It seems as if the wonders of unmanned technology never
cease. New, miraculous accomplishments
are happening every day. In the latest
development, unmanned boats can now resupply US Navy ships at sea.
Amazing! Outstanding! This means the fleet can stay at sea indefinitely, being resupplied eternally by unmanned boats!
Now, take a look at the boat that was used in the RimPac exercise
as seen in this photo from manufacturer Splash Industries on a Linkedin
site.[2]
As part of the ongoing Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2026 naval exercises, a Splash Industries Typhoon Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) successfully landed in the well deck of the Wasp-class Landing Helicopter Dock USS Essex (LHD-2), marking the first instance of a USV performing an underway replenishment for a larger, crewed vessel.[1]
Amazing! Outstanding! This means the fleet can stay at sea indefinitely, being resupplied eternally by unmanned boats!
 |
| Replenishment at Sea - one suitcase at a time! |
Despite my earlier enthusiasm, do you note anything
interesting about the boat and its cargo?
That’s right, the boat is about the size of a rowboat and the cargo was
a suitcase.
Is this someone’s idea of the future of at sea replenishment
? - a suitcase at a time? Someone thinks we’re going to resupply the
fleet one suitcase at a time delivered by tiny boats? Was this a joke? Is it April Fool's?
It’s one thing to tinker around with technology for its own
sake. That’s a minor, cheap, zero-impact
foray into pure science. Doesn’t hurt
anything. Doesn’t cost anything. However, it’s a completely different scenario
when that pointless playing around ties up major US amphibious warships, wastes
the time and resources of crews, and leads to false expectations.
If you want to play with your tiny, remote controlled,
unmanned boat in the bay near your house and have it drive up onto someone’s
boat ramp … go ahead. You’re wasting
your time but who cares and you’ll have a fun day at the beach. However, when you tie up amphibious ships,
waste sailors time, and cost the taxpayer money then you need to stop and
whoever authorized this for the Navy needs to be fired.
Splash Industries, you took an oversized kid’s remote
control boat, tied a box to it, and drove it up a ramp just like we did as kids
when we drove our remote controlled boat up onto the beach. Congratulations. You’ve reinvented a technology that kids have
played with for decades and somehow got some idiot in the Navy to sponsor you.
Note: the video of the boat beaching itself on the
ship’s ramp is widely available on the Internet if you want to see it. It appears the boat may have missed the
intended ramp point but I can’t be positive.
______________________________
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2026/07/typhoon-usv-uss-essex-at-sea-resupply/
As former crewman of an AFS, going off foggy memories... In routine post-DesertStorm Med operations, we transferred about 1000 pallets of supplies a month to customer ships through UNREP/VERTREP. 1000 pallets times two to three tons each. A carrier would take HUNDREDS in a single evolution. Now, even lacking a Mathmatics PhD, moving that amount of material, one suitcase at a time is....
ReplyDeleteSo what is the point of this pint-size "replenishment"? Is it to test software and hardware before scaling up to somthing that's 15000 tons? 8000? 1000? And even if that's the case... why?? Sorry but I don't see a USV running a highline and doing an UNREP, AI or not. The maintenance on that equipment is constant and labor intensive, with no way to automate it. So without large material quantities and UNREP capability, it's quite a stupid idea. Nothing is going to replace auxilliaries, the job they do, and the crews that do it.
This is another case of unmanned for the sake of unmanned, without a thought about reality. Just when I thought the Navy couldn't do anything dumber... they always seem to break out the old "hold my beer"!!! What an absolute waste of time...
Trying desperately to look at it from the Navy's point of view, I can sort of imagine an occasional need for a high priority delivery of a small quantity of something really critical. Like a vital medicine or maybe a critical (small) spare part or something. But of course the logical delivery mode for THAT would be a UAV, not a USV. Assuming of course that the Navy's version of the V22 (the new COD plane) isn't available for some reason.
ReplyDelete"high-priority delivery of a small quantity of something"
Deletethe acronym translates as...
"Critical Resupply of Admiralty Potables"
"occasional need for a high priority delivery of a small quantity of something really critical."
DeleteFirst, if it's really something critical, it should be part of the ship's stores (or those of a nearby ship) so that they DON'T get into that kind of situation.
Second, how do you envision a small speedboat getting to a ship in the middle of the ocean to make this critical delivery? Similarly, how would you envision a small UAV getting to a ship in the middle of the ocean?
