NASA picks Booz Allen for $622.5M cybersecurity and privacy enterprise contract

NASA has awarded a cybersecurity and privacy enterprise solutions contract with a total potential value of $622.5 million to Booz Allen Hamilton.

The contractor will start work on May 31 and provide services to the agency’s Office of the Chief Information Officer. The contract initially runs until Sept. 30, 2023, and has four option periods that run through Sept. 30, 2030.

The contract, known as CyPrESS, is a cost-plus award fee core and hybrid indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract. It is the first enterprise cybersecurity and privacy service contract to be struck by the agency, consolidating cybersecurity and privacy work from various center and enterprise IT contracts.

Cybersecurity remains a top priority for executives at NASA, following multiple recent audits from federal security agencies highlighting concerns over IT security.

In March, a watchdog report revealed that NASA management has agreed to conduct a risk assessment of its unclassified systems to determine if its insider threat program should be expanded to include them.

Based on that report, the agency plans to assemble a cross-discipline team with representatives from the offices of Protective Services and the Chief Information Officer, as well as the OIG Cyber Crimes Division by Dec. 1, 2023.

Army secretary looks to hiring flexibilities to boost cyber talent recruitment

The Army’s top civilian official wants to focus on using the U.S. military’s Cyber Excepted Service authorities to attract cybersecurity talent into the force.

Secretary Christine Wormuth told lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday the Army is exploring ways to use the authorities, which Congress granted the Department of Defense in 2016 to be more flexible in compensating and hiring cybersecurity talent.

Nearly six years later, Wormuth said the Army still faces a challenge in competing with other organizations for cyber experts.

“One of our challenges frankly is competing with the private sector,” she testified. “Everyone is looking for cyber experts, and in the private sector, they’re obviously well compensated. So that’s something I want to see us explore.”

Across the DOD, despite the enhanced hiring authorities, officials have struggled to improve the recruitment and hiring of technical talent. Part of that has been attributed to a lack of supporting infrastructure for the Cyber Excepted Service. And others contend the added flexibilities still aren’t enough for the Pentagon to get the talent at the scale that it will need to compete as the nature of defense becomes increasingly cyber-driven.

The Department of Homeland Security similarly created a Cybersecurity Service in 2021 akin to DOD’s Cyber Excepted Service.

The Army is seeing success in identifying that talent, or training for it, within its existing ranks, said Wormuth and Gen. James McConville, Army chief of staff.

Among different organizations like the Army Cybersecurity Center of Excellence at Fort Gordon in Georgia and the Army Software Factory in Texas, the service is “finding, frankly, cyber and coding expertise all over the Army in places you wouldn’t expect and training those people and giving us the capability to really have Army soldiers at the tactical edge who can code and develop applications for us,” Wormuth said.

“We’re blessed that we have a lot of young men and women who want to go into cyber,” McConville said, pointing out that at West Point and in the Army ROTC, “that is one of the most competitive branches.”

McConville said once the Army does identify talent or train soldiers to become cyber warriors, it must find ways to keep them around. He told the story of a young medical specialist who works with the Army Software Factory.

“He codes at a Ph.D. level” with no formal training, he said. “And what we want to be able to do is be able to credential that capability … but because of his [highly sought after] skill set, how do we keep that person in the Army, how do we credential that person and then incentivize him to stay?”

Wormuth said what’s going on in Ukraine and the lessons learned there have demonstrated why cyber talent is so critical.

“The information domain is incredibly important,” she said. “The force that can dominate in the information space, I think, will have the advantage in future conflicts, so there’s a lot of a cyber dimension there.”

And while the U.S. has evaded major cyberattacks on its critical infrastructure of late, “I think that is something we can expect in the future,” Wormuth said. “So we’re looking a lot at how we can shore up vulnerabilities, whether it’s with our suppliers or in our own networks, to make sure that we’re not vulnerable to cyberattacks.”

Special Operations Command looking to ditch some of its drones, buy new ISR capabilities

Special Operations Command wants better intelligence collection and intel fusion capabilities, and officials plan to take a hard look at their drone portfolio to determine which systems are no longer needed.

SOCOM acquired a slew of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to meet requirements for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But some of those might no longer be needed as the command pivots to new technologies and great power competition with China.

“We need to look hard at all those systems and go, which ones within our enterprise are the biggest bang for the buck? And which ones do we need to retain? And which ones do we actually need to cut away?” SOCOM Commander Gen. Richard Clarke said Tuesday at the SOFIC conference.

Systems will be reviewed as the command undertakes long-term planning for capabilities development and resource allocation.

“We need to take a comprehensive look at all of our programs,” he said. “As we’re going into some specific discussions about future POM [program objective memorandum] cycles, there are some things that we need to look at hard and go, ‘Is this really what we still need within our formations?’ We’ve got to take a whole full-throated effort towards that because we’ve got to point towards China, but we still have other missions we’ve got to do.”

