can take
advantage of this time period in which we still have the
advantage to invest in them.
What we need to do is--or just some key features of this
future competition that are likely to occur are six major
areas, so what I think we are going to end up with as a new
basis for submarine detection that is going to emerge out of
these sets of game-changing technology.
So we are used to passive sonar being the primary means by
which we detect a submarine. So we listen under water, a
submarine makes noise, we detect that noise and go attack the
submarine. Well, as submarines have become quieter, that has
become less possible. And, also, as adversaries have tried to
develop their own anti-submarine warfare [ASW] capabilities,
they are moving into new areas like active sonar and getting
away from the idea of listening for the submarine and, instead,
just using active sonar to bounce sound off of a submarine.
So that is going to create new requirements for the U.S. to
be able to protect their submarines from detection. That is
going to create a counter-ASW competition, and so that is
something that we can look at both gaining advantage in and
being able to use against our enemies.
We are also going to see the advent of undersea families of
systems, or undersea systems of systems, where you have
submarines and unmanned systems both on the sea floor and
mobile ones, like unmanned vehicles, working with one another,
communicating with one another to accomplish a mission, not
dissimilar from how you see aircraft today.
So, today, with integrated fire control systems, you see an
AWACS [Airborne Warning and Control System] aircraft being able
to find targets and then direct fighter aircraft to go
intercept those targets. You will see a similar emergence in
the undersea, where manned platforms and unmanned platforms are
going to be interacting in these families-of-systems
constructs.
We are going to see probably the advent of seabed warfare,
where the ability to find things underwater becomes very
important and the ability to install them or remove them
becomes very important, and whoever can do that better than the
other competitor is likely to gain an advantage going forward.
And you can see that even right now with the efforts the
Russians are taking to try to identify and locate undersea
cables.
And the last feature of this competition you are likely to
see is the focus on cost imposition rather than attrition. So
our normal model of warfare is we try to destroy the other
guy's forces, kill as many of his people as possible, break as
much of his stuff as possible. In the undersea, it is different
because it is very hard to find things undersea, it is very
hard to close the kill chain to destroy them. And so, as a
result, you are going to see efforts to try to just impose
costs on the enemy, force them to be always on the defensive,
as Admiral Connor said, rather than trying to kill them
outright. So we can look for ways to take advantage of that as
the U.S., as opposed to that being used against us.
Some things that the Navy should do to take advantage of
the technologies that are available and get ahead in this next
phase of competition are five main things.
So first is to sustain and expand our submarine capacity.
Because, as you noted, Congressman Forbes, we are going to have
a reduction in overall submarine capacity here in the coming
years where it is just actually going to go below the Navy's
identified requirement of 48, and then we are also going to
have the reduction in overall capacity with the retirement of
the SSGNs. So looking at ways to be able to mitigate that
reduction in overall submarine capacity will be important.
We need to achieve organizational alignment in the
development of our undersea systems. Today, it is sort of a
letting-all-the-flowers-grow effort, where we try to let
everything come up and see which of these undersea systems,
like an unmanned system or a sensor, is going to show promise.
And, instead, we need to be a little bit more focused about how
we manage and structure that effort.
We need to ensure that the new SSBN [ballistic missile
submarine] will be survivable in an environment where new ASW
methods, new submarine-detection methods are becoming common.
And looking out 50 years or more into the future for that new
SSBN, it is going to be hard to figure out what is the new ASW
technique of the future going to be, but we have to have that
determination and make those systems part of that submarine.
We need to establish priorities for unmanned underwater
vehicle design and where they should be focused, for example,
what mission should they be focused on and what sizes and
capabilities do they need to have, as opposed to kind of the
bottom-up approach that is proceeding today.
We need to look at how we evolve our SSNs [attack
submarines] for new roles. Our attack submarines are going to
be the heart of this undersea family of systems, so they need
to be equipped and have the payload capacity to do so. So
things like the Virginia Payload Module are very important.
Maybe that should be part of every Virginia-class submarine in
Block V rather than simply half of them.
And then the last thing is moving undersea systems from the
research and development [R&D] community into acquisition.
Because today a lot of these systems are languishing, waiting
to transition into acquisition programs because of a lack of
requirements or a lack of organizational wherewithal to push
them across the ``valley of death'' and become something that
is actually fielded as part of the fleet rather than an
experiment that is done once or twice and looks good but never
actually becomes part of our overall approach to undersea
warfare.
So, in conclusion, I would say that the undersea--you know,
America can certainly sustain its undersea advantage and impose
costs on its enemies using the undersea, but we have to evolve
our approach and evolve the capabilities that we are developing
to be able to take advantage of the technologies that are
emerging and be able to do that in the future.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Clark can be found in the
Appendix on page 46.]
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, Mr. Clark.
And to our witnesses, again, thank you for being here.
This subcommittee is one of the most bipartisan
subcommittees in Congress. And while we go outside these doors,
we maybe differ on a lot of different things, we may be
parochial in nature, we may have other issues, when we come in
here, we are pretty much Team USA, you know, in how we do the
best that we can do to defend and protect the United States of
America.
One of the things I want to encourage subcommittee members
to do--and Mr. Courtney and I both concur in this--for those of
you who might have gotten here after our opening, we normally
don't emphasize that you read the opening remarks. You can do
that if you want to or not. These are two of the best opening
comments that I think Joe and I both have seen in a long time
that really outline this area. So I would just encourage all of
our members to read those two opening remarks in their
entirety.
And, as I look at those, to both of you, we are oftentimes
tasked with looking at charts of platforms. And so we can look
at number of SSBNs we have, how many we need, we can look at
the Virginia attack subs, how many we need, how we are going to
compare, look at our surface ships.
But, as I look at both of your written testimony as well as
what you have verbally stated here today, it seems like what
you are talking about in the future is we are going to have to,
instead of just building more subs, which is important that we
do, we are going to have to create these systems of systems
that you talk about so that the subs that we have can be
multiplied, not by having more subs only but by having systems
that expand their both capacity and capability, I guess, in
doing that.
And two of the problems that we have--Mr. Connor, you
specifically outlined these in your written testimony. But we
are going to have to be on the innovative edge if we do that.
And innovation sometimes means coming up with the ideas but
also being able to get to those ideas.
And the two concepts that I thought were pretty intriguing
that you put out was, first of all, just with our normal budget
process, it takes a year for one of our services to come up
with their budget, and then it takes a year, on a good year,
for us to be able to match that budget and get it to the
President. And by that time, oftentimes the shelf life of the
innovation has run out.
So I think both of you are concurring that we have to find,
as to the innovation piece, how we do that faster. And so we
would look, one, for your ideas on that, maybe an elaboration
on that.
But the second thing--and I thought this is something we
need to really look at too--is the concept of failure. We have
developed a culture now where, if we fail, any platform, it is
like the most horrendous thing that has ever taken place. And I
think, Admiral, your thoughts on that would be, if we are not
failing, we are not innovating. And you point out in your
testimony that in Silicon Valley they are going to have a 90
percent failure rate. So even if we had a 50 percent failure
rate, that is not a bad thing.
So I was wondering if the two of you could just kind of
give us your thoughts on those concepts.
Admiral Connor. I would be happy to, Chairman.
And you described the limitations of the budget process
very well. Even some of the tools that we have used to overcome
the process, so to speak--we have a program we call Speed to
Fleet, which behind closed doors we call the NBA [National
Basketball Association] playoffs because what happens is that,
over the course of a year, we compete various technologies
within the Navy to decide which ones will get funded in the
next budget. And the problem with even that is that is a year-
long process, to do your fast project. It just doesn't make
sense.
So, to a certain degree, I think the Congress and then
whoever they select within the Department of Defense [DOD] to
administer the program would have to create and oversee very
much a venture-capital-like approach to innovation. The money
has to be set aside. The money should be invested in projects
that have credibility, that people can demonstrate why they
have credibility. There ought to be milestones involved in that
process, where people come back and show that they are on track
and harvesting the results or making the progress that they
intended to make--or not.
And the ``or not'' piece comes into your failure rate you
talked about. And if something seemed like a good idea but the
physics don't work out or the concept of operations is
untenable, then there may come a point in some of the
applications when we just say that this isn't working, we are
going to stop, we are going to file the lessons away, and we
are going to learn from it, but we are going to stop here and
put that money where it can move us forward faster.
That may seem like a start-and-go-type process, but, at the
end of the day, if you look at the way that works in other
arenas, you make more forward progress by being bolder and
making more bold attempts, even when you have occasional or
even frequent failure in the process.
Mr. Clark. So I would have two things that the Congress
could do, potentially.
So one would be related to how do you incentivize the
research organizations with regard to the things they pursue?
Today, research organizations in the Department are
incentivized to transition things into the warfighters' hands.
So they are graded on how well the projects they pursue end up
turning into an acquisition program, or at least part of an
acquisition program. Even an organization like DARPA [Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency] feels pressure to transition
more capabilities into the warfighters' hands.
What that does, though, is it makes them, over time, shift
from a focus on bold, innovative, game-changing ideas to things
that are more evolutionary and less disruptive and more likely
to turn into an operational capability that will turn into an
acquisition program.
So one thing the Congress could do would be to incentivize
a focus within these organizations, particularly the DARPAs and
the S&T [science and technology] organizations, on more
disruptive ideas that are more revolutionary. And so this comes
to, how do we report this?
So the reporting requirements for technology programs are
generally: How well did they transition? What is the percentage
of transition? And then how fast did they transition? Things
that take too long or things that don't transition are not
rewarded, and things that do are rewarded.
If instead we ask and there are reporting requirements to
say, characterize how your technology programs were in terms of
how disruptive they were to the status quo in terms of
technologies and how revolutionary were their operating
concepts, that would be a way to incentivize organizations to
move in the direction that they should be, which is bolder
ideas that are going to be able to change the way we operate
more dramatically than potentially just coming up with
evolutionary changes that simply move the ball a little bit
further down the field.
And I am thinking mostly of a DARPA-type model here. DARPA
should be incentivized to pursue those game-changing
technologies, but today they feel like they need to transition
things to the warfighter, and, as a result, you are seeing a
dulling of that focus on game-changing technologies.
So that is one thing, in terms of how do we--you know, we
can incentivize them through reporting requirements and through
driving them to take more risk and accept more failure in terms
of how the Congress deals with these organizations.
I would say that the second thing is, in terms of getting
the new capabilities more quickly into the warfighters' hands,
because of the budget process and this 2-year delay that you
discussed, maybe we should formalize an opportunity during the
development of the appropriations and authorizations bills for
the Department to come back and make changes, in consultation
and coordination with Congress, to accommodate the fact that
certain programs in those 2 years may have shown a lot of
promise and should get more money, but, you know, our budget
has been in stasis for the last 2 years. So we don't have that
opportunity until the budget has been issued and a
reprogramming is conducted.