I find it interesting that we fought WWII without any of this kind of high tech crap and yet, now, we think it's impossible to operate a fleet without it.
DeleteI hear the arguments about helos being mandatory for intership transfer of personnel and cargo and yet we got through a world war without helos and somehow managed to transfer personnel and cargo. Amazing. Our fathers were truly miracle workers. Magicians, at least.
"Second, how do you envision a small speedboat getting to a ship in the middle of the ocean to make this critical delivery? Similarly, how would you envision a small UAV getting to a ship in the middle of the ocean?"
DeleteWell, I actually had my tongue in my cheek this time. Sort of an attempt at a humorous "devil's advocate" thing. Of course I don't see a small boat getting through the ocean to a ship -- and I never said it could.
As far as "small UAV" is concerned, well, there's small and then there's small. Certainly a $500 Walmart drone couldn't do it, but the Iranian Shahed 136 (according to Wikipedia at least) has a wingspan of about 8 feet, weighs about 200 kg (a little over 400 pounds), carries a payload of about 100 pounds (or 200 pounds in a more recent Russian version) and has a range of about 1600 miles. Which is, I believe, more than some of the planes that we currently use for the COD mission.
So there's that ...
Of course, while it's probably physically possible for a "small" (at least compared to a Reaper) UAV to deliver 100 or 200 pounds of emergency cargo to a ship at sea, that still leaves the question of whether this capability is actually something that's worth spending money on. And on that, I agree with you that the answer is almost certainly "no".
DeleteThe USN used float planes and small boats in WW2 a Cleveland class light cruiser had 4 floatplanes and 2 steamcatapults and 4-6 boats which were either motor launches, whaleboats, gigs and utility boats.
DeleteA burke carries 2 helos and a couple of RHIBs.
I assume 2 helos have more utility than floatplanes and are at least faster to get back on the ship.
The helos are essentially the equivalent replacement to our floatplanes in terms of an organic scouting asset carried by the warship. Recall that Seahawks, in addition to the ASW dipping sonar, also carry a surface search radar to help the Burke scout. More importantly, they also have a datalink to send targeting data back to the Burke.
DeleteThe British Lyxn Wildcat has similar functionality, but the datalink was deleted as a cost-saving measure, so the helo has to return to the ship, land, copy the data onto a USB drive, and a sailor has to hand-carry it to CIC, which kind of defeats the point of having a scouting asset.
"Seahawks, in addition to the ASW dipping sonar, also carry a surface search radar"
DeleteHelos, in a combat scenario, are of very limited use. They are the definition of non-stealthy, they have a short range radar, and they have to actively radiate which pinpoints their location for the enemy. They'll be dead long before they can find anything.
"Shahed 136 ... payload of about 100 pounds"
DeleteHow would you envision the 100 lbs of supplies getting from the UAV to the receiving ship since the drone is not designed to land on a ship and no ship, other than a carrier, would have the ability to recover and re-launch a UAV?
Assuming you'd have to drop the supplies (parachute?) to the waiting ship, the supplies would have to be robustly packaged for survival and watertightness with, presumably, a parachute mechanism. The packaging would consume a significant chunk of the theoretical payload. A 100 lb payload might deliver fifty pounds of supplies?
Do we want to risk an enemy tracking a UAV to our ship for fifty pounds of supplies?
Somehow, by some miracle, we managed to win a world war with aerial resupply. Why can't we operate ships today without it?
"How would you envision the 100 lbs of supplies getting from the UAV to the receiving ship since the drone is not designed to land on a ship and no ship, other than a carrier, would have the ability to recover and re-launch a UAV?"
DeleteApparently I failed to make clear that I wasn't proposing something like the Shahed for doing these deliveries. I merely mentioned the Shahed as an example to demonstrate that it is in fact possible to make a drone with a potentially useful payload that has that type of range. Obviously to actually perform this function a different drone, presumably with vertical landing capability, would be developed. I've interpreted all of this as being, so far, in the research phase.
As I also mentioned, I'm pretty sure that spending the money to develop that other drone isn't justified.
"possible to make a drone with a potentially useful payload that has that type of range."
DeleteI understand that you weren't proposing this. I'm looking at whether what you're suggesting as being in the ballpark of what's needed really is or not. I'm dubious.