The command is less interested in remotely piloted drones and is looking for UAVs that can operate more autonomously and reduce the manpower burden for Special Operations Forces (SOF).

“Unmanned systems have shown great value to SOF operations and will continue to show great value. The issue for us is, we have a small formation and everyone in that formation is dedicated to a certain task. And if I’ve got to pull an operator to have them go one-on-one to operate that unmanned system, I’ve just pulled them away from the tasks that they’re … supposed to be doing,” SOCOM Acquisition Executive Jim Smith said.

He continued: “That’s why we’re really interested in autonomy to be able to get the operator off of the Xbox controlling the unmanned system, and back over their rifle sights and doing what they were paid to do. And so that’s where I think unmanned systems will go in the future.”

UAVs are just one tool for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR). SOCOM wants to leverage more space-based sensors — including commercial satellite imagery — cyber tools, and other technologies.

“We have focused for the last 20 years on airborne ISR overhead capabilities that allow us to look down and see [and] sense the enemy with multiple pods on top of them,” Clarke noted. “We’ve got to layer in the space capabilities with that, we have to layer open-source data with that. And we have to be able to pull that all together. And those things that are flying above, we need to make sure we have the best capabilities on top of them. So, as I look at next-generation ISR I think that’s something that still needs further development, because … just buying overhead UAVs — that is not going to be the solution in the long run.”

Special Operations Command wants technologies that enable “collaborative autonomy” and AI for small unit maneuver.

“We are going to use a lot of sensors — whether they’re unmanned aerial systems, unmanned ground systems, unmanned maritime systems, unattended sensors — all working together,” Smith said. “Our goal is to have those working together collaboratively and autonomously.”

SOCOM aims to take ISR data collected by a variety of unmanned systems, fuse it with data collected from satellites and cyberspace, and provide it to SOF at the tactical edge to improve their situational awareness. Artificial intelligence and machine learning could help SOCOM sort through the sensor data and separate the wheat from the chaff, and give commandos the information they need to accomplish their missions.

“That’s what we think next-generation ISR looks like,” Smith said, adding that a lot of AI and data transfer will be required to enable that.

DIA awards spot on $370M workplace analytics contract to Golden Key Group

The Defense Intelligence Agency has awarded a workplace analytics and talent management services contract to Golden Key Group as part of a $370 million contract vehicle.

The indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity prime contract has a five-year base period with an additional three-year option. It was awarded through a contract vehicle used by the agency’s Office of Human Resources Operations and Services, and the performance period is expected to start on June 30.

As part of the contract, Golden Key will provide the office with assistance across a range of areas, including workforce analytics, records management, and hiring and staffing.

Golden Key provides HR and human capital management services to civilian and military departments including the Departments of the Army, Air Force and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

The company last year hired federal acquisition specialists including former Health and Human Services modernization advisor JD Walter, and former General Services Administration chief acquisition officer Jessica Salmoiraghi.

The Army’s unified network concept is gaining momentum in 2023 capability builds

The Army is expecting to see progress in linking its enterprise network to tactical formations in upcoming tactical network capability sets.

The Army has adopted a multiyear strategy involving the incremental development and delivery of new capabilities to its integrated tactical network, involving a combination of program-of-record systems and commercial off-the-shelf tools. Those “capability sets” now provide technologies to units every two years, each building upon the previous delivery.

Capability Set 21 was primarily designed for infantry brigades, Capability Set 23 is focused on Stryker brigades, and Capability Set 25 is focused on armored brigades.

In October 2021, the Army released its unified network plan, which set forward a path for linking its enterprise and tactical network.

This is now beginning to materialize in the Capability Sets 23 and 25 builds, Army officials said during the Army’s eighth Technical Exchange Meeting in Philadelphia on May 10.

For the “unified network … I will submit to you that we are now actually executing along that line. Capability Sets 23 and 25 are really where you see that transition to go vertical,” Lt. Gen. John Morrison, the Army’s G-6, said a the meeting. “It is just a natural state of play as we mature the capabilities set construct.”

These meetings gather members of industry, the Army acquisition community, Army Futures Command and the operational community to outline priorities and capabilities to modernize the service’s tactical network.

Currently, there are too many tools on the network that aren’t integrated, interoperable or sustainable between the enterprise strategic network and the tactical network at the very edge. Leaders want to better connect these disparate systems to get to a truly singular unified network across the globe that will be centered around data and allow forces to have greater insights and visibility from theater to theater.

In previous examples, officials have cited issues in which units were not able to join the network immediately upon entering a theater — most recently during the withdrawal operations in Afghanistan —which creates big problems for the Army as it is trying to be more expeditionary.

