Will we see soon an autonomous Corvette?

These seem to be the intentions of the US Navy based on the information that they will take an RFP (Request For Proposal) from a medium-range ship (Corvette type or similar) with autonomous behavior capabilities.

This news is relatively recent and there are several dozen interested companies, as it seems clear that it is a tendency to be increased in the future. At present, the Navy already has a small autonomous ship, the Sea Hunter (an underwater fighter) that is in tests and not long ago that has sailed from the North American coast of San Diego to Hawaii and back. They try to get experiences for possible future missions.

As I said, the RFP is now for a larger ship (Corvette or similar) that can operate alone (autonomous) or with a small number of crew members, and that has full performance capabilities at sea. Similar to those of a manned ship of equal size and condition.

The Program is called Large Unmanned Surface Vehicle, and is expected to affect the future strategic capabilities of the US Navy. The RFP is expected to appear at the end of this year, and the Pentagon is going to dedicate a lot of money (although Congress has already announced some cuts) and of course it will count on the participation of DARPA.

The goal is to build two ships (LSUV ‘s) prototypes of about 300 feet and up to 2,000 tons of displacement. With them they will test and investigate the possibilities they really have, before moving on to more operational stages.

One of the biggest concerns of the US Navy is how to integrate these ships with the current ones already in operation, and that they will continue to be for many tens of years. How to share information and missions, and ultimately how they could be part of the current fleets.

I think that is the Gordian knot.

Currently, the US Navy is very powerful, but they know that the Chinese have more ships and men, as well as very sophisticated anti-ship missiles (DF-21 and DF-26) that can reach American ships from hundreds miles away.

Therefore autonomous ships can be a good solution complementary to the current reality, and especially if they have high attack and coordination capabilities with current fleets.

In the following photo I present what could be the “vision” of the US Navy on autonomous ships. They have divided it into 4 types according to its size: large, medium, small and very small.

But all of them have the ability to work interrelated and transferring information from one to the other, and of course also with ships controlled by sailors.

As you can see, they think seriously and in a big way. This is not a fad.

The autonomous devices are here to stay, and every day we will see them in more places performing the most varied functions.