So, instead of waiting for that reprogramming, change that
appropriation while the appropriations bill is being developed
over here on the Hill. It gives the Department a second
opportunity to make changes to those small technology programs,
some of which may have failed in the ensuing year and a half or
some of which have shown great promise and need to be fostered
further.
Mr. Forbes. Well, thank you both. And our subcommittee is
going be looking to both of you two as we go down the road,
perhaps, to laser in on some of these changes that we can do.
We heard in the full committee just earlier today that one of
the difficulties we have is a lack of competition now. So they
said, before, a lot of our innovation came from the fact that
the loser would create the innovation for the next time, and
today we don't have that situation. So this is something I
think is very, very important as we move forward.
Mr. Courtney is recognized for any questions he may have.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, again, I just want to reiterate your comments about
the testimony. Again, I just think it is--I would really
encourage all the members and, frankly, the whole committee to
take a look at it. Because, you know, clearly, the sort of
post-Cold War holiday in the undersea realm is over, and, you
know, the world is changing. And you guys really focused on it,
you know, just in a really important way. So thank you, to both
of you.
Mr. Clark, you talked a little bit about the Virginia
Payload Module program, which, again, is right before us--
actually, it is in the budget--in the authorization this year.
At this point, again, it doesn't look like it is going to
commence until 2019----
Mr. Clark. Right.
Mr. Courtney [continuing]. With Block V. Again, the Navy
shipbuilding plan, though, as you noted, is for only one out of
the two a year Virginia classes, to incorporate that.
I mean, given the fact that--I mean, it is clear we are not
only just talking about strike capability but also, you know,
the family of systems, as you said. I mean, should we be
looking at maybe trying to modify that proposal to, again,
maximize the benefit of that modification?
Mr. Clark. Definitely.
If you look at the cost of the Block V Virginia-class
submarine with the VPM, it is going to cost less, in constant-
year dollars, than the original Block III cost because of the
cost savings that have been incorporated into the program
through the design-for-affordability efforts and by the other
efforts that EB [Electric Boat] and HII [Huntington Ingalls
Industries] have taken to reduce the cost of building the ship.
And you can see that in how fast they build them and how early
they are completed. That translates into lower costs.
So the submarines are going to cost less money than their
predecessors while offering more capability. So we should take
advantage of that opportunity and expand the number that we are
purchasing, because we need this capacity not just to replace
the SSGNs, as you noted, for their strike capacity but also to
enable these submarines to be the host and coordination
platforms going into the future.
Because the model we have to start thinking of for the
submarine is less of the tactical aircraft that goes into
harm's way alone and unafraid and more like the aircraft
carrier model, where it is the centerpiece of a family of
systems that are operating in conjunction with it, some of
which would come from the platform itself, and some may come
from somewhere else. But that payload capacity is essential to
afford it the ability to be that aircraft carrier of the
undersea.
Mr. Courtney. And, Admiral Connor, again, you devised this
undersea dominance campaign. If we have non-VPM Virginia-class
subs versus those with the module, I mean, can you just talk a
little bit about, you know, what the difference would be in
terms of trying to implement that plan?
Admiral Connor. Congressman, I would be happy to do that.
The first point I would like to make is that it is a lot
easier to be building subs in parallel that are exactly the
same than to be having two variants coming off the line
depending on what time of year it is because there are nuances
there. So there are efficiencies that I believe would show up
in production that probably aren't reflected in the way we
calculate costs ahead of time.
The other issue, though, is, as we look to a world where we
will intentionally pursue a path with a wide range of
technologies--numerous less expensive technologies that we
solve hard problems with numbers of small things--having the
capacity built in place to deploy and retrieve things, even
things that we haven't invented yet, would be a very important
part of our strategic planning.
While we work in a timeframe probably with payloads and
vehicles that become obsolete in 3 to 5 years, we have to plan
on ships that are around for 30 to 40 years. And to make
decisions today that would discount their ability to handle a
wider range of payloads, I think, is worth reconsidering.
Mr. Courtney. And your comments about anti-ship missiles, I
mean, again, that also sort of fits into the Virginia payload,
you know, capacity, just to have more----
Admiral Connor. Very much so. If you just would take, you
know, the typical range of a Tomahawk missile today, which I
think you all know, and say that were an anti-ship missile, and
you would draw a radius around a submarine operating undetected
in some part of the world, and the fact that that ship could
impose a mission kill on pretty much anyone they chose, using
technology that exists in other missile areas today and
applying it to a missile that we know we can fly off a
submarine, that is a pretty huge quandary, as I said, for the
adversary.
So the more capacity you have to employ those types of
things, at the same time that you have these other payload
options for sensing and so forth, would be critical.
Mr. Courtney. Great.
Thank you to both of you.
I yield back.
Mr. Forbes. Mr. Clark, did you have a----
Mr. Clark. One thing I would add to that, too, on the
payload capacity, what is really important is some people might
argue that, well, if I try to use an anti-ship missile like the
Tomahawk to attack a high-end destroyer of the Chinese, they
will probably shoot it down. And I would argue that, well, if I
shoot 10 or 12 Tomahawks at them, they may not shoot all of
them down; all it takes is one to get through.
That would be a very good cost tradeoff. If I am paying for
10 or 12 Tomahawks at about a million dollars apiece to destroy
a $1.5 billion or $2 billion Chinese destroyer, that would be a
good tradeoff to accept.
Mr. Forbes. Okay.
Mr. Wittman is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Vice Admiral Connor and Mr. Clark, thanks so much for
joining us today. Some interesting points about what we need to
do to dominate in the undersea realm.
I want to expand from your concepts about using the
submarine as kind of the centerpiece and having a number of
systems that work in a dependence or in relation to the
submarine itself, whether it is UUVs [unmanned underwater
vehicles] or UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles]. Great concept. I
think the carrier strike group concept with the submarine is a
great way to go about that. It lets us leverage an awful lot of
different systems on different platforms and creates lots of
uncertainty for our adversaries.
One thing, too, in a resource-restricted environment, which
is where we are going to find ourselves, I think, at least now
and into the foreseeable future, is we see our adversaries not
only use nuclear-powered submarines, but we also see them use
diesel-powered submarines.
Give us your perspective about us having a fleet with some
of those other platforms, a diesel-powered submarine. I think
the technology is there, and we can build those for half the
price of nuclear submarines. Nuclear submarines certainly have
a place, but the question is, our adversaries have significant
numerical advantage, and, as the saying goes, quantity has a
quality all its own.
What do we do, in looking at the ever-expanding numbers of
our adversaries? And is there a place for diesel submarines as
a platform, to look at something that is in addition to UUVs
and UAVs, as we create these undersea systems?
Admiral Connor. Congressman, I have studied this issue a
fair amount. I have been both the submarine commander and the
anti-submarine commander in the Western Pacific, Arabian Gulf,
and the Atlantic, and these are the types of things that I
thought about every day.
What I found is the argument that suggested that the
quantity of diesel submarines is a quality all its own is true
if and only if the theater of operations is very constrained.
And what you can do if you are the anti-submarine commander and
the adversary is a diesel or even a diesel with air-independent
propulsion capability, the energy density they have just isn't
there. They can't move, on average, more than about 100 miles a
day without resorting to coming shallow and operating their
engines and therefore exposing themselves.
So I would contend that while a diesel submarine does not
replace a nuclear submarine, because we can go much further,
much faster at quiet speeds, a capable unmanned vehicle, I
think, does fulfill that role of getting numbers in a
relatively constrained area.
So we should be looking at sort of a high-low mix of
capable submarines that can project a threat anywhere we want
in a short period of time with the ability to deploy from
submarines or other platforms--airplanes and surface ships--
vehicles that can fulfill that mission that others use their
diesel submarines for.
Mr. Wittman. As we look at the innovation and creation that
takes place--and I agree with both of all of you, it takes
place at a breakneck pace, and the current system of
acquisition--and we talked about this earlier today--isn't
well-suited to get technology to the warfighter quickly.
Give us some of your perspectives--and you shed a little
bit of light on that in your testimony, but give us your
perspectives on what we could do to really enhance that. You
know, it is great to have a fund, but there is always this
accountability side about what are you doing, who is going to
oversee that, and those sorts of things.
But give us your thoughts about, first of all, how would
you do that internally? How would you encourage the private
sector to take that innovation, to develop it, to make it
available to DOD? And if it is applicable, we can put it to
use. If not, then there should be some ownership, I am sure, by
the private sector.
But, anyway, give us your perspective on how we can make
that happen.
Admiral Connor. The ability of the private sector to invest
and to retain their intellectual property and profit from it
when they succeed would be a huge incentive to bringing many
companies that are not traditionally pursuing defense work into
that arena. And there are some very innovative people who would
be happy to spend their own money for a chance to compete. So
that is one point.
The other area is probably more on the side of the
Department than the Congress, but that is, when programs are
defined, I think we have had a tendency to define them too
narrowly. And sometimes that works in the favor of preservation
of the program in the form it was conceived. But to the extent
to which we could expand the definition of a program such that
when good ideas happen that meet the intent of the program they
can be incorporated.
If you want to see a good example of that, you could look
at the Advanced Processor Build/Technological Insertion program
we use on submarines, which--basically, we assume that the
hardware becomes obsolete every 5 to 6 years and the software
becomes out of date every 2 [years], so we plan for those
changes. We could do similar things with hardware.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Forbes. And, Admiral, just to clarify your response to
Mr. Wittman, as I understand, you are saying if you had to
spend defense dollars, you would rather have a limited number
of very high-end platforms supplemented by a large number of
more inexpensive, perhaps unmanned platforms, rather than
putting it all in multiple midrange submarines. Is that a fair
representation?
Admiral Connor. That is very accurate. I might say massive
numbers of small platform.
Mr. Forbes. Right. That is great.
The gentlelady from Florida, Ms. Graham, is recognized for
5 minutes.
Ms. Graham. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Admiral, Mr. Clark. Appreciate you all being
here.
I represent north Florida, where the Naval Support Activity
Center in Panama City is located. Much of what we are
discussing here today is being developed and tested there. As a
matter of fact, there are commercial entities that are on the
cutting edge of innovation.
I am curious about what you all are seeing in terms of our
adversaries across the world and where they are in terms of
developing unmanned undersea technology. Because, often, the
challenges that we face are what drive development and drive
the desire to be competitive in this area.
So, if you could speak to that, I would appreciate it.
Admiral Connor. The cutting edge of unmanned undersea today
exists probably in the academic world and in the oil and gas
exploration world. And they are developing a lot of technology
very rapidly.
From what I have seen--and I am now out of the Navy and no
longer have a clearance, but it hasn't been that long--our
adversaries are not ahead of us in unmanned vehicles,
particularly in the autonomy area. I think we have--the
robotics center of excellence is in this country, and the
marine robotics center of excellence is in this country. And
the folks in your district, in Panama City, have leveraged this
very highly.