Moreover, the Army is moving away from the brigade combat team-centric fight during the war on terror years that saw the brigade as the primary unit of action. Top nation-state powers that are more technologically sophisticated and transnational are forcing the Army to shift to higher echelons with the division as the unit of action.

“In a multi-domain fight, where our Army is heading, it will be a division and corps fight. Brigades will be maneuver elements,” Morrison said. “How do you maneuver a division network? How do you maneuver a corps network? How is it linked back to the enterprise so you can get to a strategic and operational effect at the point in time that a maneuver commander needs it anywhere on the battlefield.”

To this end, Morrison described moving network complexity higher up the chain, which will take the burden off those at the tactical edge and closer to the fight.

“If you buy into data centricity, and we all should, where do you place that complexity? You don’t place it at the lowest possible level. That’s not how industry does it; it’s not how the United States Army should do it,” he said. “We’ve got to work our way through how do we raise that complexity up to the appropriate echelon where people can deal with it, hence, this division- and corps-centric approach. We do need to be able to plug into whatever infrastructure is available, whether it’s commercial or military, do so securely and then reach back into that broader enterprise so that we can apply those strategic and operational effects to the point of need.”

Those effects could be long-range precision fires, cyber effects, some electronic warfare effects or deep sensing, Morrison said, adding that the Army of the future must be able to see something, feed it into the network and act on it in a timely manner.  

These efforts are also about reducing complexity and allowing greater visibility into the network, both from a tactical level all the way up to the strategic perspective.

“From my perspective, at the operational level, I just want to be able to see my network, both the upper tactical and the lower tactical,” Maj. Todd Donaldson, the communications officer at 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, said at the same conference. “I want to be able to see what’s on the network, what’s not on the network, if something starts to drift be able to pull it back in, see how much data we’re using and how congested that network might be at that time and how many users we have up on it.”

He added that as more capabilities are added to the network, such as radios and expanded mesh networking capabilities, he needs to be able to see everything to facilitate those capabilities and maneuver the network for the commander.

One area the Army is working on is trying to establish end-to-end capabilities for endpoint management from the highest strategic levels down to those tactical nodes. This will allow defenders and high-end cyber specialists to be able to see directly down into the tactical network from operations centers in the United States — or theoretically, anywhere in the world — and provide assistance and visibility like never before.

“It goes after this notion of unified net ops. The S6 at the edge, the person sitting in the regional cyber center and then all the way back to the Information Warfare Operations Center at [Army Cyber command] — common capabilities, common view. Now we can really work through who’s got to handle the most complex tasks,” Morrison told reporters on the sidelines of the conference. “We’ll be able to defend it much more effectively and that notion of being able to maneuver it because we have a common look and feel and we’ll be able to put that complexity where we want it to be. That way, folks that need to be able to do the higher-end DoDIN ops can concentrate on it. Communicators down at the edge that need to focus on maneuvering their formations and supporting those operations will be able to do that.”

Ahead of the efforts planned for Capability Set 23, the Army has begun moving personnel and resources to regional cyber centers, division headquarters and corps headquarters to enable a DoDIN operations framework from the enterprise to the tactical level, Morrison said.

This includes empowering newly created Expeditionary Signal Battalions-Enhanced, which support units that don’t have organic communications capabilities.

Morrison has also explained the need for local cyber defenders to up their game of securing, defending and operating the network to keep the high-end cyber protection teams doing what they do best, which is hunting on networks and being threat-focused.

Networking at the tactical edge

Ultimately, in the tactical sphere, the Army wants to reduce the network complexity and training burden for personnel.

In the immediate term, it is focusing on the lower tactical tier, for which the Army Requirements Oversight Council will sign out a requirements definition package later this year.

“We can focus on what planning, management, configuration, initialization, control and monitoring tools exist today, where can we gain some opportunities for optimization, what building blocks can we set the stage with for radio management,” Matt Maier, project manager for Interoperability, Integration and Services at Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical, said at the Technical Exchange Meeting. “Then we can start to migrate those capabilities up into the upper tactical tier and emerge and replace capabilities as capabilities come online.”

Capabilities in the lower and upper tactical tier aren’t well integrated like they are in the enterprise, he said. Notions such as identity management and zero trust don’t exist in the tactical space, which is something the Army is beginning to address.

The plan right now is to put several requests for information out to industry. Then, a draft request for proposals will be released in the third quarter of 2023 with contract awards scheduled for the second quarter of 2024, Maier said.

Artificial intelligence experts helping NATO with new ‘horizontal scanning’ initiative

Editor’s note: This story was updated with comments from NATO.

More than 80 artificial intelligence experts from the U.S. and other nations are helping NATO explore the military implications — and opportunities — for leveraging the technology.

