Category Archives: Future Tech

What is coming down the pipe in naval and maritime technology?

Drones

Defeating Floating IEDs with USVs

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By CDR Jeremy Thompson, USN

This concept proposal explores a technology solution to the problem of risk to first responders when identifying, neutralizing, and exploiting “surface-floating” maritime improvised explosive devices (SF/MIEDs).

Does the Navy need a maritime equivalent of the Talon Counter-IED robot?
Does the Navy need a maritime equivalent of the Talon Counter-IED robot?

When considering the proliferation of technology for use against land-based improvised explosive devices (IEDs), it may be puzzling to many observers why remote IED Defeat (IEDD) technologies, particularly robots, have yet to fully cross over into the maritime domain. Although some unmanned underwater vehicle programs designed for limpet mine-like object detection on ships are in development, much less attention has been given to countering SF/MIEDs. In general, the purpose of MIEDs is to destroy, incapacitate, harass, divert, or distract targets such as ships, maritime critical infrastructure and key resources (CI/KR), and personnel. MIEDs may also present obstacles (real or perceived) with the purpose of area denial or egress denial. As a subset of the MIED family, the “surface-floating” MIED operates on the water’s surface in environments such as harbors, the littorals, the riparian, and the open ocean. It may be either free floating or self-propelled, with remote control (manual or pre-programmed) or with no control (moves with the current). It is a tempting low-tech, low-cost option for an adversary.

Thankfully, SF/MIED incidents have been rare in recent times, the last significant use occurring during the Vietnam war. Nonetheless, a capability gap is highlighted by the challenge they represent—namely, that a human must unnecessarily expose themselves to the object. One material solution to a surface-floating IED may be to develop an IED Defeat Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) around a design philosophy based on IEDD robots used in land warfare. Protection of high value units and critical infrastructure / key resources would be its primary missions along with counter-area denial. Its most likely operating environment would be CI/KR dense areas such as harbors and seaports as well as the riparian environment since rivers are constricted in the water space available to shipping to maneuver around SF/MIED threats. A key element of design philosophy in an IEDD USV would be to meet the expectations of the customer—the first responder. Military explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) units and civilian bomb squads are much more likely to accept a platform in which the console and all other human interface features are nearly identical in look, placement, feel, and responsiveness as the most popular robots they have been accustomed to operating such as the TALON robot by QinetiQ and Packbot by iRobot.

A functional hierarchy could be drawn around major tasks such as reacquisition of a suspected surface-floating IED, identify/classify, threat removal, neutralization, and recovery of the IED for exploitation. Modularized payload packages to execute these tasks may include a towing package, an attachments package (e.g. hooks, magnets), a neutralization tool package to include both precision and general disruption EOD tools, an explosives, chemical, and radiological detection package, and an electronic counter-measures package.

Numerous trade-offs between weight, power, stability, and the complexity of modular packages would need to be considered and tested, however, variants like a “high-low” combination of a complex and simple USV working together may minimize some of the trade-off risk. If an IEDD USV were to be developed key recommendations include:

  • Official liaison between NAVSEA (US Naval Sea Systems Command) between PMS-406 (Unmanned Maritime Systems) and PMS-408 (EOD/CREW program) to ensure the transfer of USV expertise between PMS divisions.
  • A DOTMLPF assessment to determine whether limpet mines or surface-floating IEDs are more likely and more dangerous to U.S. assets and personnel given the uncertainty of future naval operations.
  • Including civilian bomb squads in the design and development process early to increase the potential for demand and cross-over with the law enforcement sector and therefore reduced long-term program costs.

Current UUV programs under development include the Hull UUV Localization System (HULS) and Hovering Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (HAUV).

This article was re-posted by permission from, and appeared in its original form at NavalDrones.com.

Drones, Future War

What’s at Stake in the Remote Aviation Culture Debate

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It has been written that it is difficult to become sentimental about . . . the new type of seaman—the man of the engine and boiler rooms. This idea is born of the belief that he deals with material things and takes no part in the glorious possibilities of war or in the victories that are won from storms. This theory is absolutely false . . . for there is music as well as the embodiment of power about the mechanisms that drive the great ships of today.

—Capt Frank Bennett, USN
The Steam Navy of the United States, 1897

Hunting for a wingman
                                      Hunting for a wingman

From our flyboy friends in the U.S. Air Force comes the article “The Swarm, the Cloud, and the Importance of Getting There First” in the July/Aug issue of the Air & Space Power Journal (including the lead-in excerpt). In it, friend-of-CIMSEC Maj David Blair and his partner Capt Nick Helms, both manned-aircraft and drone pilots, address their vision for the future of the aviation warfare concept of operations and the cultural sea changes that must take place to accommodate it. Needless to say, such a vision is also relevant to the future of naval aviation. So if you’ve got some beach-reading time ahead of you, dig in. The link above includes the full article:

This article advocates an aviation future of manned–remotely piloted synergy in which automation amplifies rather than replaces the role of aviators in aviation. In this vision, aviators are judged solely by their effects on the battlefield. Amidst this new standard of decentralized execution is the “swarm,” a flock of highly sophisticated unmanned combat aerial vehicles that serve as “loyal wingmen” for manned strike aircraft. Here, every striker is a formation flexibly primed to concentrate effects at the most decisive times and locations. This future also includes the “cloud,” a mass of persistent remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) that provide vertical dominance through wholesale fire support from airspace cleared by the swarm. Fusion amplifies the human capacity for judgment by delegating routine tasks to automation and “demanding” versatile effects in response to fog and friction rather than “commanding” inputs.

