![]() One can only speculate what insider political wranglings led to the early inclusion of this text, and then to its removal. However, it did was ultimately removed and did not appear in the November 30 final version, which President Trump signed into law on December 12. This wording, directing the US Department of Defense to help Taiwan develop undersea warfare capabilities and vehicles, remained in the NDAA 2018 up until the conference report was filed on November 9. On June 28, 2017, the US Senate Arms Services Committee (SASC) added text to an early draft of the US National Defense Authorization Act of 2018 (NDAA) which: “directs the Department to implement a program of technical assistance to support Taiwanese efforts to develop indigenous undersea warfare capabilities, including vehicles and sea mines.” The reference to indigenous underseas warfare capabilities and vehicles harkens to diesel-electric submarines, or possibly even mini-subs or unmanned underwater vehicles. likewise, there’s going to be an evolutionary process with respect to deployment of UUVs for a wide range of missions,” Savitz said.David An is a senior research fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute and was previously a political military officer at the US Department of State. “Just as it took some time to figure out how submarines would be interacting with the rest of the fleet, and their various roles. Larger autonomous surface vessels could even be used to deploy undersea drones. These kinds of medium-size vessels could be used for sensing operations, to conduct electronic warfare and to support crewed aircraft carriers, Clark said. The ship’s maker, Reston, Va.-based Leidos, said humans made “very short duration boardings” only to check electrical and propulsion systems. This year, the Navy’s 132-foot-long Sea Hunter autonomous surface vessel sailed from San Diego to Hawaii and back without crew aboard. However, VanNierop said the two vehicles will not be exactly the same.Įventually, the Navy could pair these underwater drones with their uncrewed surface counterparts. Testing and lessons learned from Echo Voyager have been incorporated into the Orca design to improve reliability and reduce risk, Boeing said. The drone is designed to be programmable so it can launch from shore, complete its mission and then return when it’s done, said Deborah VanNierop, a Boeing spokeswoman.Įcho Voyager is currently in its second round of sea trials, which began last year, VanNierop said. During the first sea trials, Boeing tested the drone’s ability to surface, recharge and submerge, as well as its control in currents and waves. A generator kicks in when the battery runs low, and the drone will periodically resurface to snorkel depth to raise a mast that provides air to run the diesel engines, which recharge the batteries. The drone is powered by a hybrid electric-battery/marine-diesel system. During the first tests in 2017, Echo Voyager operated for about three months off the coast of Southern California while monitored by a crewed chase boat. The 51-foot-long, yellow-and-gray submarine-shaped drone has completed more than 2,500 hours of ocean testing, including two sea trials. to have enough trust in the system, which can only be achieved through testing, evaluation, usage and so on,” Savitz said.īoeing has worked on some of these issues with its Echo Voyager underwater drone prototype. “There’s a need to develop greater autonomy for UUVs than there was for UAVs and. It would also need to resurface to send faster transmissions and gain access to GPS. That means the drone would have to handle changing weather conditions or avoid obstacles underwater without human assistance. Unlike an aerial drone, which can access satellite communications to gain its bearings and show what it sees in real time to a human operator thousands of miles away, an underwater drone loses access to the electromagnetic spectrum once it is below the waterline, he said. Undersea drones can use a few different methods of communication, such as acoustics, but must be willing to trade off a slower data rate, shorter transmission distance, or both, she said.Īs a result, the drones must be endowed with a greater level of autonomy than aerial drones, said Scott Savitz, a senior engineer at the Rand Corp.
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