NATO’s Science and Technology Organization (STO) and the NATO Communications and Information (NCI) Agency jointly hosted a workshop earlier this month in the Hague, Netherlands, marking the launch of a new strategic initiative to bolster the alliance’s AI approach.

“AI is one of the key emerging and disruptive technologies identified by NATO as vital for the maintenance of its technological edge,” NATO Chief Scientist Dr. Bryan Wells said in a press release Monday. “By working together, the STO and the NCI Agency are able to bring together global experts to ensure the very best scientific expertise is available to advise NATO and its Allies and Partners on the latest scientific trends in this area.”

AI scientists, ethicists and military operational experts — from across Europe and North America — participated in the workshop. The AI experts also met with NCI Agency scientists and engineers at the agency’s lab based in the Netherlands, where they observed demonstrations of how artificial intelligence systems can be trained using NATO data to confront existing challenges, and several existing projects affiliated with the alliance’s different communities. 

“One example is the Resilience Assessment Project funded by Allied Command Transformation, a tool to assess resilience in seven key areas that NATO has defined, such as transportation, energy, communications, and others,” NCI Agency Chief of Data Science and AI Dr. Michael Street told FedScoop in an email on Tuesday.

That project is based on open-source data from a wide variety of sources and is being developed in close collaboration with the end-users and subject matter experts, he explained. It enables users to better assess situations and conduct “what if” analyses to understand the impact of crises. 

“For example, the tool is being used to support exercises to understand the state of critical infrastructure and points of interest such as road networks or energy supplies,” Street said.

The core tasks of the transatlantic military alliance between the U.S., Canada and 28 European nations involve collective defense, crisis management and cooperative security.

The organization’s defense ministers officially signed on to an AI strategy in October, formalizing their intent to accelerate NATO’s collective adoption of the technology, ensure it is deployed responsibly, and protect against threats it might pose. Building on that effort, the AI experts participating in the recent invite-only multinational workshop kicked off a strategic initiative to drive AI-focused “horizon scanning” — a methodology for performing comprehensive assessments of possibilities and threats connected to a particular technology or other topics.

The new NATO initiative employs aeronautical scientist Theodore von Kármán’s “foundational principle to bring armed forces and scientific personnel closer together to enhance collective knowledge and understanding,” according to the press release. Such scans examine the state-of-the-art in the field, the outlook for the next decade, its relevance for the armed forces, potential avenues for investment, and more. 

They have also been undertaken on laser weapons, quantum technologies and optronic 3D imaging systems.

“Horizon scanning allows us to bring together technology experts and military leaders to define the medium-to-long term activities to fully benefit from a technology, such as artificial intelligence in this case,” Street said. “This NATO strategic initiative employs Von Karman horizon scan methodology to understand the impact of technology on defense, and vice versa.”

Following the workshop, a group of experts from across the alliance will continue to work on these issues over the remainder of the year. 

“They will prepare a set of recommendations on how AI-based technologies could be further developed and applied for NATO use, and how defense use can contribute to AI development. The recommendations will be delivered to the NATO Science and Technology Board, the highest authority within the Science and Technology Organization,” Street confirmed.

Space Force trying to protect its ‘soft underbelly’

The U.S. military faces a variety of threats to its satellite systems, but the Space Force’s “soft underbelly” is cyber, a top official said Monday.

Cyberattacks could threaten on-orbit capabilities and the ground systems that support them, which are critical for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), communications, and positioning, navigation and timing. Making U.S. systems secure is a top priority, noted Lt Gen. Stephen Whiting, head of Space Operations Command (SpOC).

“These global networks that we have in Space Force and SpOC are truly not only global — meaning they wrap around the globe — but then they extend out to 22,000 miles above the Earth’s surface into geosynchronous orbit. And that creates a lot of novel cyberattack surface … where bad actors might try to attack us in the cyber domain. So, we have to secure that because that’s our soft underbelly,” Whiting said during a Mitchell Institute event.

“That’s our first priority is to prepare those combat-ready, ISR-led, cybersecure space and combat support forces,” he added.

Advanced adversaries like Russia and China have tested anti-satellite (ASAT) missiles that could destroy U.S. spacecraft in orbit, “but they would prefer to take us on in cyber because it’s just a lower bar” to clear operationally, Whiting said.

Cyberattacks would also be a preferred method for less advanced adversaries such as North Korea because their other counter-space capabilities are lagging, he said.

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) released a report last month on challenges to security in space. The study included cyber among a list of other threats to U.S. space systems such as ASAT missiles, directed energy weapons, electronic warfare and orbital systems.

“With sophisticated knowledge of satellite C2 [command and control] and data distribution networks, actors can use offensive cyberspace capabilities to enable a range of reversible to nonreversible effects against space systems, associated ground infrastructure, users, and the links connecting them,” the report said.