The MK 18 Mod 1 unmanned vehicle, which is based on a REMUS
[Remote Environmental Monitoring Units] vehicle which was
invented for academic research at Woods Hole by some people
from MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology], is a classic
example of how smart people inside the military leverage
commercial technology for a very good purpose. In that case, it
was mine hunting.
Mr. Clark. I think I agree with Admiral Connor on that,
that the most capable systems are being developed by American
academia, often in consortiums with the U.S. Government.
You see a lot of efforts going on, though, in other
countries just to put more and more stuff out there. So the
Chinese have a large number of UUVs that they have been
developing. The Russians have had a longstanding program that
uses unmanned vehicles, and mostly remotely operated vehicles,
to go do undersea surveillance or to do work on cables, et
cetera. So those programs have been, you know, longstanding
efforts by those countries. But they aren't as advanced as the
U.S. technologically, but they may try to make up for that in
terms of just mass, by putting more effort into it.
The other area where I see, when you look at the technical
journals, foreign countries, you know, potentially gaining a
level playing field is when it comes to the physics and some of
the computer processing power that is available. So how you
improve your anti-submarine warfare capabilities involves how
do you use the physics of the undersea. Well, that technology
is obviously well understood to a lot of people. And so it
could be something that academically other countries will
leverage and take advantage of the fact that computer
processing power has now grown to the point where you can do
things today in other countries using their technology that you
would only be able to do in the United States in the past.
Ms. Graham. Thank you for that.
As I have spent quite a bit of time at the Naval Support
Activity Center in Panama City and I have seen all the
incredible things that they are doing--and the private sector.
It is not just by coincidence that there is a large growth of
companies that are developing undersea technology there, so
that they can work together with the Navy. And I think that is
an indication of the cooperation between the private and public
that we should be encouraging. I am very proud to represent
both.
So thank you for that, and I appreciate your answers to the
questions.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Forbes. Mr. Conaway is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Conaway. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, thanks for being here.
As the Navy considers or looks to the next generation of
attack submarines and the capabilities or attributes that will
be the key to that, can you talk to me about, is that all
manned, or is there a blend between the manned and unmanned
platforms that would be appropriate? And what other key
attributes should the Navy look at?
Admiral Connor. And so, as we look forward, we are looking
at manned and unmanned vehicles that go undersea. We tend to
call the ones with the people in them ``submarines,'' and we
tend to call the unmanned things something else. But, clearly--
I think Mr. Clark articulated it very well--there is going to
be a synergy in the future between things that are manned and
are unmanned.
He referenced the ability of the submarine to be the node
for a number of other vehicles undersea. I would add that, in
many cases, the submarine might simply be the customer for a
number of unmanned devices that are informing them about the
environment, whether they are controlled from a submarine or
not. They may very well be controlled from shore or from a
carrier strike group or an aircraft.
We should get to the point where it doesn't matter because
we have been able to network them, and whoever has the best
vantage point----
Mr. Conaway. Yeah, I have got that part, but what about
using them as attack vehicles, armed and dangerous?
Admiral Connor. Ah, I see your question. I think the
submarine will be the centerpiece of the things that apply
lethal force in the undersea. I think we have some not just
conceptual work but policy work to do before we have unmanned
vehicles that are delivering.
Mr. Conaway. The Air Force had that same struggle between
air-breathers and others, and today we wouldn't think about not
having armed, unmanned--or remotely piloted, excuse me. They
are all piloted.
But is there a lesson for the Navy there? Would they get to
an answer quicker?
Admiral Connor. There are some parallels in that area. The
area that is not a parallel is that, when you have an unmanned
air vehicle, you have constant communications. You usually have
a video feed. There is a person actually in the loop all the
time. That degree of precision control is often not available
for something operating undersea, and you have to rely on the
inherent autonomy of a computer. And the policy issue is, at
what point will we let that autonomous computer make a decision
to apply lethal force?
Mr. Clark. Sir, I would say that the major limitation we
are going to find pretty soon in autonomy is not so much how
smart the computer is on the vehicle but its limited ability to
get situational awareness of what is going on around it. So its
sensors are going to be imperfect, and so what will happen is--
--
Mr. Conaway. But wouldn't they have the same kind of
ability to figure on what is going on around them that the
submarine does?
Mr. Clark. Exactly.
Mr. Conaway. Nobody looks outside the portholes in the sub.
Mr. Clark. Right. No, but what happens is, on the
submarine, you have a human who can be accountable for making a
decision with uncertain data. So the submarine commander every
day makes decisions with a lack of certainty with regard to
what is going on around him, and he is accountable for the
results of that action. The autonomous vehicle can't be
accountable for the actions that it takes in the face of
uncertain data.
But what we could see is a situation where unmanned
vehicles----
Mr. Conaway. But we don't lose unmanned aerial vehicles
that don't have a human trigger-puller.
Mr. Clark. Right. And you could do the same thing undersea.
Mr. Conaway [continuing]. Have a trigger-puller either,
would you?
Mr. Clark. Yes, sir. So you could have an undersea system
where the unmanned system is in relatively close contact with a
submarine, not necessarily continuous coms [communications] but
would, you know, be able to relay back to the submarine a
situation that it sees, and then the submarine commander or the
person on board would make a decision on whether to apply
lethal force and be accountable for that decision. But it would
require some degree of coordination between the unmanned system
and the submarine.
Mr. Conaway. Yeah.
And, again, the unmanned systems can be deployed off a
submarine or a carrier. How does the Navy not silo up this
decision process and take full advantage of these systems--you
know, the surface guys between carriers and LCSs [Littoral
Combat Ships] and subsurface and all those silo things? How
does it avoid not using something to the fullest extent because
it was somebody else's idea and we don't like submariners, we
like surface guys better?
Admiral Connor. Congressman, I think we are past that in
many areas. Having managed the ASW fight, which is a team
effort between aircraft, surface ships from carrier strike
groups, and submarines and fixed systems, we have some fairly
highly evolved ways that we can work closely together without
fratricide. And there is a fair amount of humility in who does
the final act, so to speak.
In fact, this world that we are talking about in undersea
that is heavily based on netted systems, in the vast majority
of cases, the preferred community to conduct the final attack
would probably be the aviators. Because, as we have a wide
range of sensors, when we get a contact and we want to quickly
turn that contact into disabling the enemy, the platform of
choice would probably be a P-8 aircraft.
Mr. Conaway. Thank you.
I yield back.
Mr. Forbes. Mr. Johnson is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, thank you for your testimony today. And thank
you for your service to the Nation, as well.
Admiral Connor, how does the Navy intend to incorporate the
proliferation of underwater vehicles into existing submarine
platforms? And what modifications should the Navy incorporate
into future requirements to ensure that they are able to accept
a wider range of emerging technologies?
Admiral Connor. Congressman, that gets fairly close to the
discussion we had with Congressman Courtney in that we have to
have the payload capacity and the versatile payload capacity to
handle these vehicles.
This year, for the first time in an operational setting, we
deployed and retrieved a series of unmanned vehicles doing
missions in a place and in a manner that we could not have done
with a submarine. However, we did that with a submarine that
was equipped with a device we call a dry-deck shelter, which is
designed for the deployment and retrieval of Navy SEALs [Sea,
Air, Land forces]. And that is a large ocean interface that we
carry on the back of the submarines.
As we look to the future, we need to design our submarines
such that the vast majority, if not all of them, will have that
same ability to deploy and retrieve, and, preferably, we don't
have to add some special component that impacts the performance
of the submarine in other ways.
So we are learning lessons as we go along. We have made
some steps, but those steps are telling us the types of things
we need to have so that we can deploy and retrieve in the
future.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
Mr. Clark, do you have anything you would like to add?
Mr. Clark. Yes, sir.
So the system Admiral Connor is talking about is the
Universal Launch and Recovery Module, ULRM. And that system
would be really important to be able to launch and recover
unmanned vehicles from a submarine more easily without having
to have divers and everybody involved.
The other thing we need to do with our submarines, though,
is look at how they communicate with the outside world and with
the unmanned vehicles they are going to be interfacing with.
Today, you can generally use three ways to communicate from
a submarine. One would be the radio frequency spectrum, so that
kind of requires that you be above the water in order to use
the radio.
The second way is light, so you can use lasers to
communicate at relatively short distances. So we would need to
equip submarines with ways of using lasers or LEDs [light-
emitting diodes] to communicate with unmanned vehicles that are
relatively close to them. And that is a pretty high bandwidth
communication link, but it is very short-range.
And then acoustic communications, which can actually travel
for a very long distance, so hundreds of kilometers,
potentially, if you go to low frequencies. Those communications
can travel over a very long distance. So we would need to equip
submarines with the ability to do those kinds of long-range
acoustic communications so that they can form the centerpiece
of this battle network in the future.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
What barriers to innovation must the Navy address to more
rapidly field emerging technologies? For the both of you.
Admiral Connor. Congressman, I think the two barriers are:
funding; and the other one is the willingness to experiment and
tolerate failure in addition to success, with the goal of
moving forward faster overall.
Mr. Clark. I think we need to look at how we establish
requirements for new programs.
Today, if you are going to start a new acquisition program,
you go and develop through a series of years of analysis a set
of requirements for that program. That might be acceptable when
you are talking about a manned platform that is going to have
people on it and is going to be in the force for decades after
its introduction.
But for a payload like an unmanned vehicle or a weapon,
that may not be the case. There may be a very quick technology
refresh cycle on that. So we may be able to have requirements
that are less stringent or less comprehensively developed and
could be developed in a shorter time. And that would increase
the speed with which we could bring these new systems on board.
The other thing I would note is the testing process that we
have today can be very cumbersome. A great example of that is
the mine warfare mission package for the LCS, which uses a lot
of unmanned systems to go look for mines and blow them up. The
one problem they are having today is they are finding that some
of these unmanned vehicles are not as good as other unmanned
vehicles they would prefer to have in the package, but because
the test plan doesn't address the fact that you can switch out
these unmanned vehicles as you find some that work better than
others, they are forced to stick with their original plan and
their original, you know, poor-performing vehicle because the
test plan doesn't accommodate any changes.
So having more flexibility with regard to testing might be
a very important way to encourage, you know, the introduction
of new systems that have shown themselves to be more capable
than the ones we are currently pursuing.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
And, with that, I will yield back.
Mr. Forbes. The gentlelady from Missouri, Mrs. Hartzler, is
recognized for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Hartzler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, gentlemen. This is very interesting. And I had
to miss the opening statements, so I apologize if I ask a
question you have already covered here.
But, just to be clear, are there any of these, as you call
them, unmanned underwater vehicles in operation now, or is this
just totally conceptual at this point?
Admiral Connor. There are absolutely vehicles operational
now.
Mrs. Hartzler. So how many do we have in our fleet now?