The challenge is not technological but cultural. To realize this future, we first must accept remote aviation as a legitimate part of the Air Force story, and then we must look to deep streams of airpower thought in order to understand it. First, Gen Henry “Hap” Arnold teaches us air-mindedness—to fully leverage a technology, we must develop both humans and hardware. Second, Gen Elwood Quesada describes an aviator’s relationship with technology—the discussion is never “human versus machine”; rather, it concerns the relationship between humans and machines. Instead of a cybernetic view in which automation reduces the role of humans in the world, we argue for a capabilities-based perspective that uses automation to empower aviators to better control the battlespace. Third, Col John Boyd reminds us that identities are always in flux in response to changing technical possibilities.

Thus, the F-22 and the RPA are more akin than we realize since both embrace the power of advanced processors and networked data links. An Airman’s view of RPA futures enables manned–remotely piloted fusion, and both traditional and remote aviators must build that future together as equals. The friendly lives saved and enemy lives taken by RPAs in the air campaigns of the last decade merit this acceptance. 

Dave also recommends the article “Why Drones Work: The Case for Washington’s Weapon of Choice” by Daniel Byman.

Current Operations, Drones

Drones for Maritime Activisim

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Phase 1: Stop illegal driftnet fishing in the Med. Phase 2: Keep those pesky children out of my flowerbeds.
First we stop driftnet fishing in the Med, then we get those pesky children out of my flowerbeds.

The Black Fish is a non-governmental organization (NGO) “working for the oceans that has integrated the use of unmanned air vehicles in support of its marine wildlife protection operations.  Blackfish’s UAS were provided by Laurens De Groot’s organization ShadowView, which supplies UAVs to non-profits for conservation projects.  The group flew initial demonstration sorties with a quad-rotor over a harbor and is looking to improve their UAS capabilities to fly longer-range missions over the open water in an effort to expose illegal driftnet fishing in the Mediterranean
 
The Black Fish joins the ranks of a growing number of NGOs using drones for maritime activism, specifically UAVs for surveillance operations, including Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Earthrace Conservation, and Greenpeace.

This article was re-posted by permission from, and appeared in its original form at NavalDrones.com.

Cyber War

The Full Cost of Remote Diagnostics

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Last week an article came out about state-sponsored hacking that had nothing to do Edward Snowden or the NSA. Bloomberg News detailed the ongoing hacking of U.S. defense contractor QinetiQ. Two paragraphs in the piece particularly struck me:

“The [China-based] spies also took an interest in engineers working on an innovative maintenance program for the Army’s combat helicopter fleet. They targeted at least 17 people working on what’s known as Condition Based Maintenance, which uses on-board sensors to collect data on Apache and Blackhawk helicopters deployed around the world, according to experts familiar with the program.

The CBM databases contain highly sensitive information including the aircrafts’ individual PIN numbers, and could have provided the hackers with a view of the deployment, performance, flight hours, durability and other critical information of every U.S. combat helicopter from Alaska to Afghanistan, according to Abdel Bayoumi, who heads the Condition Based Maintenance Center at the University of South Carolina.”

A remote diagnostic system: safe and secure...
        A remote diagnostic system: safe and secure…

While it’s unclear whether the hackers succeeded in accessing or exploiting the data, it is clear that they saw the information as valuable. And rightly so – systems such as condition based maintenance, remote diagnostics, and remote C2 systems are designed to reduce the workload burden on front-line “warfighters”, or the logistics burden on their platforms, by shifting the location of the work to be done elsewhere. This can also facilitate the use off-site processing power for more in-depth analysis of historical data sets and trends for such things as predicting part failures. The Army is not alone in pursuing CBM. The U.S. Navy has integrated CBM into its Arleigh Burke-class DDG engineering main spaces, meaning “ship and shore engineers have real maintenance data available, in real time, at their fingertips.”

However, the very information that enables this arrangement and the benefits it brings also creates risk. Every data link or information conduit created for the benefit of an operator means a point of vulnerability that can be targeted, and potentially exploited – whether revealing or corrupting potentially crucial information. This applies not only for CBM, but more dramatically for the C2 circuits for unmanned systems. I’m by no means the first to point out that CBM, et al, means tempting targets. UAV hacking has garnered a great deal of attention in the past year, but the Bloomberg article confirms an active interest exists in hijacking the enabling access of lower profile access points.

This raises several questions for CBM and remote diagnostics, not least of which is “is it worth it?” At what point does the benefit derived from the remote access become outweighed by the risks of that access being compromised? Given the sophistication of adversary hacking, should planners operate from the starting assumption that the data will be exploited and limit the extent of its use to non-critical systems? If operating under this assumption, should “cyber defense” attempts to protect this information be kept to a minimum so as not to incur unnecessary additional costs? Or should the resources be devoted to make the access as secure as the C2 systems allowing pilots to fly drones in Afghanistan from Nevada?

Scott is a former active duty U.S. Navy Surface Warfare Officer, and the former editor of Surface Warfare magazine. He now serves as an officer in the Navy Reserve and civilian writer/editor at the Pentagon. Scott is a graduate of Georgetown University and the U.S. Naval War College.

Note: The views expressed above are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their governments, militaries, or the Center for International Maritime Security.