China’s People’s Liberation Army emphasizes offensive cyberspace capabilities as a major component of integrated warfare, the DIA noted.

The PLA could launch cyberattacks against other nations’ space-based assets and other command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) networks and commercial systems to establish “information dominance” in the early stages of a conflict, the report said.

China also uses cyberespionage to steal other countries’ space and counterspace technologies for its own benefit, according to DIA.

Meanwhile, Russian counterspace doctrine involves using cyber capabilities to target an adversary’s satellites and supporting infrastructure.

“Russia considers the information sphere, especially space-enabled information collection and transmission, to be strategically decisive and has taken steps to modernize its military’s information attack and defense organizations and capabilities,” the DIA report said.

It added: “Since at least 2010, the Russian military has placed a priority on the development of forces and capabilities, including cyberspace operations, for what it terms ‘information confrontation’ — a holistic concept for ensuring information superiority. The weaponization of information is a critical aspect of this strategy and is employed in times of peace, crisis, and war.”

Washington lawmaker warns over impact of VA electronic health record outages on patients

A lawmaker has written to the director of the Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane, Washington, warning over the impact of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ recent electronic health record system outages on veterans’ care.

In a letter to the director of the medical center last week, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., outlined serious concerns with delays in care and lost medical records as a result of complications associated with the VA EHR system rollout.

The congresswoman wrote: “I continue to have serious concerns with delays in care and lost medical records due to complications with the EHR rollout. It was recently reported in the Spokane Review that the system has been partly or completely down more than 50 times since it has launched.”

“This has led to hundreds of impacts on patient care, with veterans experiencing unacceptable care delays for critically needed treatment,” McMorris Rodgers. “Veteran records have been deleted from the system, leading to lost prescriptions for critical medications, appointment cancellations and delays, and other unacceptable lapses in veteran safety and care.”

The intervention comes after the VA at the end of April rolled out the new Cerner-provided electronic health records system at the Central Ohio Health System in Columbus. It is the third medical center to adopt the new platform, despite calls from multiple lawmakers for the rollout of the system to be temporarily halted until existing issues with the system are fixed.

According to a recent report by the Spokesman-Review newspaper, the EHR platform has gone offline more than 50 times since it first went live in 2020.

The VA is in the process of conducting root cause analyses of the electronic health record system’s problems with Cerner, which built the commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) product the department is moving to under a $10 billion contract.

Cerner agreed to credit VA for failing to maintain the minimum level of system uptime stipulated in the contract, Dr. Terry Adirim, program executive director of the EHR Modernization (EHRM) Integration Office (IO), told The Spokesman-Review earlier this month. Outages have hindered health care providers’ ability to access patient information and plan care at VA medical centers piloting the system in Washington State and Ohio.

Prototyped DIU technologies coming to GSA contracts

The General Services Administration can transition successfully prototyped Defense Innovation Unit solutions to its contract vehicles through a memorandum of understanding signed Monday.

GSA will use its streamlined FASt Lane process and DIU the Other Transaction authority and follow-on production contracting to onboard the latter’s industry partners faster.

The agencies previously partnered on Blue UAS, which makes National Defense Authorization Act-compliant drones available through GSA for the Department of Defense and civilian agencies, and this second collaboration makes it easier those agencies to access non-traditional commercial technologies.

“Sharing expertise and intellectual resources between agencies is mutually beneficial to DIU and GSA’s missions,” said Laura Stanton, assistant commissioner for the Office of IT Category, in the announcement. “We’re really excited to bring these innovative companies, many of which are small businesses, to GSA contracts.”

Agencies can access the technology solutions through GSA’s Multiple Award Schedule.

DIU accelerates the military’s adoption of emerging technologies in six areas: machine learning and artificial intelligence, automation, cybersecurity, energy, human systems, and space.

“Partnering with GSA to more easily bring proven, innovative and emerging technologies to meet agency missions across the U.S. government is a win-win for both the taxpayers and for the commercial companies working with DIU,” said Director Mike Brown.

Navy grappling with the future of its unmanned fleet

The Navy wants to create a “hybrid fleet” that includes a large number of robotics vessels to complement its manned ships, and it is laying the groundwork for such a transformation. However, its new shipbuilding plan and recent comments by senior officials indicate that the future of the unmanned force remains murky.

The service is touting the benefits of having cost-effective uncrewed maritime systems that could conduct a variety of missions — to include intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR) and offensive strike — and keep sailors out of harm’s way.

Officials say such platforms will be an integral part of the Navy’s future warfighting team.

“Unmanned systems will increase lethality, capacity, survivability, operational tempo, deterrence, and operational readiness,” the Navy stated in its Unmanned Campaign Framework released last year.

“The question is not ‘if’ the Naval force will prioritize and leverage unmanned platforms and systems, but how quickly and efficiently, in resource constrained environments,” the document said.

