US Navy considers alternatives to unmanned boats with missiles

Or we could just cut through the b***sh*t. The all volunteer force has proved to be not sustainable over time as we predicted back in '75. As the recruitment pool has gotten fat and soft and taken to cutting off their johnsons, my Navy has tried to "smart ship", replacing sailors with gadgets. They've scrapped all the support assets at the same time we have starved CONUS ship yards and moved merchant builds overseas. They are trying expensive alternatives like this to make up for low manpower. They want to, as an example, scrap whole classes with the excuse that they are unsafe. Why? Because we have consolidated or done away with ratings that had the skills to maintain those vessels. Some ignorant MBA opined it less expensive to off the shelf repairs. And some woke JCS/DOD, said yeah and then we could justify lowering standards across the board. Guess what? There's no money to be made guessing what parts are going to be needed, when. Ships are like Fords (fix or repair daily) . Ships need tenders. Ships need their husband, and HTs, MRs, ENs, BMs, ICs, EMs and all the rest needed to repair her when the nearest land is seven miles straight down. A human being needs to craft parts from material at hand. No automatic halon dump valve is going to stop the main space fire. Bodies with hoses do it. No computer program is going to clear a jammed carousel. Automatic guns aren't. We need a self sustaining Navy. That requires sailors. Fit, motivated and high standard. More than the AVF provides. My two cents on my Navy. You other four services can can rant about yours. Yes I included the Coasties. But not that space thingy.

MAJ James Woods
"WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy is nearly done assessing whether to put missile tubes on an unmanned surface vessel, comparing the idea to other options for getting missile launchers out to sea.

The ongoing distributed offensive surface fires analysis of alternatives is in its final stages and expected to complete by the end of April, Navy spokesman Lt. Lewis Aldridge told Defense News.

The study will compare the Navy’s preferred plan — a large unmanned surface vessel (LUSV) outfitted with vertical launching system tubes that can fire strike missiles — to other options. Four categories of options being considered are modifying existing naval ship designs, such as amphibious ships, expeditionary fast transports and expeditionary sea bases; modifying commercial vessel designs, such as container ships and bulk carriers; creating a new naval ship design; or creating a new commercial ship design, Aldridge said.

A 2019 study on the future surface combatant affirmed the need for an LUSV with missile tubes, to supplement DDG(X) as a large surface combatant and the Constellation-class frigate as a small surface combatant. This family of systems would allow the large combatant to focus on the most sophisticated missions, while the small and unmanned combatants could distribute firepower in more places across the ocean.

Despite the Navy’s certainty on this armed LUSV requirement, lawmakers have been concerned about the immaturity of unmanned technology and the Navy’s ability to use unmanned ships for the remote launch of missiles in a secure manner. The Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act limited the Navy’s ability to pursue an armed LUSV until a new analysis weighed alternatives. Aldridge said that study used the approved top-level requirements for LUSV — the requirements six industry teams have been considering — as the baseline option, though he could not elaborate on those requirements."...