Is the Shahed really capable of carrying a payload? It's a one-way attack drone with a relatively small warhead. Basically, it's a very slow missile. Add a few hundred pounds of payload and I have doubts about its airworthiness and range, even ignoring the fact that it can't actually deliver the payload. Make it vertical takeoff and launch and it loses even more payload and range. I'm not sure it's really an example of a drone with any potential. Off hand, I don't know of any drone that could perform the task.
RE: the drone.
DeleteAgain, we agree we are not talking about the Shahed itself. We are talking about a drone in a similar size range.
1st: I'm not talking about ADDING 100 pounds of payload. I'm talking about REPLACING the warhead (which weighs 100 to 200 pounds) with some sort of urgent payload.
2nd: Vertical launch. The Shahed is launched vertically with rocket assist. This is a fairly common and well understood technique. Although I do confess that I didn't really think through the implication of the receiving ship launching it on a return trip (and therefore needing to store booster rockets). Just like the Navy didn't really think about how requiring that every ship receiving replenishment from this new boat must have a well deck, which seems ... problematic.
3rd: Recovering the drone at the ship. There are several possible techniques. Potentially the method used by the ScanEagle (strengthened wing which catches a cable at the wingtip at the edge of the ship) could be used. Although strengthening the wing of something the weight of the Shahed (to handle the extra force) may add too much weight. Alternatively, the technique used by the battleships in the 1980's (for their reconnaissance drones) could be used. The battleships stretched a strong net across the fantail and just flew the drone into the net. There are also experimental "tailsitter" drones being worked on, which take off and land vertically and then convert to horizontal flight later.
So I'm fairly sure that a drone in the size range of the Shahed that can carry a 100 to 200 pound payload can be built. The key question is whether a 100 to 200 pound payload is sufficient for the type of urgent supply that we're discussing here. I suspect (as I've mentioned several times), as I believe you do, that it's probably not a common enough problem to justify the investment.
You seem to have developed a very British sarcastic sense of humour. lol.
ReplyDeleteIs it possible to look at the Navy's actions with anything other than derision and sarcasm?
DeleteIm afraid, unfortunately, you may be correct. The US navy, in my humble opinion, has more "top management" playing politics than running an efficient sea base fighting force.
DeleteMaybe we can use it to send a Candy-gram to the Chinese?
ReplyDeleteI was curious about the subject.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia, "Following the explosion and sinking in January 1944 of USS Turner, U.S. Coast Guard Commander Frank Erickson flew the first U.S. helicopter rescue in a Sikorsky R-4 carrying life saving blood plasma for the casualties from New York City."
Also, Wikipedia, "On 22–23 April 1944, U.S. Army Lieutenant Carter Harman of the 1st Air Commando Group conducted the first combat rescue by helicopter using a YR-4B in the China-Burma-India theater.[12] Despite the high altitude, humidity, and capacity for only a single passenger, Harman rescued a downed liaison aircraft pilot and his three British soldier passengers, two at a time."
The Germans used helicopters as well, for naval reconnaissance and, in one instance, aircraft recovery.
At least they used a Pelican case!
ReplyDeleteBest case out there! I keep my 16” battleship guns in one.
DeleteThe navy plans to have the unmanned sea hunter as a locator of subs and then transmit targeting info to the ships with ASROC, Navy Times. My Take : Will sea hunter handle high seas ? Would be interesting to read the GAO report when this is introduced to the fleet.
ReplyDelete"The navy plans to have the unmanned sea hunter as a locator of subs"
DeleteI've not heard that but, that aside, the Navy makes lots of plans, 99% of which are idiotic and quickly abandoned.
Give me a link to some document stating that.
Think about it. If a small, unmanned craft with an even smaller, low poser sonar can find and tract subs when our very biggest, best, most powerful ships/sonars struggle, wouldn't we be engaged in a crash program of ripping out every Burke and Virginia sonar and replacing them with tiny, low power units? This is nonsensical fantasy even by the Navy's standards.
https://thedefensepost.com/2026/01/19/us-navy-usvs/
DeleteThe Seahawk and Sea Hunter, both nearly 135 feet long (41 meters), will initially serve in surveillance roles and provide real-time data to manned ships, supporting anti-submarine warfare and reconnaissance.
" initially serve in surveillance roles and provide real-time data to manned ships, supporting anti-submarine warfare and reconnaissance."
DeleteThat's a marketing statement, completely lacking in details and utterly divorced from any realistic concept of operations.