However, the sea service still hasn’t figured out how many it will need in the long term and what mix of systems it wants.

The new shipbuilding plan

In April the Navy released a new 30-year shipbuilding plan shortly after submitting its fiscal 2023 budget request.

The plan offers narrow objective force sizes for its future manned battle force under various budget scenarios, and it provides detailed procurement profiles for the coming decades. However, long-term plans for unmanned surface vessels (USVs) and unmanned undersea vessels (UUVs) are less clear.

The document says the Navy will have anywhere from 89 to 149 unmanned maritime vessels by 2045, assuming no real budget growth, which could include some combination of medium unmanned surface vessels (MUSVs), large unmanned surface vessels (LUSVs), and extra-large unmanned undersea vessels (XLUUVs).

Projected force levels will be adjusted as the capabilities of unmanned platforms develop and are integrated into the battle force, according to the shipbuilding plan.

“As prototyping and experimentation retire technical and CONOPS [concept of operations] uncertainty, coupled with higher fidelity cost models, we expect that the objective force ranges will narrow,” it says.

Other documents released in recent years similarly offered broad objective force ranges for the unmanned fleet.

For example, a Future Naval Force Study delivered to Congress in 2020 during the Trump administration called for 81 to 153 USVs and 18 to 50 UUVs by 2045. A Biden administration shipbuilding plan released in June of last year called for 59 to 89 USVs and 18 to 51 UUVs.

The new long-term shipbuilding plan did break down how many USVs and UUVs, respectively, might be in the future fleet, or the approximate mix of MUSVs, LUSVs, XLUUVs and other robotic platforms.

In the near term at least, the picture is a little bit clearer.

The Navy’s fiscal 2023 budget request includes $104 million for research and development of medium unmanned surface vessels and $146.8 million for large unmanned surface vessels, as well as $181.6 million for “enabling capabilities.”

LUSVs are expected to be 200 feet to 300 feet in length and have full-load displacements of 1,000 tons to 2,000 tons — larger than a patrol craft and smaller than a frigate, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS). Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday envisions them as strike platforms that could carry a “floating arsenal of weapons.”

MUSVs are expected to be 45 feet to 190 feet long, with displacements of roughly 500 tons — about the size of a patrol craft. They could be equipped with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance payloads and electronic warfare systems, according to CRS.

Additionally, the Navy is requesting $283.9 million for R&D of unmanned undersea vessels, including $116.9 million for the Orca extra-large UUV, $106.3 million for small and medium UUVs and associated payloads, and $60.7 million for supporting technologies.

XLUUVs are to be about 50 feet long, or approximately the size of a subway car, and could lay mines, among other potential mission sets, according to CRS. The Navy christened the first in-water “test asset system” for the Orca platform in April.

The sea service is also pursuing a variety of smaller systems that would likely never be included in the battle force count, such as the REMUS 300, which in March was selected as the next-generation UUV program of record. The system is man-portable and could be deployed from small boats for ISR missions or countermine operations, among other tasks.

In April the Department of Defense also announced plans to transfer mysterious “unmanned coastal defense vessels” to Ukraine that analysts say are likely small USVs, but the Pentagon has been tight-lipped about them.

‘Still in their infancy’

Part of the reason the Navy isn’t on the precipice of buying large numbers of robotic ships is that these types of systems aren’t as far along in their technological readiness as unmanned aerial systems, which proliferated and became an iconic symbol during the post-9/11 wars.

“While the U.S. military has remotely operated uncrewed aerial vehicles for over three decades, uncrewed maritime systems are still in their infancy from both technical and operational perspectives,” the Government Accountability Office said in a report published in April.

“To execute its strategy, the Navy needs to make significant investments in the development of technologies to enable these uncrewed maritime systems to operate both autonomously (or semi-autonomously) as well as in conjunction with the existing fleet. As a result, the Navy is embarking on a robust effort intended to rapidly develop and field uncrewed maritime system prototypes and overcome technical challenges prior to acquiring these systems in significant numbers,” the GAO study said.

The Navy’s new shipbuilding plan acknowledges that new production platforms have developmental risks.

The Snakehead large displacement UUV program is an example. The fiscal 2023 budget request would eliminate funding for the program to the tune of $516.8 million across the future years defense program.

“Misalignment of Snakehead LDUUV design and procurement efforts with submarine hosting interfaces resulted in limited availability of host platforms to conduct Snakehead operations,” according to Navy budget documents. “Cost and schedule delays associated with LDUUV development and Virginia Class SSN [submarine] integration prohibited further investment.”

Building and integrating platforms isn’t the only challenge. Developing enabling technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning will be critical for enabling autonomous operations.