Admiral Connor. I don't know the exact number. I would
estimate that it is on the order of a couple of hundred if you
include in that definition these series of Wave Gliders that we
use around the world for oceanographic measurements which we
incorporate into how we operate our sonar systems. That is one
category.
There are probably upwards of 50 vehicles in use in the
mine-countermeasures mission. And that is a mission that has
probably been the most proactive in experimenting, and that was
because of the urgent need that was developed by the threat of
mines in the Strait of Hormuz, which led to an intense program
with funding and led to some pretty remarkable results.
Oh, by the way, that program leveraged vehicles that had
been put in service by the oceanographic community for some of
their needs. So you can see how, when you set the right
environment, one organization can quickly build on another
organization's success. It is a very collaborative effort.
And then I did mention earlier that we did our first
operational deployment and retrieval on a submarine-like
mission this year. So it is expanding pretty rapidly.
Mrs. Hartzler. So there is only one that is actually being
launched from the submarine at this point, and that is the one
that was used by the Navy SEALs?
Admiral Connor. No. There is one variant that is currently
deployed by submarines. It is deployed and retrieved by the
submarine development squadron that embarks on the submarine.
Mrs. Hartzler. Okay. Very good.
And I just want to know a little bit more how it works. I
want to build on Representative Conaway's point. I have the
Predator drone unit in my district, and they do not like to be
referred to as unmanned aerial vehicles, which I certainly
understand. They are remotely piloted.
So, in this case, are they all remotely controlled? Or you
indicated, Mr. Clark, that there may be some option for just a
software package where they operate free of human direction. Is
that correct?
Mr. Clark. That is correct. Yes, ma'am. So, today, most of
our undersea, underwater, or other unmanned underwater vehicles
are automated----
Mrs. Hartzler. They really are.
Mr. Clark [continuing]. Or autonomous. Right. They do not
have a remote pilot. So a remote pilot diversion would be a
remotely operated vehicle [ROV], which is what you might use in
the oil and gas industry to go down and do operations at a
wellhead. So, for example, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that
we had in the Gulf, we were using ROVs to do a lot of the
repair work there to try to close off the spill.
But in the Navy, we use a lot of unmanned undersea vehicles
that are truly unmanned, and they use onboard automation in
order to go out and conduct their mission. We use them for
survey work. For example, the MK 18 Mod 2 was used to look for
the Malaysian airliner that went down in the southern Indian
Ocean last year.
So they go off, and they can do these survey missions on
their own and come back, and the data can be retrieved from
them. What we are talking about is expanding the use of those
systems now to do other missions than simply surveying, you
know, to look at them for weapons, for example, because they
can go out and actually attack something if it has been
defined, especially like a fixed target that you could define
well in advance.
You could also use them to go do ASW operations by dragging
a rig behind them and then being able to search for a contact,
that kind of stuff.
So we are looking to expand their use into a lot more
areas. But they aren't remotely operated; they are truly
unmanned.
Mrs. Hartzler. Now, last question, you talked about the
three ways it could be run--through radar, laser, acoustic. I
was just wondering, if they are acoustic, does that make them
vulnerable to intentional detection?
Mr. Clark. Right. It does. It depends on how you do it. So
there are ways, just like radio communications, to encrypt
those communications underwater. There are also ways to make
them less detectable by making the beam very focused so it is
hard to intercept it from outside a very narrow beam width. And
you can also make it so that the sound is not too far above the
noise level of the overall ocean, so you would have a difficult
time finding it. You know, if you were trying to listen for the
communication, it would just barely rise above the background
noise.
Mrs. Hartzler. Very interesting. Thank you.
I yield back.
Mr. Forbes. If the gentlelady would yield, one of the
things that might be interesting for any of our members to do
is get a classified briefing on some of the unmanned operations
that are going out there. I think that would be insightful too.
With that, the gentlelady from Hawaii, Ms. Gabbard, is
recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Gabbard. Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, gentlemen, for being here.
And, on that note, I would like to encourage my colleagues
to come out and visit the Barking Sands facility in my
district, where a lot of this innovative training is taking
place in 900 square nautical miles, water depths ranging from
6,000 to 15,000 feet, with a full spectrum of range support and
data display, target weapon launching, recovery, et cetera, et
cetera. It is something that we are proud of, and it is a one-
of-a-kind asset that we have here for our Navy to use.
Mr. Clark, I wonder if you could speak a little bit more to
something that you mentioned earlier with regards to
transitioning R&D [research and development] technologies from
DARPA into acquisition programs. And you mentioned about the
need to move away from transitioning directly to warfighters to
focusing more for DARPA on kind of these bigger, longer-term
innovative ideas.
If you could talk a little bit about the balance of that,
given some of the present-day challenges we are facing as well
as the projected challenges and increased capabilities we are
seeing in other parts of the world.
Mr. Clark. Yes, ma'am. So our service organizations that do
research and development--for example, the Office of Naval
Research--are designed to be pursuing near-term advancements to
current capabilities. So they would be the organizations that
are looking to take existing systems that we have today and
adding new capabilities to them through their research projects
or introducing some new systems that sort of build upon what
the current system of systems that we may have in the DOD does.
So that is more of the evolutionary change. It is going to
come from those organizations. What we need DARPA and
organizations like that--and this is also where the, you know,
kind of, outside-DOD innovation industry could be looking, as
well--is, how are we getting ahead to deal with the next set of
challenges?
So the near-term challenges are: We have new competitors
that are fielding submarines. We have to be able to, you know,
detect and potentially engage them. And we have to maintain our
ability to gain access undersea in places where people don't
want us to go. I mean, those are things we have talked about
with unmanned vehicles, et cetera.
But we need to start looking down the road at, what is the
next generation of anti-submarine warfare detection
technologies? If it is not going to be passive acoustic sonar,
is it going to be something else? DARPA should be looking at
what is that next game-changing technology.
If we are going to go to vehicles that can do on their own
everything that a base submarine would do, then how do we build
that autonomy and build that sensor capability--because they go
together--into the next generation of vehicles to enable these
totally different operating concepts that we might use, where
an unmanned vehicle goes and does an operation in place of a
submarine?
Those are the things that a DARPA-type organization should
be looking at. So they are fairly disruptive. They are pretty
revolutionary. They are going to involve some risk. But if
nobody is looking at that, then we won't be able to gain that
next advantage.
So a good example would be things like stealth. You know,
we wouldn't have had stealth if DARPA hadn't started pursuing
it 20 years before we ever fielded the first stealth airplane.
Ms. Gabbard. And, on that note, Admiral, at the end of your
written testimony, you talked about innovation and
incentivizing that innovation, which goes directly along with
what you are talking about.
Can you give some examples of how we can best incentivize
private investment towards this development and open up the
doors more for those who are doing the research and finding
solutions for this in the private sector and eliminating some
of those obstacles to the DOD being able to take action?
Admiral Connor. Yes, ma'am. I would be happy to do that.
I will give you an example. In the field of autonomy, for
example, you know, autonomy engines, which are really software
algorithms that help machines make decisions independent of
operator, it is a very quickly moving field. Most of the
development that is taking place there is taking place in the
private sector. Much of what they are developing is directly
applicable to the type of work that we do in national defense.
If we want to be able to leverage the best types of
algorithms that come into our programs, we will need to provide
a way, for example, that the rights to that intellectual
property when we incorporate it still provide a reward to the
person who designed it in a way that makes them want to keep
working with us and that makes their competitors want to design
something better that we want to buy.
And it is an incredibly fast-moving field. And that is just
one example. There are other parallels in propulsion, that the
battery industry is moving forward at a very rapid pace, and
whoever has the best battery, which has a big impact on the
system, should be rewarded for that.
Ms. Gabbard. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Forbes. Mr. Larsen is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Larsen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
So, a little over a year ago, I was out fishing about 20
miles off the coast of Neah Bay with former Congressman Norm
Dicks, and there were two things I discovered that weekend:
One, I am a better fisherman than Norm Dicks. And that is for
the record. That is for the record. It is a pretty high bar.
Second, there is a lot of water out there, a lot of water out
there. And so that physical limit, if you will, applies to us
as much as it applies to peer competitors and near-peer
competitors, to cover that water.
So, Admiral Connor or Mr. Clark, can you talk a little bit
more about the sheer numbers? If you went to ROVs or
autonomous, to cover the kind of water that we would need to
cover, you would need a lot, unless you made a conscious
decision to, you know, limit the space that you are going to
cover at any one time. And so how do you address it? It is sort
of the--it is not the tyranny of distance; it is the tyranny of
volume.
Admiral Connor. Congressman, I would be happy to answer
that.
This is a case where you don't have to know everything
everywhere, but there are some places where you would like to
have very good knowledge. So if you take some of the more
strategic chokepoints in the world, the approaches to them, you
would want to gain near-perfect knowledge in those areas.
When we have critical things we want to protect, like some
of the undersea infrastructure that we mentioned earlier that
is so critical to our economy, there may be places where you
decide you want to have a volume of system in that relatively
small area around that infrastructure where you would have
sufficient vehicles for perfect knowledge. And then you would
need, obviously, a different approach to, you know, open ocean.
The other area where we want to have fairly perfect
knowledge is the area around things like our carrier strike
groups. And all of the examples that I mentioned are doable if
we take that system-of-systems approach, recognizing that some
systems are suited to, say, a deepwater environment and others
are more suitable for a chokepoint environment.
And the task that the Navy has to come up with is how to
combine varying systems in a way that they present an output
that is easy to understand by the operators so that they don't
have to worry so much about the physics of shallow versus deep
water; they just have to know where the contact is. And that is
doable if we just apply some operational planning and decide
what areas are important.
Mr. Larsen. Uh-huh.
Mr. Clark. So one thing I would add to that--I think that
is exactly right when it comes to areas that we are trying to
defend. I think, then, looking for the adversary's problem, we
want to force the same problem onto him. So we don't need to
have a large number of underseas systems in his near-abroad to
force him now into a situation where he is expending a lot of
effort to go find where we are. So the combination of
submarines with unmanned systems would enable us to be able to
distribute our force over enough area that it creates fits for
him in terms of his anti-submarine warfare efforts.
The other thing it points out is the urgent need for the
DOD to develop counter-UUV technologies. Because finding an
unmanned underwater vehicle is very hard because they are
small, they are usually made of plastic, they don't have a
great sonar return. So developing ways to counter the efforts
of others to bring UUVs against us is very important, because
that could be one of the asymmetric capabilities of the future,
like we saw with the IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and
now we are seeing UAVs. UUVs may be another capability somebody
could use against us asymmetrically.
Mr. Larsen. Yeah.
I want to follow up on something Mr. Wittman and Ms.
Gabbard discussed, but I am still not hearing the specifics,
and this is how to get private sector to participate more in
this particular area, especially as it relates to IP
[intellectual property].
