HII’s Uncrewed Systems, a business unit of its Mission Technologies division, has completed trials with the REMUS 620, the company’s advanced medium-class unmanned underwater vehicle, or MUUV, in the U.S. Navy UUV Confidence Course in Bangor, Washington.

HII said Wednesday the MUUV was shipped from its Pocasset, Massachusetts facility to Keyport, Washington and went through pre-mission checks and ballasting.

An Industry First

The REMUS 620 is the first industry-made MUUV to go through the Navy’s confidence course, making HII one of the first companies to use the test course. This showcases the collaboration between the service branch’s Unmanned Undersea Vehicles Group ONE, or UUVGRU-1, and industry partners.

The confidence course is meant to offer repeatable and comparable performance data for capability development. This aligns with the Chief of Naval Operations’ NAVPLAN Project 33 and submarine force objectives, which are intended to bolster warfighting readiness. 

“Getting a chance to put our newest design through its paces on the Navy’s UUV confidence course was a great opportunity for us to validate our design improvements to the vehicle. We also gained a lot of valuable operational data using the KRAKEN MINSAS 120, ” said Adrian Gonsalves, REMUS 620 product manager.

“The confidence course provided us a great benchmark we can use to continue our improvements to this great design and gave us a chance to show UUV sailors in Keyport how much improvement we built into this next-gen MUUV in terms of modularity and maintainability,” added Gonsalves.  

The U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command/U.S. 4th Fleet has revealed that the Navy’s Hybrid Fleet Campaign through Operation Southern Spear will commence later this month within the Southern Command area of responsibility and the 4th Fleet Headquarters at Naval Station Mayport.

Assessing Robotic and Autonomous Systems

The Department of the Navy said Tuesday Operation Southern Spear will evaluate the performance of unmanned air and surface vessels in combination with manned forces. The aim is to assess their capabilities to conduct maritime surveillance and counter-narcotic operations.

The operation involves deploying long-dwell robotic surface vessels, small robotic interceptor boats and vertical take-off and landing robotic air vessels into the USSOUTHCOM AOR while the 4th Fleet will integrate the unmanned systems with Coast Guard cutters at sea and the operations centers of the 4th Fleet and Joint Interagency Task Force South.

Operation Southern Spear is conducted in support of the Navy’s Project 33, which aims to operationalize robotic and autonomous systems, a.k.a. RAS. The project intends to enhance RAS presence and awareness in critical maritime regions to provide insights to decision-makers, boost sovereignty and promote regional cooperation.

Cmdr. Foster Edwards, hybrid fleet director of the 4th Fleet, said, “Southern Spear will operationalize a heterogeneous mix of robotic and autonomous systems to support the detection and monitoring of illicit trafficking while learning lessons for other theaters.”

Rear Adm. Carlos Sardiello, commander of the Naval Forces Southern Command/4th Fleet, added, “Hybrid Fleet operations increase our collaboration with partners in the region while furthering the Navy’s tactics, techniques, procedures and processes.”

The Government Accountability Office is calling on the Department of Defense to issue guidance that would instruct combatant commands to identify training resource needs when proposing a security assistance package for Ukraine.

Training Disruptions

GAO said in a report released Tuesday that the measure would help DOD avoid problems that might disrupt associated training being provided to Ukraine in response to Russia’s invasion. According to the report, training disruptions were experienced due to insufficient training equipment, limited time to prepare for training, insufficient resources to repair training equipment and mismatches between the expertise of U.S. trainers and the training needs of Ukrainian forces.

Problems With Data Collection

The report also flagged DOD for deficiencies in the data it collected following the trainings. On one hand, training reports do not capture enough data to cover all the objectives of a given training, it said. On the other hand, the data that is required is sometimes not provided by units conducting the training. Just as critically, training data collection methods tended to change with each new training unit.

Documentation and Information Sharing

Data collection is key to assessing trends and identifying areas for improvement. In response to the challenges, GAO recommended that training assessment processes be properly documented. The office also recommended that relevant training observations be captured and shared via the Joint Lessons Learned Information System, a process mandated by DOD policy but which was not consistently applied or even reflected in the implementing orders for the training.