“We need to be more disciplined in describing what we need artificial intelligence to do, what type of machine learning do we actually need, how will those investments close our key operational problems, and how they’re linked to our concept of operations in terms of how we’re going to shoot how, we’re going to maneuver, how we’re going to resupply and how we’re going to defend in high-end conflict that could potentially be in the Pacific,” Vice Adm. Scott Conn, deputy chief of naval operations for warfighting requirements and capabilities, said in April at the annual Sea-Air-Space conference.

Speaking last month at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Adm. Gilday said unmanned systems coupled with AI and other software have a lot of unrealized potential, but it’s difficult to come up with “a definitive number” for how many systems the Navy needs.

Additionally, the service still needs to make more headway with Project Overmatch, the Navy’s contribution to the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) concept, which aims to link the U.S. military’s sensors and shooters into a more unified communications network.

That effort is “getting after the C2 challenges that we need to resolve before we scale in a big kind of way with unmanned,” Gilday said.

Ships will need to have their own “tactical cloud” to handle data.

“That tactical cloud might be informed by a data link back in CONUS [the continental United States] or in Hawaii or wherever it might be. But at some point that ship … is likely to be cut off from communications and only have the data available that you have resident in your own tactical cloud, supplemented by your own sensors,” he said.

He continued: “And so I think, first and foremost … we have to have the ability from a mission command standpoint to leverage micro-processing and applications. And this is exactly what we’re trying to do with Overmatch in order to make the most use of that data locally.”

He continued: “And then I think the real key is the AI capabilities you’re going to use to leverage the data … We’re in a good path in terms of experimentation to work our way through that.”

An ‘eye opening’ experience

The Navy in September of last year established an Unmanned Task Force to look at ways to solve operational challenges and inform acquisition strategies.

Around the same time, another task force, CTF-59, was set up with the Navy’s Fifth Fleet to try to accelerate AI solutions through operational experimentation with available unmanned systems and to look for ways to improve situational awareness.

A number of fleet exercises have also been conducted to explore the technology, including International Maritime Exercise 22. The event, which wrapped up in February, involved more than 80 robotic platforms of various types.

“We put unmanned systems in those exercises with our industry partners, with our allies, to iterate, to learn, to understand the capabilities [and] the gaps that we need to close on before we make the decision to scale,” Conn said.

“That is the type of environment that we need to continue to resource and to use because I’m a firm believer some of the really clear innovative solutions is going to come from the fleet. Give them the tools, let them iterate, let them learn, provide us in the Pentagon feedback,” he added.

The hope is that the unmanned task forces will reduce technical risks and make the Pentagon a more informed customer with respect to what it’s going to buy and the appropriate engineering paths and command-and-control frameworks before it starts deploying them.

The sea service is worried about screwing up, Gilday acknowledged, pointing to the failures of the Littoral Combat Ship program. The LCS have been plagued by technical problems and doubts about their survivability and utility in a conflict against advanced adversaries, and the Department of Defense is in the process of retiring many of them even though they’re relatively new additions to the fleet.

“I don’t want to wake up in 15 years and say we bought the wrong kind of LUSV with the wrong engineering plan,” Gilday said.

The Navy wants to “build a little, test a little, learn a lot.”

Based on what’s been learned so far, Gilday recently called into question whether the Navy even needs a medium unmanned surface vessel, despite the fact that the service’s 2023 budget request includes $104 million in R&D funding for the technology.

“The way we’re going with the unmanned task force that’s tied together acquisition specialists, requirements folks, scientists from the Navy research labs, and also the fleet with CTF-59 in terms of real-time exercising, experimenting and developing CONOPS — it’s been a powerful, eye-opening, awakening experience for us,” he said.

In the future “I don’t know if we’ll have a medium unmanned or not,” he added. “The stuff that [Vice Adm. Brad Cooper] is doing right now with CTF-59 and using small unmanned on the sea, in the air to sense the environment and make sense of it in order to yield a common operational picture for allies and partners, as well as the Fifth Fleet headquarters, has changed my thinking on the direction of unmanned.”

The Navy may be able to close capability gaps with smaller, expendable robotic systems, he suggested.

‘Minimally manned’

The Navy has been testing the ability of various vessels, including large Sea Hunter prototypes, to sail long distances without humans onboard. Such systems now have more than 40,000 nautical miles of “autonomous travel” under their belt, according to Gilday.

But navigation is just one piece of the operational autonomy puzzle that needs to be solved for robotic ships to take on a bigger role.

“To send an unmanned out into the ocean with a mission, and to expect that unmanned to come back and salute and say ‘mission complete’ — that’s a whole different problem set,” Gilday noted. “That’s something that we’re working on, but quite frankly that’s going to be a journey for us.”

There could be a transition period for platforms like LUSVs during which some sailors would be onboard to make sure things don’t go awry.