I forget which one of you mentioned it in your testimony
more specifically, but there is a problem with who gets to keep
that intellectual property and who has to sign it over. It is
usually the Navy gets to keep it, and the private sector has to
sign it over. That is not going to work long term if we want
the private sector to participate.
Can you talk a little bit more about how you could make
that work?
Admiral Connor. One way to make that work is to start
buying stuff. I know it sounds pretty simple, but when defense
contractors would come to me, they would look at our budget and
they would look at the size of the budget and they would look
at the probability that they could gain that business, and then
they would make a decision as to how to invest their own money.
And so, if we recognize that this is a growing field and we
make a conscious attempt to lead-turn this dynamic field by
investing in the technology that is coming to bear in a short
period of time, that will snowball and others will join the
business, and our capacity will get greater, but also the
quality of the systems will get greater because American
entrepreneurs will make an attempt to gain our business.
Mr. Clark. The other thing I would say is we could look at
leasing more systems. As unmanned underwater vehicles become
more common, both commercially and in the military, we could
lease more of these systems.
And that is a similar model to what we have used the UAVs,
so the ScanEagle and some of the other UAVs that we have used
off Navy ships. In many cases, most of them we have today have
been leased, and it is contractor-owned/contractor-operated,
and we just rent the thing.
So those are options that are going to present themselves
to us as unmanned underwater vehicles become more common.
Mr. Larsen. Thank you.
Mr. Forbes. Gentlemen, thank you very much.
As we mentioned at the outset, we always like to give our
witnesses a few moments. If there is anything that you didn't
get a chance to elaborate on as much as you thought you should
have or if there were any questions that you would like to
clarify an answer on, this would be the time to do that.
And, Admiral, why don't we once again start with you, and
we will let Mr. Clark have the final word.
Admiral Connor. Chairman Forbes, thank you again for
letting us talk to you today.
The points that I would like to just add that I didn't
mention earlier is that one of the areas we didn't talk about
very much was the risk that adversary systems might present to
our infrastructure and the urgency with which we should seek to
come up with efficient ways to defend our infrastructure--oil
and gas, coms, power, et cetera. And that should be a
consideration. And that mission will probably fall to the Navy
if it is greater than 12 miles from land.
And then, lastly, we talked about developments in laser
coms and autonomy and so forth, and I just want to thank you
all, because we had made some great strides in very recent time
simply with the funding that was allocated to those efforts via
the omnibus reprogramming earlier this year. And all the
committees that made that happen had a direct impact in pushing
forward a dynamic field in a very big way. I was at Woods Hole
yesterday, and they were showing me all the great work that
they did with the money you provided only a few months ago.
Thank you.
Mr. Forbes. Good. Thank you.
Mr. Clark.
Mr. Clark. Thank you, sir. Thank you again for having us
here today. It has been a terrific experience and honor.
I would have two things that I wanted to add. We talked a
little bit earlier about diesel submarines. Congressman Wittman
brought them up. One thing I would say with regard to diesel
submarines, our experience with World War II diesel submarine
warfare, which is the largest scale of anti-submarine warfare
competition that we have had, was that diesel submarines could
be rendered ineffective by mounting a pretty aggressive anti-
submarine warfare campaign even if you didn't sink any
submarines.
The Germans, the Italians, even the Americans, when faced
with somebody that was aggressively going after them with
active sonar and even ineffective attacks, were successful at
keeping the diesel submarines from being able to operate and do
counter-shipping attacks.
So diesel submarines, while they are cheaper, probably, and
maybe could be bought in larger numbers, also suffer from some
disadvantages that would make them easier to prevent from being
effective because they are slow and they lack the ability to
endure underwater for a very long time.
The second point I would bring up is on this point of
innovation and organization, is that the Navy's recent effort
to align all of its unmanned systems under a single directorate
I think offers some opportunities to improve the speed with
which and the effectiveness with which it can transition new
capabilities. So I would applaud that.
I think we have to take a similar approach in the
acquisition world, to look for ways to align under one
organization these smaller programs that lead to technological
advancements. Because today they are often under a larger
organization that has much bigger responsibilities for large
acquisition programs that are going to consume all of their
time and consume most of their money.
So they don't have the brainpower and the bandwidth to be
able to look closely at the technology efforts and see which
ones are offering the most promise and foster those and then,
you know, take the other ones and take them off the plate and
cancel them. And so one of the reasons we see today that we
have a lot of programs bubbling up but very few get turned off
is because the people that manage those programs don't have the
time to devote to be able to determine which ones to keep and
which ones to get rid of.
So I think that is a good effort on the requirements side
that the OPNAV [Office of the Chief of Naval Operations] staff
is taking. We need to follow suit within our acquisition
organizations in the Navy to be able to carry that through so
that unmanned systems and the innovative technologies they
incorporate can be, you know, taken forward in a strategic way
as opposed to simply in a bottoms-up, water-all-the-flowers
approach like we have now.
Mr. Forbes. Could you just take a couple seconds and
clarify on the diesel subs, since it has been raised? The
admiral mentioned they could go about 100 miles and then they
had to come up to the surface. Can you explain why, so we have
that on the record?
Mr. Clark. Right. So a diesel sub is going to be able to
operate on its battery and use battery to drive an electric
motor to go around underwater, but that battery will eventually
need to be recharged. And so the diesel engine is then operated
to recharge the battery, which means you have to come up and
put the snorkel up in order to get air to run the diesel.
Even air-independent propulsion submarines, which use an
engine that uses a chemical oxidant instead of air to be able
to run a diesel engine and recharge the battery, have a limited
amount of that chemical oxidant on board. So, after a couple of
weeks, they have to go and replace their chemical oxidant, so
they are pretty limited in their endurance, as well.
So non-nuclear submarines offer some opportunities, but
they have significant limitations when it comes to how long
they can stay underwater.
Mr. Forbes. Admiral.
Admiral Connor. If I could just clarify, if I implied that
a diesel submarine could only go 100 miles without a recharge,
that is not what I meant to convey. What I meant is----
Mr. Forbes. Maybe I misunderstood. You said about 100 miles
in a day, I think.
Admiral Connor. Right. And then they have to recharge,
depending on how their technology is, every 2 to 5 days. But
when you work against them, on average, you know they are not
going to make much more than that, or if they are, they are
going to make noise.
Mr. Forbes. Okay.
Well, thank you both for being with us.
And if there are no other questions, then we are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:03 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
October 27, 2015
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
October 27, 2015
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[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
October 27, 2015
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. LANGEVIN
Mr. Langevin. I noted with interest the testimony regarding the
need to develop a common battlespace picture of the undersea,
regardless of the platforms and individual sensor inputs. What would
this look like in your mind, what are the linchpin technologies and
concepts that would need to be developed in order to enable this system
of systems, and are we currently designing sensors and systems with the
ability to communicate in such a way?
Admiral Connor. In my mind, the solution would have a background
that looked like ``Google Earth'' and then have multiple layers of data
that could be layered on top of that background. Each layer would
represent a different source of data and each layer could be at a
different classification level, with the classification varying as a
function of the sensitivity of the data source. Users would be
authorized to see all of the data that they are cleared for, subject
also to the classification level of the room in which is was displayed.
The technologies exist today and consist of tagging information
from various sources with a geographic position, a time stamp, a source
identifier, and other metadata as needed. There is no particular sensor
technology required here. A good battle space picture will be able to
accept data from a variety of sources.
It should be noted that systems with the proper characteristics are
being introduced at some of the intelligence agencies. My point for DOD
is that these technologies need to be standardized across the
Department of Defense and used in the operations centers where tactical
and operational level decisions are made. Unfortunately, the command
centers on our ships and in our fleet headquarters do not effectively
leverage this technology today. As a result, the speed and quality of
operational decisions will continue to suffer until this is overcome.
To get a sense of how the technology exists in the private sector
today, just look at a Google map and select the layers of information
that you wish to display such as weather, traffic, restaurant locations
etc. We should have the ability to do something like this with a chart
of the ocean, then layer AIS traffic, weather, satellite derived
intelligence, reports from our ships, reports from fixed sensors, and
so forth. That does not exist today in a simple, standard format that
could be shared across the Joint Force.
Mr. Langevin. I appreciated your testimony about the need for
nonspecific innovation funding and broadly defined programs. While I
agree about the need for increased agility and freedom to fail on
innovative ideas, this concept always comes into significant tension
with the need for Congressional oversight and accountability. Can you
provide examples of programs besides APB/TI that have been defined
properly, in your view, and ones that have not? Are there innovation
funds elsewhere in the budget that you would use as a model?
Admiral Connor. There are specific innovation funds that are
controlled by the Department of Defense Strategic Capabilities Office.
This represents a good start. As we also discussed in testimony, there
are Speed to Fleet funds controlled by the Office of Naval Research.
However, as I noted in testimony, the time frame for deciding how to
allocate Speed to Fleet funds takes about a year, defeating the intent
of the program.
In addition to the APB/TI process used in the submarine combat
system, there is more a more recent program in the Aegis combat system
called the Advanced Capabilities Build (ACB) program that has migrated
that system much closer to an easy to modernize, Commercial Off the
Shelf (COTS) strategy that should be able to handle change more easily
in the future than in the past.
An example of a program that has struggled to incorporate
technology is the LCS mine countermeasures mission package. This
package is derived from a program that was originally conceived to
deploy from an aircraft carrier. Is is based on a diesel powered Remote
Minehunting System (RMS) that tows an acoustic sensor (AQS-20) I don't
have access to the entire history of the program, but believe it to be
about of 20 years old. It has yet to deliver a meaningful capability.
In the interim, the field of autonomous undersea vehicles (AUV) has
emerged and offered solutions that have been deployed as prototypes in
the Arabian Gulf. The AUV-based programs will likely overtake the LCS
mine countermeasures program of record. The Navy struggles as an
institution to make a decision such as abandoning a non-performing
program with significant sunk costs in favor of a more elegant solution
that uses more modern technology. Part of that difficulty involves the
need to go to Congress and report ``failure.'' My point here is that
recognizing that a solution is obsolete and cutting (or restructuring)
the underlying program in favor of better technology should not be
considered failure. It should be considered an appropriate business
decision.
I would like address your accountability concerns. I agree that
there is a tension between freedom to innovate and proper stewardship
of taxpayer dollars. However, our current system focuses the
accountability at the level of the program manager and below. Program
managers are incentivized by initiatives such as Nunn-McCurdy to set
modest goals and then meet those goals as inexpensively as possible. As
a result, a program with a long lead time will often reject technology
that becomes available after those goals were set due to either the
administrative obstacles or financial hurdles, even if that technology
could make that system much more effective. This can result in programs
that meet program goals, but do not deliver capability that is still
relevant at the time of delivery.
