Tag Archives: unmanned surface vessel

The second unmanned surface vessel, named NOMAD, of the Ghost Fleet Overlord program passed through the Panama Canal and completed its transit to the Pacific. The USV traveled 4,421 nautical miles from the Gulf Coast to the West Coast, moving autonomously 98 percent of the time. DOD’s office of the secretary of defense strategic capabilities office and the U.S. Navy performed the second long-range autonomous transit with NOMAD.

The U.S. Navy has awarded Lockheed Martin a $7 million contract to deliver a study for a proven, integrated and capable payload ship that will be able to patrol for extended durations, under the U.S. Navy’s Large Unmanned Surface Vessel (LUSV) competition, Lockheed Martin reported on Thursday. 

The White House has asked the U.S. Navy to propose the inclusion of unmanned surface vessels and unmanned underwater vehicles in its planned 355-ship Battle Force fleet, the War Zone reported Friday.

The Office of Management and Budget sent a letter to the Senate and House Armed Services Committees expressing concern on a provision in the Senate’s defense policy measure that would limit the Pentagon’s ability to develop a space-based missile defense architecture, C4ISRNET reported Thursday.

Navy Adm. Ron Boxall, surface warfare director OPNAV N96, has said his goal for 2019 is to bring more weapons and sensors into the battlespace to enable larger combat ships to serve as command and control for smaller vessels, Defense News reported Wednesday. “If you think about what we are trying to do with the surface force, we have large and small surface combatants that will [ultimately make up part of the 355-ship Navy] but we have no requirement for unmanned surface vessels right now, which I see as an absolutely critical part of distributed lethality, distributed maritime operations environment that we are moving into,” Boxall said.

The U.S. Navy plans to purchase its first Future Surface Combatant ship in 2023 in support of its Arleigh Burke Flight III warship program, USNI News reported Tuesday. The combatant ship will integrate design elements from Zumwalt-class (DDG-1000) and Arleigh Burke-class (DDG-51) destroyer vessels, according to the report.