Submarine Killer - The Sea Hunter - Largest Drone Warship in the World

The rise of powerful artificial intelligence is threatening to put much of the human workforce out of a job. Soldiers and sailors are among those whose jobs may be threatened by the rise of AI. Meet the Sea Hunter, the world's biggest drone ship to date, and one whose coming arrival signals that the AI revolution extends far beyond cyberspace or the skies. Drones have been an increasingly important part of warfare for the past decade or more. It is easy to see why politicians and the military brass would have a fondness for them. They are cheap and expendable, making them easy choices for risky missions. However, drones are becoming essential to the conduct of military operations in general, and integrating themselves into the heart of a fighting force's ability to wage war effectively. The fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2020 was perhaps the clearest demonstration that drones had arrived as one of the most important items on the battlefield. In that conflict, the Azerbaijanis used drones to devastating effect against the Armenian army, which had always been blessed with superior soldiers and officers until then. Azerbaijan turned this situation around by using drones to reconnoiter the Armenian lines and reserve placements, direct firepower against ideal targets, and then use the drones to guide ground assets against the Armenian reserves, effectively cutting off the Armenian forces from one another and destroying them in detail. Drones have proven to be as important in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Both sides have used them in important operations, with Russians using Iranian drones on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians have used anti-personnel and anti-armor drones against Russian supply lines, among other targets. The wide-scale, multi-purpose use of drones in the war between Russia and Ukraine reveals how central they are becoming in warfare. Up to now, unmanned assets have largely been associated with airpower, targeted killings, and surveillance for fighting on the ground. But the Sea Hunter is one of the first signs that this is about to change. Drones are now taking to the seas. In the spring of 2016, the United States Navy christened a new ship. With a price tag of $23 million, the ship was an Unmanned Surface Vehicle, USV, called the Sea Hunter, officially known as the Medium Displacement Unmanned Surface Vehicle, MDUSV. The Sea Hunter originated as part of DARPA's Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel, ACTUV program. In 2018, Fred Kennedy, then director of DARPA's Tactical Technology Office, described the vessel as part of the US military's plan to trade small numbers of very capable, high-value assets for large numbers of commoditized, simpler platforms that are much more capable in the aggregate. He analogized it to trading smaller numbers of kings and queens on the maritime chessboard for a lot of pawns that were of lower quality, but when taken as a whole, would get the job done more cheaply and effectively than traditional naval assets. In a sign of the concept's initial success, DARPA officially transferred the Sea Hunter to the Office of Naval Research on January 30th, 2018. The Sea Hunter measures 132 feet in length. It is a trimaran vessel made up of carbon composite materials. The drone ship is capable of traveling at up to speeds of 27 knots, about 31 miles per hour, powered by its diesel engines that can carry 40 tons of fuel, enough to last for months. The Sea Hunter is designed to have an effective range of 10,000 nautical miles, putting any designated mission area in the world within its reach. It will also be designed to remain operational without any human prompting for at least 70 days. In this way, the Sea Hunter's mission duration is much like a traditional ship or submarine. However, these months-long voyages for manned assets are always expensive. One of the reasons why the Navy is so excited about unmanned ships like the Sea Hunter is because the drones will be able to take some of the same long voyages at a fraction of the cost of doing them the traditional way. The Sea Hunter could do some of the same anti-submarine tactics with 10 or more times less expenditure than doing them the traditional way. The Sea Hunter's primary purpose is to find enemy submarines. To do this, it has sophisticated sonar and radar that can specifically detect diesel-electric submarines, which are quieter than the US Navy's nuclear submarines when they run on electric power. Diesel-electric submarines are the type that currently compose the bulk of the undersea's fleet for China's People's Liberation Army Navy, PLAN, signaling what the US Naval Brass intends the Sea Hunter's primary mission to be. The Sea Hunter is not yet operational, but if it joins the fleet, it, or whatever succeeds it, will be able to complete its missions without any human input, even from remote control. Its