Greg Avicola, a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Tactical Technology Office, said he envisions a Navy strike force built of a “heterogeneous” mix of robotic platforms, Defense One reported Wednesday.
“I could imagine the battle group eventually becoming completely autonomous,” Avicola said Tuesday at the AWS Summit in Washington, D.C.
He noted that there could be “a lot of experimentation” in design and operation.
“If I make the vehicle look like this, and I make the ship look like that, how does that pair? And how do I do the logistics? How do I do the refueling? How do I do the assured comms between those platforms?” Avicola stated at the event.
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Deploying Robotic Warships
The DARPA official acknowledged that barriers to deploying robotic combat ships are not only bureaucratic but also practical. Autonomous warships, for instance, must be able to return to port in case of a malfunction.
“How do you make sure when it goes to sea, if it starts breaking down, it can still get home on its own so you don’t have to divert assets to tow it back?” Avicola asked. “If you have an autonomous ship and it’s working with the destroyer, and the autonomous ship breaks, and the destroyer has to go off-mission to escort or tow that ship home—guess what? [The Navy] isn’t going to buy any more autonomous ships for decades.”
Fielding robot ships equipped with intelligence and surveillance payloads may be a safer bet for now.
“If somebody boarded the ship and took the payload, you could live with it. If you’re carrying missiles, you may not want—or Congress might not want—that ship to be boarded,” Avicola stated.
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