09/05/25: The US Navy & the Hybrid Fleet

The US Navy stands at the precipice of a new era of technology advancement. In an address at a military-industry conference, the then-US Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Michael Gilday, revealed the Navy’s goal to grow to 500 ships, to include 350 crewed ships and 150 uncrewed maritime vessels. This plan has been dubbed the “hybrid fleet.”

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The reason for this commitment to uncrewed maritime vessels is clear. During the height of the Reagan Defense Buildup in the mid- 1980s, the US Navy evolved a strategy to build a 600-ship Navy, with the fleet peaking at 594 vessels in 1987. That number has declined steadily during the past three-and-one-half decades, and today the Navy has less than half the number of commissioned ships than it had then. However, the rapid growth of the technologies that make uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) increasingly capable and affordable has provided the Navy with a potential way to put more hulls in the water.

PATH TO CONOPS

However, the US Congress has been reluctant to authorize the Navy’s planned investment of billions of dollars in USVs until the Service can come up with a concept of operations (CONOPS) for using them. Congress has a point. The Navy has announced plans to procure large numbers of uncrewed systems—especially large and medium USVs—but a CONOPS, one in even the most basic form, is yet to emerge.

That said, the Navy has taken several actions to define what uncrewed maritime vessels will do and thus accelerate its journey to have uncrewed platforms populate the fleet.

These include publishing an UNCREWED Campaign Framework; standing up an Uncrewed Task Force; establishing Surface Development Squadron One in San Diego and Uncrewed Surface Vessel Division One in Port Hueneme, California; and conducting many exercises, experiments, and demonstrations where Navy operators have had the opportunity to evaluate uncrewed maritime vessels.

These initiatives will serve the Navy well in establishing a convincing CONOPS to outline the tactical integration of these novel platforms, which will include detailing how these uncrewed systems will get to their target operating area as needed, as well as what missions they will perform on arrival.

INTEGRATING A SYSTEM OF SYSTEMS

A progressive concept of operations is to marry various size uncrewed surface, subsurface, and aerial crafts to perform critical tasks that the US Navy has—and will continue to have—as the Navy-After-Next evolves. The Navy can use a large uncrewed surface vessel (LUSV) as a “truck” to move smaller USVs, UUVs, and UAVs into the front line to carry out dull, dirty, and dangerous work associated with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and mine-countermeasures (MCM). Further, the Navy does not have to wait for a lengthy acquisition process to field capable USVs. Rather, it can use commercial-off-the-self (COTS) USVs and scale their application tomorrow, today.

How would this CONOPS for a hybrid fleet emerge? Consider the case of an Expeditionary Strike Group comprised of several amphibious ships underway in the Western Pacific. This Strike Group includes three LUSVs. Depending on the size that is ultimately procured, the LUSV can carry several medium USVs (MUSVs) and deliver them to a point near the area of proposed deployment.

These vessels can be sent independently to perform the ISR mission, or alternatively, can launch one or more smaller USVs to perform this mission. Building on work conducted by the Navy laboratory community and sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, MUSVs will have the ability to launch uncrewed aerial vehicles to conduct overhead ISR.

For the MCM mission, the LUSV can deliver several MUSVs equipped with mine-hunting and mine-clearing systems (all of which are COTS platforms such as the MCM-USV, T38 Devil Ray, Shadow Fox and others tested extensively in Navy exercises). Indeed, the T38 Devil Ray has performed this mission in Pacific Fleet-sponsored exercises.

INDUSTRY SUPPORT

While the full details of how this CONOPS plays out is beyond the scope of this article, this innovative approach accomplishes an important goal. If the US Navy wants to keep its multi-billion-dollar capital ships out of harm’s way, it will need to integrate uncrewed maritime vessels into the contested battlespace while its crewed ships stay out of range of adversary anti-access/area denial systems, sensors, and weapons.

To be clear, this is not a platform-specific solution, but rather a concept. When fleet operators see a capability with different size uncrewed COTS platforms in the water working together and successfully performing these missions, they will likely press industry to produce even more-capable platforms and thereby accelerating the fielding of a hybrid fleet.

This US Navy hybrid fleet initiative has significant implications for industry. The uncrewed systems industry is investing in extending capacity to produce various sized USVs for the naval battlespace. This will drive down the unit cost of these vessels which will, in turn, make them more affordable for other important uses, such as remote ocean monitoring, oceanographic surveys, protecting offshore infrastructure and a host of other data-centric assignments currently conducted by crewed vessels.