designers have stated that the Sea Hunter is meant to be an autonomous ship, so that it can do tasks it needs to do on its own. It operates purely on artificial intelligence, which gets information from its sophisticated radar and electronic systems. In 2016, Scott Littlefield, the project manager for DARPA, said, "...we didn't want a remote-control vessel. We actually wanted something that could behave appropriately and do complicated missions under what we call sparse human control." To ensure that those complicated missions get done, the Sea Hunter boasts a capability to maintain constant communications with other ships and satellite systems. Taken together, these assets are designed to replace the traditional human crew in information gathering and decision-making, at least in the immediate term. Sea Hunter vessels are not currently designed to carry weapons. They are essentially the maritime equivalent of surveillance drones. Their mission would be to spot hostile submarines. They would not attack them on their own initiative, however. Once the Sea Hunter spots a suspicious or enemy submarine, the artificial intelligence will then notify more traditional, manned naval assets about the submarine's location. The humans aboard those ships would then make the decision about whether or not they could attack the spotted submarine. This mission will require constant communication between the Sea Hunter and traditional assets via satellite. After identifying a target, the Sea Hunter will move on to other potential targets and predict what they will do next. In addition to tracking submarines, the Sea Hunter has programs in place that would allow its artificial intelligence to track international ships and monitor shipping routes. It can act as a deterrent as well, trailing potentially hostile craft and directing them to comply with the commands that human operators make in that situation. This ability would make the Sea Hunter a valuable asset in the US Navy's Freedom of Navigation operations in the increasingly contested and dangerous waters of the South China Sea. US Navy ships participating in these FONOPs are often trailed by PLAN ships and other assets. The Sea Hunter throws a new obstacle that China would need to deal with, more on that in a moment. However, it is not yet clear when the Sea Hunter will join the US Navy's fleet in a fully operational capacity. The trials are still ongoing, building an autonomous ship is not yet easy, however, there are some promising developments. The Sea Hunter presents challenges not unlike the companies which are trying to design autonomous road vehicles. Although there are fewer surface obstacles in the ocean, the artificial intelligence steering the Sea Hunter will need to anticipate and respond to dangers on the spot without any human prompting. Thankfully for Leidos Holdings, the defense contractor behind the Sea Hunter, their project has had some promising results. The Sea Hunter has made successful ocean crossings, proving the concept of drone ships. The Sea Hunter's early tests were so satisfactory to the naval brass that some military experts anticipate that when the ship launches, it will not be limited to the primarily anti-submarine role it was initially conceived for. Instead, the Sea Hunter could take on a much broader array of missions, including surveillance, reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering tasks. A ship of the Sea Hunter's size would also be able to carry weapons, and it seems likely that the Sea Hunter or other drone ships like it will soon bear arms. For the US Navy, the Sea Hunter's arrival is coming at a critical time. The United States has, over the last 10 years, slowly but steadily lost ground in the military balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region. China has used a lot of the money from its breakneck economic growth to build an increasingly modern navy, which has become more and more of a challenge to the US Navy in the waters near the Chinese mainland. China is not only building modern ships and aircraft carriers, but submarines as well. It has also built and militarized artificial islands in the South China Sea. These bases boast scores of ship-killing missiles. Additionally, the PLAN patrols the South China Sea aggressively, claiming that all the waters in the area fall within Chinese territory. In response to the growing power of China's PLAN, and to a lesser extent the Russian Navy, the United States Department of Defense developed its Third Offset Strategy in the mid-2010s. The development of this doctrine signaled that American national security strategy would be shifting away from the War on Terror and asymmetrical counterinsurgency campaigns and toward state-based military competition, as the United States looked to maintain its military superiority in the face of more aggressive and capable nation-states like China and Russia, who sought to challenge the US-led international order. The ACTUV program, which includes