“I use the word ‘unmanned’ perhaps too often. I think that we’re going to be in an evolutionary path here with unmanned, and I think that’s likely to involve minimally manned [ships] for a while,” he said.

Gilday sees a possibility of deploying LUSVs with strike groups and amphibious ready groups beginning in the late 2020s, but he noted they don’t necessarily have to be completely uninhabited by sailors at that time.

A view from the Hill

The White House and Navy can propose buying whatever ships they want, but Congress has the power of the purse and can choose to not go along with their plans.

While lawmakers recognize the usefulness of unmanned technology, some are worried about embracing it too quickly.

“It’s hard enough to operate a ship and the mechanical systems at sea with a crew. And we have tried even with a manned ship to scale back and do smart ship technology and do different things to reduce manning — and we failed at that every time. How are we ever going to actually field the technology where we can operate this [unmanned] thing independently for extended periods of time?” said Vice Chair of the House Armed Services Committee Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., a retired Navy surface warfare officer.

Concepts of operations for unmanned vessels haven’t been sufficiently fleshed out, she said at the Surface Navy Association’s annual conference earlier this year.

“There’s kind of just a lot of different things out there that have been proposed. And it’s not very clear kind of which direction the Navy wants to go, what technology they want to either replace or augment with these unmanned vessels. And so that’s why I remain somewhat skeptical,” she said.

Luria is particularly opposed to efforts to decommission manned ships to free up money to invest in new technologies like unmanned systems that aren’t yet ready for prime time.

“We need to make investments in developing the technology to implement it when it’s mature, but that should not be at the expense of” the current fleet, she said. “We can’t just get rid of our fleet today to jump on a technology that’s not mature yet.”

Gilday noted that there’s wariness on the Hill about robotic ships.

“Congress is not going to let us move that quickly anyway, so we are trying to prove ourselves in an evolutionary, deliberate, informed kind of way,” he said.

No risk-free path

The Government Accountability Office says the Navy is at risk of failing to achieve its strategic goals if it doesn’t improve how it’s managing its uncrewed maritime systems portfolio.

“If it continues with its current approach, the Navy is less likely to achieve its objectives,” the watchdog warned in its report released last month.

GAO issued a list of recommendations for the sea service, including providing cost estimates that include the full scope of known costs to operate uncrewed systems, reorganizing oversight of the uncrewed maritime systems portfolio, and offering more details about measures and metrics for achieving strategic objectives.

Other recommendations include: developing evaluation criteria for assessing each uncrewed prototype effort’s readiness to transition to an acquisition program; putting together a master planning schedule to include each uncrewed maritime system effort; and revising prototyping plans for each uncrewed maritime system to incorporate how the Navy plans to use its prototyping efforts to mature technologies to achieve top level requirements as well as develop certifications that apply to uncrewed maritime systems prior to investment decisions.

The Navy generally concurred with the recommendations, but its planned actions do not fully address all of them, according to GAO.

Tom Shugart, a defense analyst with the Center for a New American Security and a retired submarine warfare officer, said the Navy’s current approach to unmanned maritime systems is about right, but it needs to be prepared to move faster.

“Once the Navy does sort of get these things figured out, I think the scale needs to be turned up pretty rapidly. Because the nature of the challenge that we’re seeing out there in the western Pacific really calls for a pretty dramatic and urgent action to try to address the challenge of the PLA [China’s military] and in particular the PLA Navy,” he said.

When the Navy is ready to ramp up, industrial capacity isn’t expected to be a hindrance, the new shipbuilding plan suggested.

“The unmanned surface and undersea vessels described in this plan can be supported by the existing shipbuilding industrial base, providing opportunities for existing shipyards, existing boat and craft builders, and the potential for new entrants,” the document says.

There’s no risk-free path to developing an unmanned fleet, Shugart noted.

“I get it that there are folks that are hesitant to invest a lot of money into things that haven’t been fully proven yet,” he said. “But not investing and not moving at the pace we need to has its own operational and strategic risks of just leaving an unanswered challenge out there.”

How many uncrewed systems the Navy needs and decides to procure will depend on a number of factors and will be shaped by requirements and the amount of resources available for investment.

“The requirements part I would imagine hasn’t really been fully figured out yet. They’re still working on the CONOPS, the concepts of operations … which helps you figure out what you can and want to do with these things,” Shugart said.

Operational plans for the systems, informed by threat assessments, need to be developed to help officials determine how many they will need to achieve operational objectives.

Given the uncertainties at this point, it makes sense that the Navy’s shipbuilding plan didn’t offer a narrower range for the number of USVs and UUVs that it projects will be in its future force structure, or provide more granular details, he said.

It could be years before the sea service is able to state more precisely how many robotic ships it plans to buy.

“To have things really nailed down to one ‘here’s what we need’ number for unmanned systems — that would be unrealistic anytime real soon,” Shugart said.