By Mark Dalton
Head of Strategic Planning Office
U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Newport Division

Throughout history, a nation’s ability to master the sea has been crucial to develop and safeguard prosperity. Imagining mastery of the sea likely conjures quaint images of the Age of Sail, yet the concept remains relevant. In the modern era, a nation’s ability to project sea power is essential to deter adversaries and protect trade for economic development. Since the end of World War II, the U.S. Navy has taken on this role, mastering the sea to provide security for maritime trade worldwide.

Today, two factors challenge the U.S. Navy’s longstanding technological and operational superiority in the sea. One is new warfighting domains that add complexity; technologies that exist from the ocean floor to space now play a significant factor in maritime and economic affairs. The other is that great powers (China and Russia) seek to challenge the international rules-based order.

To counter these threats, the Navy is developing new concepts of operation and integrating emerging technologies into its systems-of-systems. Commander of the U.S. Navy Submarine Forces Vice Adm. Robert Gaucher has outlined four major areas where the government, industry, academia, and the Submarine Forces need to collaborate on development efforts. These focus areas provide insight into what work is needed for the U.S. Navy to retain mastery of the sea at all depths.

UUVs and Subsea, Seabed Warfare

The deployment of unmanned systems, mainly unmanned aerial systems (UAS), has changed the character of war. While unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs) have been slower to achieve a UAS level of adoption due to the challenging undersea environment from a communications standpoint, recent developments have made UUVs more common, and the Navy can now leverage UUVs more frequently in the undersea domain.

UUVs offer submarine crews greater capacity to conduct operations, such as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; acoustic collections; and oceanographic surveys. UUVs also extend the reach of the Submarine Forces to areas too dangerous for a manned platform to operate, expanding the range from the shallows to the depths of the seafloor.

Additive Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing (AM), or 3D printing, has matured in the past decade and could address some of the challenges the U.S. Submarine Forces face when it comes to accessing spare parts. Instead of manufacturing parts at a central location and staging spares, plans can be sent to the end-user for production at remote facilities or even on the platform itself. As the Navy operates in theaters that are far from support activities, the ability to produce parts locally and remain on station adds tremendous value.

Early efforts have focused on polymer printing—demonstrated on six submarine deployments to date—with metallic printing becoming more common. For example, the submarine tender USS Emory S. Land deployed to Australia with a metal AM capability, which expands the level of support provided to submarines in the Indo-Pacific.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are software techniques that are now used broadly in industry and government, and the Navy is no exception. A foundational task for developing AI/ML algorithms at the speed of relevance is to establish a common development environment (CDE) that provides developers with tools and integration pipelines to design, test, secure, and deploy algorithms.

In the past year, an AI/ML initiative by the Submarine Forces known as Task Force Turing established a CDE for a project known as Harbinger to develop, test and field ML algorithms for use on submarine-relevant acoustic data. Building upon the CDE, the team is exploring use cases outside of acoustic data, including using large language models to assist submarine support activities with creating engineering repair packages and interactive technical manuals.

Cross-Domain Command and Control

The most significant operational characteristic of the Submarine Forces is stealth, as it provides the ability to project power without detection. It is critical for commanders to have the ability to command and control all military assets within their area of responsibility. For the Submarine Forces, assets must remain hidden but retain the ability to communicate. To resolve this tension, the Submarine Forces are pursuing technologies that enable cross-domain command and control (C2) while reducing the time spent at periscope depth.

Conclusion

As it stands, the U.S. Navy—specifically, the Submarine Forces—is well poised to address challenges to our nation’s ability to master the sea at all depths, from emerging domains and global competitors. It is imperative to improve the operational capability of our forces through technological development because what is sufficient today may be insufficient tomorrow.

The Submarine Forces are focusing on the technology areas of UUVs, subsea seabed warfare, AM, AI/ML, and cross-domain C2 to remain ready and able to deliver warfighting capability to combatant commanders. Progress in these areas requires effective collaboration among the Navy, other government organizations, commercial industry, and academic partners to advance the state of the art and transform technological promise into operational capability.

Learn more here.