the Sea Hunter, is part of the Pentagon's approach to the new Great Power competition. Considering the growing capability of the Anti-Access and Area Denial, A2AD, systems of competitor states, it's one of the most integral parts of the Third Offset Strategy. This idea primarily refers to China's huge arsenal of ballistic missiles, which pose terrible danger to American bases and traditional naval assets, like carrier groups in the Indo-Pacific region. A 2019 report from the US Army's Center for Lessons Learned revealed part of the strategy to counter enemy A2AD assets. To offset an adversary's A2AD, the US military must live and operate within the A2AD region. The National Defense Strategy, NDS, represents a re-emphasis on forward presence, but a forward presence of a particular kind. It is not about presence for its own sake or for symbolic or reassurance purposes. Rather, it is about combat-credible forward forces, that is, forces that are or can rapidly get forward, survive a withering Chinese or Russian assault, and blunt the adversary's aggression. Both represent geographical challenges equal to none that the US military has encountered. Unmanned ships like the Sea Hunter are consistent with this strategy. For example, the Sea Hunter and other ships like it will increase the US Navy's capability of defying the PLAN's attempt to choke the South China Sea's waters, because they will not suffer fatigue and are easily expendable. This is what Kennedy meant when he talked about overwhelming the chessboard with pawns that, on aggregate, can do the same job as, or a better job than, the higher quality pieces. In a military confrontation, many of these unmanned ships would be destroyed by enemy missiles. But because there are no human casualties on board, their loss is far more easily sustainable, and the ships themselves can be easily replaced because they are much less expensive to construct. In contrast, a traditional naval asset like an aircraft carrier falling prey to a cheap Chinese missile would involve the loss of thousands of lives and tens of billions of dollars. Meanwhile, as the Chinese missile stockpile gets depleted in taking out the cheap drones like the Sea Hunter, other, more expensive assets can be brought more confidently forward and blunt the adversary's continued aggression. In a less dramatic and far likelier scenario, the Sea Hunter is also ideal for grey zone operations. Grey zone operations are defined as a kind of hybrid warfare that skirt the line between peaceful activities and hostile ones. For example, China's use of an aggressive fishing fleet in the disputed waters of the South China Sea skirts the line between peaceful commerce and hostile force projection. These are not armed military vessels but have nonetheless sought to monopolize resources and prevent other ships from exploiting international waters or the waters that fall within the exclusive economic zones of other nations in the area, such as Vietnam and the Philippines. Similarly, China's constant air patrols that come within Taiwan's Air Defense Identification Zone, ADIZ, steadily exhausts the latter's resources and zaps its morale, while avoiding a direct military confrontation that could be costly for the Chinese military. Cheap Sea Hunter-type drone ships can counter these grey zone operations by being easy to produce in big numbers and not falling prey to traditional fatigue or attrition items. From there, they can be sent out in large numbers to patrol the areas that countries like China want to shut off from other nations. China's shipping fleet, for example, would have a much tougher time of it if their ships constantly needed to contend with unmanned drones from other nations harassing them in the same way that they currently harass international shipping. In a world increasingly defined by the grey zone operations of authoritarian regimes like China and Russia, which are still reluctant to directly challenge the United States' traditional military superiority, drone ships will fit right in. It all sounds great if the Sea Hunter can be made operational in the near future, but can it? As of August 2023, the Sea Hunter has not yet joined the U.S. Navy fleet. The Sea Hunter's successful ocean crossing was a major milestone. On January 31, 2019, only a year after DARPA transferred the ship to the Navy, Leidos announced the Sea Hunter had made the voyage from San Diego to Pearl Harbor and back, less than three years after the ship was first commissioned. However, beneath this glittering announcement, it was revealed that the Sea Hunter had a manned ship monitoring it throughout the journey. Sailors also boarded the drone at times to ensure that its electronic and propulsion systems were functioning properly. But progress has been steady. In August 2022, the Sea Hunter participated in that year's Rim of Pacific exercise, a multinational effort involving 26 participants. At RIMPAC 2022, the Sea Hunter joined forces with a manned destroyer to demonstrate