While program managers are accountable to meet the goals of their
program, there is no senior officer or senior civilian accountability
for ensuring that the program goals actually provide the capabilities
we will need to prevail in time of war. For example, there is no
bureaucratic tension or accountability over the fact that potential
adversaries have as anti-ship missiles with engagement ranges greater
than our own. This is a significant problem that will limit the manner
in which we will be able to deploy our surface ships in time of war.
Congressional oversight and accountability of senior leaders to
ensure that they have a viable overall strategy and an agile means of
delivering the capabilities that enable strategy is an important
counterweight to oversight at the program level.
Mr. Langevin. In your opinion, are we investing enough in the
enabling technologies for next-generations sensors--communications,
advanced processing, and other sensor-independent areas--as well as the
potential sensors themselves to position ourselves well on the sensing
and communications side for the battle network competitions of the
future? What would your ``next dollar'' go to? And are there
investments that we are making now that risk being stranded?
Admiral Connor. In the area of enabling technologies, I think there
are opportunities to do better. In the near term, I would focus on the
underlying technologies that would help us get more out of the sensors
that we have.
I would focus first on machine learning. We need this technology to
do more acoustic analysis onboard unmanned systems and even in the
headquarters where a large number of systems will feed the overall
picture. Historically, each acoustic sensor system required a person to
review the live information stream produced by that sensor and make an
assessment regarding the information presented. This method of analysis
will not be tenable if we succeed in placing larger numbers of
inexpensive sensors in the field. There have been previous attempts at
``automatic target classification'' that have failed in the past.
However, we now have more elegant methods available in which the
machine actually learns its environment and recognizes changes with
little human interaction. Success in this area will make us more
effective and much more efficient.
Other focus areas that would help us move forward more effectively
include covert communications, undersea fiber optic networks, and
charging stations for unmanned vehicles. These technologies will help
us share the information that we gather more effectively and keep our
autonomous sensors on the front line longer.
Mr. Langevin. Mr. Clark testified to the need to organizationally
realign the Navy to bring the undersea under a single roof. Do you
agree with his suggestion? What in your view would be the optimal
organizational structure for the undersea?
Admiral Connor. I do not agree with his suggestion. The current
system in which the service is organized around the major warfare
communities serves a good purpose. It allows the community leaders to
focus with an expert staff on acquisition issues, community management,
and educational issues necessary to the healthy functioning of those
communities. Also, each warfare community fights as part of a Joint
Team in strike warfare, surface warfare, undersea warfare and special
operations. Warriors from each community need to be broad enough to
work across undersea/surface/strike warfare because all of the warfare
communities support all of these missions in war time.
To the extent that some organizational change may be necessary to
adapt to future security requirements, the recent establishment of N99,
an OPNAV division to support unmanned systems, is a good step. It
recognizes that there is a growing unmanned element to each major
warfare area.
The Navy needs a mind-set change more than it needs an
organizational change. The change involves recognition that we are
already in a world in which military superiority will be determined by
the speed of innovation. Our military peer competitors are innovating
at a faster pace than us. We struggle to move forward technologically
because our budget cycle and acquisition cycles are longer than those
of our rivals and are a root cause of the declining margin in our
superiority--including undersea superiority. The navy (and the other
services) are not pushing hard enough to create an environment in which
pace of innovation is recognized as a strategic asset.
Mr. Langevin. I noted with interest the testimony regarding the
need to develop a common battlespace picture of the undersea,
regardless of the platforms and individual sensor inputs. What would
this look like in your mind, what are the linchpin technologies and
concepts that would need to be developed in order to enable this system
of systems, and are we currently designing sensors and systems with the
ability to communicate in such a way?
Mr. Clark. The undersea common operational picture (COP) will be
different than the COP that can be created using sensors and networks
above the water. Sonar and non-acoustic undersea sensors are less
precise and accurate than radar or electro-optical systems. As a
result, the undersea COP will often consist of approximate target
positions and classifications along with an estimate of their accuracy,
or an ``area of uncertainty.'' And because undersea communications have
much lower bandwidth than radiofrequency (RF) systems above the water,
the undersea COP will take longer to develop and update.
The limitations inherent in establishing an undersea COP, however,
may not significantly hinder undersea operations. Unmanned undersea
vehicles (UUV) and submarines travel slower than about 35 knots in all
conditions, and less than about 15 knots to maintain their acoustic
stealth. Their positions will not change quickly, and they are unlikely
to inadvertently move into a higher threat area or risk a collision
with another vehicle due to an imprecise operational picture.
The key role of undersea networks
The networks that create an undersea operational picture will be
different than those above water and are largely limited by physics
rather than technology. Because RF signals in the frequencies U.S.
forces most often used for communication travel only a few feet in
water, undersea communication networks will rely on a combination of
acoustic, fiber optic, RF, and laser or LED-based communication systems
to connect commanders ashore with undersea forces inside contested or
denied areas.
Fiber optic and RF communication systems will form the ``long-
haul'' portion of the network between main operating bases in the
United States or overseas and the edge of friendly waters. These
systems will terminate at gateway buoys or underwater nodes that
translate RF or fiber optic communications into acoustic or laser/LED
signals. Fiber optic cable networks on the ocean floor could be
combined with undersea sonar arrays to enable a single system to act
both as part of the sensor network and as the communication backbone.
Physics and the operating environment will dictate whether acoustic
or laser/LED communications are best used to connect operating undersea
forces with fiber optic or RF networks that can only reach the edge of
denied areas. Laser/LED or medium frequency (1,000-10,000 hertz)
acoustic transmitters can communicate over a distance of a few hundred
yards with the speed of a slow internet connection. Acoustic
transducers at low frequencies (less than 1,000 hertz) can reach up to
about 100 miles away, but with transmission rates of less than 1000
bits per second, it will take minutes to send each message. As with RF
communications, the bandwidth of acoustic and light-based undersea
communications changes with their frequency, whereas the range of
acoustic communications is changes inversely with their frequency. The
farther communications need to go, the less data can be sent and a
message will take longer to send. Long-range communications will be
relatively slow, and short-range ones will be faster.
Submarines and unmanned systems operating relatively close to RF or
fiber gateways can use acoustic and laser/LED communications to connect
to the network. For undersea forces that are far from fiber optic
cables and unable to expose themselves to use RF communications, the
bandwidth and range limitations associated with acoustic and laser/LED
communications may make relays the most efficient way to connect with
commanders and support organizations ashore. These relays, such as the
Navy's Forward Deployed Energy and Communication Outpost (FDECO)
program, can be deployed on the sea floor, act as energy and
communication stations that collect messages going to and from UUVs or
submarines, and communicate with undersea gateways in friendly waters
using long-range acoustic communications or UUV ``data mules'' that
physically carry information in onboard computer memory. These stations
can also recharge UUVs and themselves be recharged by the data mules.
The key technologies needed to put these undersea networks in place
are long-range acoustic and short-range laser/LED communication
systems, deployable and fixed fiber optic cable communication networks,
processing capabilities, and deployable communication and energy
station. The Navy is developing these technologies through numerous
basic science and applied research programs, and most are mature. The
most significant gap is in communication processing technology;
undersea communications will operate at widely varying levels of
bandwidth and latency, and synchronizing inputs and outputs will
require new signal processing software and hardware.
Despite its work in technology, the Navy is not aggressively
pursuing programs that will demonstrate these technologies in
operationally relevant situations such as the Undersea Constellation
and FDECO. The Navy should put together a plan for the development of
its future undersea battle networks and demonstration of these
capabilities at sea through programs that can be transitioned into the
DOD acquisition system.
Importance of sensor technology
Because of the bandwidth and range limitations associated with
undersea communications, UUVs and unmanned systems will not be remotely
operated like unmanned air vehicles such as the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9
Reaper. They will need to be largely autonomous. Autonomy technology is
improving quickly, and many new UUVs and other unmanned undersea
systems are able to select missions from a prioritized list of tasks
and re-task themselves in response to new information.
The quality of sensor information and analysis, however, will be
the most significant constraint on autonomy. The emerging generation of
UUVs are able to travel safely to a prescribed location, avoid hazards
such as ships and debris, follow applicable navigation rules and
regulations, and execute simple tasks such as survey the bottom or
deploy mines. For these operations UUVs and unmanned systems do not
need a high level of certainty regarding the position of the UUV or
system, as well as the location and classification of contacts around
it.
Unmanned undersea systems could also be used for responsive
operations such as attacking enemy ships or submarines. These
operations will require a high level of certainty regarding the
position and classification of a contact the unmanned system will
attack, because it will not be controlled by a human operator who can
be accountable for taking the risk of attacking a contact based on
uncertain sensor information. As a result, the unmanned system will
often not engage, missing opportunities to achieve the undersea force's
military objectives. Without better sensors and target recognition
capabilities, UUVs will remain constrained to missions where the target
or location can be very precisely and accurately determined.
The Navy is developing new undersea sensor technologies that will
enable U.S. forces to detect enemy submarines at longer ranges and
classify them more accurately. This work should continue and emphasize
the ability of unmanned systems, including UUVs, to characterize the
threat environment and act autonomously in response. Some programs,
such as the Persistent Littoral Undersea Surveillance (PLUS) system,
have been effective at enabling an unmanned system to detect and
roughly classify undersea contacts. More demonstrations of this type
should be conducted to refine this technology so future unmanned
systems will be able to fully exploit ongoing advances in autonomy.
Mr. Langevin. In your opinion, are we investing enough in the
enabling technologies for next-generations sensors--communications,
advanced processing, and other sensor-independent areas--as well as the
potential sensors themselves to position ourselves well on the sensing
and communications side for the battle network competitions of the
future? What would your ``next dollar'' go to? And are there
investments that we are making now that risk being stranded?
Mr. Clark. The Navy is making appropriate investments in new
sensor, communication, networking, and data processing technologies.
They are not, however, devoting enough money or effort toward
transitioning the most useful of these technologies into operationally
useful systems by incorporating them into acquisition programs or
demonstrating them with prototype projects in the fleet. The lack of
priority and selectivity in undersea system development is largely due
to the lack of operational concepts describing how the Navy will
conduct future undersea operations. New or modified requirements are
based on new operational concepts and, in turn, drive the development
of new acquisition programs.
There are several key new operational concepts the Navy should
analyze to determine if they should drive new systems and systems of
systems, such as:
Low Frequency Active (LFA) Sonar Anti-Submarine Warfare
(ASW): The Navy's current ASW concepts center on the use of passive
sonar to detect and track the noise emanating from an enemy submarine.
This technique depends on the adversary making noise, which became
increasing difficult in the late Cold War as the Soviets incorporated
sound-silencing technology into their submarines. This challenge will
eventually return as Chinese, Russian, and other nation's submarines
improve. Further, passive sonar cannot generally detect enemy
submarines outside the range of submarine-launched anti-ship missiles,
leaving U.S. surface ships vulnerable to an unwarned attack.
