The Navy's Yellow Submarine is About to Sail — But No One Lives There

The Large Displacement Unmanned Underwater Vehicle, an experimental sub built by the Office of Naval Research, is set for a sea voyage in 2016 from San Francisco to San Diego.

ARLINGTON, Va. (April 7, 2015): First publicly released photo of ONR's Large Displacement Unmanned Underwater Vehicle - Innovative Naval Prototype (LDUUV-INP). The LDUUV-INP technologies will develop enhanced capabilities in endurance, energy, and autonomy. (Photo credit Office of Naval Research/Released).

The drone sub is ONR's attempt to crack a persistent problem in the development of underwater drones: the ability to operate autonomously underwater for a long time, using its sensors, while navigating safely. The head of ONR, Rear Adm. Mat Winter, told a crowd on the exhibition floor at the Sea-Air-Space Expo that the drone, which the Navy will start acquiring this year, can already operate for up to 30 days, but the goals are much loftier.

"I'm talking power generation, fuel and battery technology, that can approach months and years of underwater domain activity," Winter said.

The Navy eventually wants to use the Large Displacement Unmanned Undersea Vehicle for a range of missions, from underwater reconnaissance and mine countermeasures to launching aerial drones for surface reconnaissance.

But that's something the Navy is still figuring out. The test platform on display at Sea-Air-Space is being run on a number of types of fuel cells and power generation constructs as they work up extending the underwater time, he said.

Winter said getting the LDUUV's longevity up — along with keeping it from bumping into underwater obstacles, from submerged mountains to fishing nets — are the goals for the program.

"We're doing various [test] runs to understand the best configuration, best chemical reaction configuration, and fuel cell technology ... ONR scientists are really making some groundbreaking headway on that."

Those capabilities will be put to a big test next summer, Winter said.

The Navy has a grandiose vision for the LDUUV. According to recent requirements documents posted on the federal contracting database FedBizOps, the Navy ultimately wants to use the LDUUV for a range of missions from underwater reconnaissance and mine countermeasures to launching aerial drones for surface reconnaissance.

The LDUUV is being designed to launch from a Virginia-class submarine's torpedo tube, a littoral combat ship or a dry dock shelter, according to the requirements.

The LDUUV would help backfill demands from combatant commanders for attack submarine intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, said a retired submarine captain and UUV expert who spoke on background.

"When [Adm. Gary] Roughead was CNO he tasked ONR with creating a UUV that could do 'real misions,' " the source said. "An SSN can go out for 45 to 60 days at a time, so that's what ONR is trying to do."

The source said the Navy needs to have realistic expectations of what these drones can accomplish, given the complexities of navigating underwater autonomously, the severe limitation on data transmission between the sub and its controllers while submerged, and the difficulty of creating enough power from either fuel cells or batteries to keep the sub operating over long periods of time.

One option the Navy is exploring, the source said, is creating a network of underwater data transmission stations, like telephone booths, that the sub could navigate to and upload data from its sensors at a high data transmission rate.

But all of that comes later, the source said, because right now the focus is just getting LDUUV to operate without bumping into things.

"Right now they are trying to just build the truck," the source said. "What they load onto it, that comes later."

Submarines: Underwater Game Changers

The United States builds, arguably, the world’s most capable submarines. But at about $2 billion apiece, there are only so many subs the US Navy will acquire, and it’s widely recognized the supply will never meet the demand.

Meanwhile, building and acquiring modern submarines is a worldwide growth industry. Russia, China and even India are designing and building multiple new classes of subs, armed and fit with a growing variety of weapons and sensors — and a number of nations are building or purchasing foreign-designed undersea craft.

Retired Vice Adm. Michael Connor, a former commander of the US Navy’s submarine forces, explained this activity in a recent hearing on Capitol Hill.

“The undersea arena is the most opaque of all warfighting domains,” Connor said during an Oct. 27 hearingat the House Seapower subcommittee. “It is easier to track a small object in space than it is to track a large submarine, with tremendous fire power under the water. That is why countries with the technical wherewithal to operate in this domain are pursuing advanced capability. The two countries that present the biggest challenge in the undersea are Russia and China, with Russia being the more capable of the two.”

Rather than simply building more submarines, Connor and others are urging more sustained development of weapons and sensors to increase the power of US undersea forces. Among Connor’s top recommendations is the desire to extend the striking range of submarine-launched weapons.

“This multiplies the impact of each submarine and multiplies the search challenge that each submarine presents to a potential foe,” he said.

Connor specifically wants torpedoes with ranges of more than 100 miles.

“This is definitely doable with chemical-based propulsion systems and will likely soon be achievable with battery systems,” he said. Such a range also will need better command-and-control systems, including the ability to communicate with the torpedo, perhaps via manned or unmanned aircraft or by satellite, he said.

“The torpedo will come to be considered along the line of a slow-moving missile,” he said, “with the advantage that it is more difficult to detect, carries a much larger explosive charge and strikes the enemy beneath the waterline, where the impact is most severe.”

Connor also wants the US “to get back into the business of submarine-launched anti-ship missiles” with the ability to “confidently attack a specific target at sea at a range of about 1,000 miles. We should be pursuing this more aggressively than we are.”

Connor also wants better and more-capable undersea vehicles.

“We need to improve the endurance of the vehicles, expand the payload set, and get to the point where any submarine can recover the mission data, if not the vehicle. We need to do this while keeping the cost of the vehicle down. The cost should be low enough such that, while we would always like to get the vehicles back, it is not a crisis if we don’t. The value is in the data, not the vehicle.”

Bryan Clark, a naval analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, appeared alongside Connor and urged greater development in undersea sensors — onboard submarines, unmanned vehicles and weapons, as well as deployed in the water and fixed on the seabed.

To coordinate the development and fielding of underwater systems, Clark said the Navy should “make its undersea warfare resource sponsor and acquisition organizations responsible for all undersea vehicles and systems once they transition out of research and development.”

Clark urged continued development in a wide range of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV), including looking at ways to arm some. He pointed to the compact, very lightweight torpedo — now under development — as having potential not only as a defensive, anti-torpedo weapon but also as a weapon that could be carried and launched by larger UUVs.

Connor and Clark said Congress could aid these efforts by providing funding not tied to specific programs of record. “Programs should be defined broadly so that they can incorporate innovation without recreating the program,” Connor said.

The failure of some efforts, he said, should not necessarily be taken as a negative thing. He said Silicon Valley failure rates sometimes approach 90 percent.

“If we are innovating aggressively enough, perhaps half of our initiatives will fail,” he said.

Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., chairman of the subcommittee, agreed with many of the recommendations.

“There’s a recognition that if we’re going to keep up with undersea dominance, it’s not just about creating more platforms, but we have to create relatively sophisticated systems of systems with the ability to multiply capability but not just adding a platform,” he said in a post-hearing interview.

“We can create a platform to last 20, 30, 40 years,” he said, noting that many systems will be developed over that time. “So it’s important to find the process or architecture to create innovation and put it out in three to four year cycles.

“What I’m excited about,” he said, “is we’ve got people in the Pentagon, the private sector and in policy sectors who understand this and can create partnerships to actually get them done.”