how traditional and drone ships might cooperate. It was one of the most eagerly anticipated parts of that year's RIMPAC event. It was also an important experience, since sailors are often busy with their own tasks and do not have time to do the manned-unmanned work. The RIMPAC exercise gave them opportunity to do something they would not ordinarily do. The results at RIMPAC were apparently promising, with the Seahawk and Destroyer teams satisfactorily integrating their anti-submarine capabilities together, doing all of the tasks the exercise's planners wanted to do. The exercise the Sea Hunter was fully unmanned except for when it came in and out of port. Progress on the Sea Hunter seems to be proceeding satisfactorily then, although there is still no announced date for it to join the US Navy fleet beyond the current trial runs. The pressure may be building on the US Navy's brass to deliver, though, because the United States is not the only country that is interested in creating drone ships. As China continues its naval buildup, it is determined not to fall behind in the drone race. China, too, is experimenting with unmanned surface vehicles, and the PLAN is building one that some observers call a direct knockoff of the Sea Hunter. A photo spreading around on Chinese social media in the fall of 2020 revealed a ship that looked remarkably like the US Navy's unmanned vessel. It too was a trimaran ship, and it had similar dimensions to the Sea Hunter, being about 151 feet long by 50 feet wide. Archival satellite imagery revealed that the Chinese ship was launched before August 30th, 2019, and is being built by Zhang Tongfang New Shipbuilding Company Ltd. in Zhuajing City, Zhangji. We do not know if this is an official Chinese government program or if it is a private effort. However, given the ties that China's corporate apparatus has with the ruling Communist Party and the doctrine of military-civil fusion, where the government seeks to ensure that advances in science and technology in the civilian sector can also advance the fighting potential of China's military, it may be a distinction without a difference. China's paramount leader Xi Jinping personally oversees the military-civil fusion strategy, so if the Sea Hunter knockoff is technically a private venture, it is almost certainly not independent of China's military ambitions. Although China is known for its rob, replicate, and replace approach to Western military and industrial technology, the US Naval Institute USNI noted that the Chinese Sea Hunter knockoff is unusual in the degree it copies the American aircraft, even by Chinese standards. The PLAN is experimenting with other drone ships as well, such as the Changshing-1, which it revealed in 2017. Unlike the Sea Hunter and China's copy of it, this craft is likely armed with a 12.7mm machine gun. There is also the Jiarui Catamaran, which can carry a 30mm cannon, anti-submarine torpedoes and surface-to-air missiles, according to USNI. The Sea Hunter knockoff is much bigger than these other unmanned craft, and while it could carry weapons, the inference that USNI makes is that it is designed primarily to be a surveillance asset, like its American counterpart. China's investment in drone ship technology is strategic. Even without weapons, these ships will increase its grey zone operational capabilities, and although the Sea Hunter, and presumably its knockoff, is less capable of acting against faster nuclear submarines that can dive deeper, flooding the zone with large numbers of cheap, mass-produced drones will enhance the PLAN's anti-submarine warfare capability, something which is currently still one of its glaring vulnerabilities. As the retired American General Jack Keane, currently the chairman of the Institute for the Study of War, often says, Quantity is a quality all on its own. The arrival of drone ships from both the United States and China will make that quote even clearer. Additionally, the Chinese knockoff of the Sea Hunter will be much more capable of counteracting the subsurface vessels of America's allies in the Indo-Pacific region. For example, Japan, India, and Australia, the United States' partners in the Quad, do not have nuclear submarines. Like China, they, too, run on diesel-electric-based submarines, making them ideal targets for China's new drone ship. The Sea Hunter is only one of the first drone ships. The US Navy is currently experimenting with several other types, including the Sea Shadow, Sea Fighter, Sea Jet, and Sea Slice. In the coming decades, we should expect even bigger ones, carrying more sophisticated systems and weapons, to take their place alongside traditional ships and probably replace some of them. Will the US Navy's Sailor be yet another job that artificial intelligence threatens to replace? What do you think? Let us know your thoughts about the Sea Hunter and the future of drones in naval warfare. And don't forget to subscribe to the channel for more military analysis from military experts.