The Navy needs to consider approaches for surface and air ASW
that use LFA sonar, such as in the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS)
Variable Depth Sonar (VDS) and the Compact LFA array onboard
the Navy's civilian-crewed ocean surveillance (T-AGOS) ship.
LFA sonar offers longer detection ranges than passive sonar
that can exceed the range of submarine-launched missiles and
can translate into greater search areas and faster searches.
New concepts could also include the use of LFA sonars on
unmanned systems or UUVs that detect submarines and communicate
their location to other platforms, or simply drive them away
from certain areas. Submarines detected with LFA sonar would
then be prosecuted with more accurate passive sensors, or
engaged with standoff weapons such as missiles equipped with
small torpedoes or depth bombs. While the Navy has some of the
technologies needed for these concepts in the fleet or in
development, it lacks some pieces of the LFA ASW ``kill
chain,'' specifically long-range standoff ASW weapons, unmanned
LFA systems, and LFA sensors for combatant ships other than
LCS.
Passive ASW by unmanned systems: Passive sonar detection
ranges are less than those of submarine-launched weapons, and this
situation will get worse as adversaries become quieter. Passive sonar
should therefore move increasingly onto unmanned systems which are not
as vulnerable to counterattack and which can use emerging undersea
battle networks to pass contact information to manned or unmanned
forces that can prosecute submarine contacts. Further, the capability
of a passive sonar array varies with the size of the sonar array, with
larger arrays providing greater range and sensitivity. Large arrays are
difficult to place on a manned or unmanned platform, but could be
incorporated into a deployable or fixed stationary unmanned sensor
system such as the Navy's Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) arrays
positioned at key chokepoints overseas and around the U.S. coast.
The Navy needs to expand on SOSUS and similar fixed systems
by developing more deployable passive arrays that can be placed
at chokepoints, around enemy ports, and adjacent to friendly
bases. These systems, depending on their design, can also
provide the fiber optic power and communication backbone to
connect undersea forces with commanders and support
organizations ashore using laser, LED, or acoustic
communication gateways. Examples of these arrays include PLUS,
the Reliable Acoustic Path (RAP) Vertical Line Array (VLA), and
the Shallow Water Surveillance System (SWSS), all of which have
been challenged with uncertain funding and support over the
last decade. But, as with LFA sonar ASW techniques, the
enabling technologies for these approaches are mature; they
just have to make it across the technology ``valley of death''
into acquisition programs.
Counter-UUV technologies: Not much work has been done on
how to prevent enemy UUVs from attacking U.S. infrastructure or ships.
As UUV and undersea battle network technologies improve and become more
widely available, the Navy will need to be able to protect high-value
targets in the homeland and abroad. Traditional ASW approaches will
likely not work well against militarized UUVs due to their small size
and ability to have low radiated noise. New sensor technologies, such
as high frequency sonar, and passive and active defensive systems will
be needed to defeat them.
Power projection from undersea unmanned systems: The
anti-access capabilities proliferating today above the surface will
soon expand to include undersea surveillance and attack systems in
areas adjacent to enemy coasts. The Navy will need to develop concepts
for conducting surveillance, strike, anti-ship, or cyber/electronic
warfare operations from unmanned systems to avoid placing manned
submarines in high-risk areas.
The key enabling technologies for these concepts include
undersea battle networks to support communications between
manned submarines and unmanned systems, as well as between
submarines and commanders or support organizations ashore (as
described in Question 5 above); sensor and contact recognition
technologies for unmanned systems; a family of UUVs for various
roles; weapons and other payloads that can be deployed by
unmanned systems; and power technologies to enable extended
unmanned system operations. There are improvements the Navy
could make in each of these areas. The need for placing
emphasis on battle network signal processing, demonstrations of
signal processing technology, and better contact recognition
for unmanned systems are described above.
Regarding UUVs, the Navy as been favoring small ones, such as
the approximately 12-inch diameter Mk-18 UUV that ordnance
disposal and oceanographic researchers use, and the new Large
Displacement UUV (LDUUV) that could be launched from the
Virginia Payload Module (VPM) tube. The Navy needs to
accelerate its efforts to deploy the 21-inch diameter Modular
Heavyweight Underwater Vehicle (MHUV) that will be the size of
its current Mk-48 torpedo and use many parts of that weapon.
The MHUV will enable a variety of long-range surveillance,
strike, and anti-ship operations from submarines that will give
them greater standoff capability from threat areas and leverage
existing systems and technology. The Navy also needs to
increase its research into applications for micro UUVs that are
less than six inches in diameter and three to four feet long.
New power technologies are enabling these UUVs to achieve
ranges and endurance that would make ``swarm'' operations
possible in which large numbers of expendable and inexpensive
micro UUVs conduct surveillance or attack missions that would
otherwise require a much larger reusable vehicle or a
submarine.
Future power projection operations undersea will establish a
need for undersea lift, similar to the lift used for amphibious
forces above the surface. Payloads such as energy and
communication relays, mines, sensor arrays, and other
stationary unmanned systems will need to be placed in proximity
to enemy coasts or at key chokepoints. For example, DARPA is
developing the Upward Falling Payload and HYDRA programs, both
of which provide ways of placing payloads on the sea floor. The
Navy, however, may not have enough submarines to support future
undersea lift operations, or they may not want to place manned
submarines at risk to conduct them. The Navy should therefore
explore the use of extra-large UUVs (XLUUV) for deploying
larger payloads. These UUVs would be launched from shore or
large vessels, such as amphibious ships, and have ranges of
more than 1000 miles and endurance of six months or more. In
addition to lift operations, XLUUVs could also conduct long-
term surveillance missions that would otherwise require a
submarine to be on station for months at a time.
Conducting undersea lift operations will require that
submarines and larger UUVs have systems such as the Universal
Launch and Recovery Module (ULRM) that enable deployment and
recovery (when needed) of payloads. This system is being
developed today for the VPM tube, but variants of it could be
used in the future on larger UUVs and by undersea payload
modules that deploy smaller UUVs.
The Navy is developing several weapons, unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAVs), and other payloads that could be deployed by
unmanned systems. This effort needs to be more organized and
guided by new operational concepts that describe how unmanned
systems will contribute to undersea power projection operations
and take advantage of new technologies for miniaturization of
weapon guidance systems and warheads. For example, UUVs can
themselves be mines or carry mines to a deployment area with
today's level of sensor capability and autonomy. The Navy,
however, is not aggressively developing mine payloads for UUVs
and is slowly advancing the MHUV (which could likewise be a
mine or carry small mines). Similarly, the Navy has
experimented with small UAVs being deployed from submarines,
but has not yet devised a concept for deploying them from UUVs
or for using undersea-launched UAVs in power projection or
surveillance operations.
These are the most significant operational concepts the Navy should
be developing and analyzing as the basis behind new requirements for
undersea systems. Operational concepts are essential for identifying
the most important new technologies and systems to pursue, and to
establish requirements for future acquisition programs.
I would recommend the next dollar in undersea system development
funding go to completing and demonstrating the undersea battle network.
It is the fundamental capability that will enable UUVs, unmanned
systems, and submarines to work together to sustain the ability of the
Navy to project power from the undersea and deny enemies from doing the
same. After that, funding is needed most urgently for counter-UUV
technologies, XL and micro UUVs, the ULRM, and small UUV-launched
payloads.
Mr. Langevin. In your testimony, you mention the concept that
manned submarines could become conceptually closer to aircraft carriers
through the employment of UUVs and coordination of families of systems.
What, in your view, is holding us back from realizing this vision? Is
it payload space, autonomy programming, policy limitations,
communications, technology maturity, or something else?
Mr. Clark. There are four elements which need to be addressed in
order for the Navy to shift manned submarines from being only front-
line tactical platforms to being operational level platforms
controlling a wider undersea force:
Payload volume: Submarines will be, for the foreseeable
future, the most secure and accurate means of delivering unmanned
systems and UUVs to their deployment areas. Although XLUUVs and LDUUVs
will be able to take on some of this lift mission, they will not
provide the level of adaptability to changing circumstances, certainty
of deployment, and security against counter-detection as a submarine.
This makes VPM tubes or something like them critical in future
submarines.
Communication and command and control capabilities: As
described in Questions 5 and 6, undersea battle networks using laser/
LED and acoustic communications are essential to connect shore bases,
submarines, and unmanned systems. Submarines, for their part, will need
a greater number and variety of communication systems to interface with
this network. In many situations, real-time communications with
commanders ashore will not be possible due to the low bandwidth of
long-range acoustic communications. Therefore, submarine commanders
will be in charge of their local manned and unmanned undersea systems.
This will require communication and planning capabilities similar to a
large combatant such as an aircraft carrier or cruiser.
Submarine-compatible UUVs and UAVs: The Navy is
developing the LDUUV, MHUV, and interfaces for the Mk-18 UUV to be
launched from a submarine torpedo tube. The Navy should also be
developing micro UUVs and interfaces so they can be deployed from the
submarine three-inch launcher or in larger numbers from torpedo tubes,
VPM tubes, or by MHUVs. To exploit the potential in small UAVs, the
Navy should also develop small UAVs that can be carried and launched in
large numbers from submarines or larger UUVs.
Launch and recovery systems: Submarines will need
mechanisms such as the ULRM to deploy and recover unmanned systems and
UUVs as well as the means to deploy UAVs.
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. COOK
Mr. Cook. Is U.S. industry ready to deliver the systems and
components needed in a competitive and robust way? Has the Navy insured
that the industrial base, the talent pool, the pipeline of industry
investment is in the condition needed to deliver? What can Congress do
to ensure these components are in place?
Admiral Connor. The Navy has done well to sustain the legacy
industrial base in areas such as ship building and aircraft production.
Although it is very expensive to so, it is necessary because the
country has no viable large commercial ship building companies and only
one viable large scale commercial aircraft manufacturer. The
shipbuilding industry in particular is undergoing tremendous work force
change as older employees approach retirement age. The Navy has
supported efforts to train the next generation of workers in both
public and private shipyards.
Congress can help by supporting a steady production rate with long
term contracts. These contracts allow prime contractors, subcontractors
and suppliers to make long term decisions to build and retain a
sustainable work force.
The Navy and the DOD have not done very well in leveraging the
talent that resides in the more dynamic areas of our economy. Most of
the innovation that takes place in the United States is accomplished by
small companies using private funds. These companies often avoid
building products and services for purely governmental functions
because they perceive that it is too hard to work with government as a
customer. Therefore, we tend to give most of our business to a
declining number of companies that know us well and with which we have
a long history. That could be a handicap, however, when it comes to
sustaining the ability to repeatedly generate game changing
innovations.
To leverage the most dynamic and innovative portion of our economy,
the Department of Defense should move away from obtuse requirements of
the Federal Acquisition Regulations and create a face for industry that
looks and feels like any other commercial entity.
Mr. Cook. Is the Navy ready to employ these new technologies when
they are delivered? Have the warfighters developed the Command and
Control processes and procedures, the rules of use, the common
operating pictures and methods needed to employ program of record
delivered systems on the day they are delivered?
Admiral Connor. Our sailors are very adaptable and will not be the
limiting factor in how quickly we leverage unmanned systems and exploit
a better common operating picture. The Maritime Operations Centers
established nearly navy-wide over the last 5 years or so have
significantly increased Navy command and control capacity. Providing a
better common operating picture and delivering more information from
remote systems will leverage those improvements.
The Navy has processes such as table top exercises, fleet battle
experiments, and large scale fleet exercises to gracefully integrate
new capabilities as they become available.
Mr. Cook. Is U.S. industry ready to deliver the systems and
components needed in a competitive and robust way? Has the Navy insured
that the industrial base, the talent pool, the pipeline of industry
investment is in the condition needed to deliver? What can Congress do
to ensure these components are in place?
Mr. Clark. The Navy has fostered a large and diverse base of small
companies that develop unmanned systems, communication networks, and
undersea payloads. These companies, however, will not be able to scale
the production of these systems up to the level that will be needed to
create future undersea battle networks and implement new concepts for
ASW, surveillance, and power projection from undersea. For example, the
Navy plans to restart the Mk-48 torpedo production line, which will
likely be a key element in developing and producing the new MHUV UUV.
The companies bidding on the torpedo restart, however, will likely be
small companies that may not be able to support expanded production of
Mk-48 components needed for the MHUV. Similarly, Navy's deployable
sensor arrays, small UUVs, and UUV-deployable payloads are being
developed and built at prototype scale by university laboratories and
small firms that will not able to build these systems in large numbers.
Making large-scale production of new undersea systems feasible will
require incentivizing larger industry partners to build them by
establishing requirements and acquisition programs that focus
investment on a smaller number of the most useful systems. The Navy is
in a position to do this now, given its knowledge and experience with
undersea systems and emerging operational concepts for future undersea
operations. Congress can help by influencing the Navy to make these
investment choices and by providing an opportunity to focus its
investment by adjusting the proposed President's budget during the
appropriations process. This normally happens a year after the budget
was developed within the Navy, and Navy officials and analysts likely
have new insights to better guide spending decisions.
A significant concern going forward is the nation's talent pool in
engineering and physics, which form the bulk of technical expertise
needed for development of undersea systems. Graduate students should be
incentivized to go into physics and ocean, mechanical, and electrical
engineering through funding of graduate education and opportunities to
work in government research organizations.
Mr. Cook. Is the Navy ready to employ these new technologies when
they are delivered? Have the warfighters developed the Command and
Control processes and procedures, the rules of use, the common
operating pictures and methods needed to employ program of record
delivered systems on the day they are delivered?
Mr. Clark. The Navy is making appropriate investments in new
sensor, communication, networking, and data processing technologies.
They are not, however, devoting enough money or effort toward
transitioning the most useful of these technologies into operationally
useful systems by incorporating them into acquisition programs or
demonstrating them with prototype projects in the fleet. The lack of
priority and selectivity in undersea system development is largely due
to the lack of operational concepts describing how the Navy will
conduct future undersea operations. New or modified requirements are
based on new operational concepts and, in turn, drive the development
of new acquisition programs.
There are several key new operational concepts the Navy should
analyze to determine if they should drive new systems and systems of
systems, such as:
Low Frequency Active (LFA) Sonar Anti-Submarine Warfare
(ASW): The Navy's current ASW concepts center on the use of passive
sonar to detect and track the noise emanating from an enemy submarine.
This technique depends on the adversary making noise, which became
increasing difficult in the late Cold War as the Soviets incorporated
sound-silencing technology into their submarines. This challenge will
eventually return as Chinese, Russian, and other nation's submarines
improve. Further, passive sonar cannot generally detect enemy
submarines outside the range of submarine-launched anti-ship missiles,
leaving U.S. surface ships vulnerable to an unwarned attack.
The Navy needs to consider approaches for surface and air ASW
that use LFA sonar, such as in the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS)
Variable Depth Sonar (VDS) and the Compact LFA array onboard
the Navy's civilian-crewed ocean surveillance (T-AGOS) ship.
LFA sonar offers longer detection ranges than passive sonar
that can exceed the range of submarine-launched missiles and
can translate into greater search areas and faster searches.
New concepts could also include the use of LFA sonars on
unmanned systems or UUVs that detect submarines and communicate
their location to other platforms, or simply drive them away
from certain areas. Submarines detected with LFA sonar would
then be prosecuted with more accurate passive sensors, or
engaged with standoff weapons such as missiles equipped with
small torpedoes or depth bombs. While the Navy has some of the
technologies needed for these concepts in the fleet or in
development, it lacks some pieces of the LFA ASW ``kill
chain,'' specifically long-range standoff ASW weapons, unmanned
LFA systems, and LFA sensors for combatant ships other than
LCS.
Passive ASW by unmanned systems: Passive sonar detection
ranges are less than those of submarine-launched weapons, and this
situation will get worse as adversaries become quieter. Passive sonar
should therefore move increasingly onto unmanned systems which are not
as vulnerable to counterattack and which can use emerging undersea
battle networks to pass contact information to manned or unmanned
forces that can prosecute submarine contacts. Further, the capability
of a passive sonar array varies with the size of the sonar array, with
larger arrays providing greater range and sensitivity. Large arrays are
difficult to place on a manned or unmanned platform, but could be
incorporated into a deployable or fixed stationary unmanned sensor
system such as the Navy's Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) arrays
positioned at key chokepoints overseas and around the U.S. coast.
The Navy needs to expand on SOSUS and similar fixed systems
by developing more deployable passive arrays that can be placed
at chokepoints, around enemy ports, and adjacent to friendly
bases. These systems, depending on their design, can also
provide the fiber optic power and communication backbone to
connect undersea forces with commanders and support
organizations ashore using laser, LED, or acoustic
communication gateways. Examples of these arrays include PLUS,
the Reliable Acoustic Path (RAP) Vertical Line Array (VLA), and
the Shallow Water Surveillance System (SWSS), all of which have
been challenged with uncertain funding and support over the
last decade. But, as with LFA sonar ASW techniques, the
enabling technologies for these approaches are mature; they
just have to make it across the technology ``valley of death''
into acquisition programs.
Counter-UUV technologies: Not much work has been done on
how to prevent enemy UUVs from attacking U.S. infrastructure or ships.
As UUV and undersea battle network technologies improve and become more
widely available, the Navy will need to be able to protect high-value
targets in the homeland and abroad. Traditional ASW approaches will
likely not work well against militarized UUVs due to their small size
and ability to have low radiated noise. New sensor technologies, such
as high frequency sonar, and passive and active defensive systems will
be needed to defeat them.
Power projection from undersea unmanned systems: The
anti-access capabilities proliferating today above the surface will
soon expand to include undersea surveillance and attack systems in
areas adjacent to enemy coasts. The Navy will need to develop concepts
for conducting surveillance, strike, anti-ship, or cyber/electronic
warfare operations from unmanned systems to avoid placing manned
submarines in high-risk areas.
The key enabling technologies for these concepts include
undersea battle networks to support communications between
manned submarines and unmanned systems, as well as between
submarines and commanders or support organizations ashore (as
described in Question 5 above); sensor and contact recognition
technologies for unmanned systems; a family of UUVs for various
roles; weapons and other payloads that can be deployed by
unmanned systems; and power technologies to enable extended
unmanned system operations. There are improvements the Navy
could make in each of these areas. The need for placing
emphasis on battle network signal processing, demonstrations of
signal processing technology, and better contact recognition
for unmanned systems are described above.
Regarding UUVs, the Navy as been favoring small ones, such as
the approximately 12-inch diameter Mk-18 UUV that ordnance
disposal and oceanographic researchers use, and the new Large
Displacement UUV (LDUUV) that could be launched from the
Virginia Payload Module (VPM) tube. The Navy needs to
accelerate its efforts to deploy the 21-inch diameter Modular
Heavyweight Underwater Vehicle (MHUV) that will be the size of
its current Mk-48 torpedo and use many parts of that weapon.
The MHUV will enable a variety of long-range surveillance,
strike, and anti-ship operations from submarines that will give
them greater standoff capability from threat areas and leverage
existing systems and technology. The Navy also needs to
increase its research into applications for micro UUVs that are
less than six inches in diameter and three to four feet long.
New power technologies are enabling these UUVs to achieve
ranges and endurance that would make ``swarm'' operations
possible in which large numbers of expendable and inexpensive
micro UUVs conduct surveillance or attack missions that would
otherwise require a much larger reusable vehicle or a
submarine.
Future power projection operations undersea will establish a
need for undersea lift, similar to the lift used for amphibious
forces above the surface. Payloads such as energy and
communication relays, mines, sensor arrays, and other
stationary unmanned systems will need to be placed in proximity
to enemy coasts or at key chokepoints. For example, DARPA is
developing the Upward Falling Payload and HYDRA programs, both
of which provide ways of placing payloads on the sea floor. The
Navy, however, may not have enough submarines to support future
undersea lift operations, or they may not want to place manned
submarines at risk to conduct them. The Navy should therefore
explore the use of extra-large UUVs (XLUUV) for deploying
larger payloads. These UUVs would be launched from shore or
large vessels, such as amphibious ships, and have ranges of
more than 1000 miles and endurance of six months or more. In
addition to lift operations, XLUUVs could also conduct long-
term surveillance missions that would otherwise require a
submarine to be on station for months at a time.
Conducting undersea lift operations will require that
submarines and larger UUVs have systems such as the Universal
Launch and Recovery Module (ULRM) that enable deployment and
recovery (when needed) of payloads. This system is being
developed today for the VPM tube, but variants of it could be
used in the future on larger UUVs and by undersea payload
modules that deploy smaller UUVs.
The Navy is developing several weapons, unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAVs), and other payloads that could be deployed by
unmanned systems. This effort needs to be more organized and
guided by new operational concepts that describe how unmanned
systems will contribute to undersea power projection operations
and take advantage of new technologies for miniaturization of
weapon guidance systems and warheads. For example, UUVs can
themselves be mines or carry mines to a deployment area with
today's level of sensor capability and autonomy. The Navy,
however, is not aggressively developing mine payloads for UUVs
and is slowly advancing the MHUV (which could likewise be a
mine or carry small mines). Similarly, the Navy has
experimented with small UAVs being deployed from submarines,
but has not yet devised a concept for deploying them from UUVs
or for using undersea-launched UAVs in power projection or
surveillance operations.
These are the most significant operational concepts the Navy should
be developing and analyzing as the basis behind new requirements for
undersea systems. Operational concepts are essential for identifying
the most important new technologies and systems to pursue, and to
establish requirements for future acquisition programs.
[all]