British-based BAE Systems is proposing a sea-going mother ship for unmanned vehicles (UXV) of various types. A BAE news release sent out a few days ago describes the new warship as the UXV Combatant, designed to operate in a future battle space dominated by land, sea and air unmanned vehicles. Using a proven naval hull form to launch, operate and recover large numbers of small unmanned vehicles for extended periods, the UXV plays the role of mother ship — a permanent base and control centre for the futuristic unmanned land, sea and air vehicles…
An artists concept of the 8,000-tonne warship shows a low-observable (stealth) design with two large island structures amidships, recessed missile launchers forward, and a large flight deck area aft for operating Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). The ships hull and combat systems will be a development of the Type 45 destroyer.
The first Type 45 destroyer — HMS Daring — is now on sea trials. The Royal Navy plans to procure eight of these ships, which have a full-load displacement of some 7,350 tonnes and are 500 feet in length. The gun/missile-armed ship has helicopter facilities.
The UXV support ship, apparently based on an enlarged Type 45 design, will have a lower hangar deck for storing and maintaining UAVs, while the two flight decks will have a variable ski-jump ramp to accelerate the launch of heavily loaded UAVs.
The ship would also support Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUV) and Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV).
While the Royal Navy has made no commitment to construct such a ship, BAE Systems believes that a UXV support ship could be operational by 2020.
The U.S. Navys Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program that is now underway provides for at least three LCS mission configurations — anti-surface craft, anti-submarine, and mine countermeasures. All of these configurations will make extensive use of UAVs and, depending upon the configuration, will also operate surface and underwater unmanned vehicles.
The U.S. Navy is also developing a large, carrier-based Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAV) based on the technology demonstrator designated X-47B. Developed by Northrop Grumman, the UCAV derived from the X-47B will be a multi-mission aircraft with a flying-wing configuration. It will operate from large-deck aircraft carriers. They will operate employing arresting gear and catapults, as do manned aircraft, and they will be integrated into conventional carrier air wings.
But the proposed BAE Systems UXV support ship will — with the U.S. Navys LCS program — be the worlds first specialized ships for operating unmanned vehicles. These will certainly lead to a marked change in the nature of naval operations.
Good Morning Guys,
The only response I can think of to this idea is why?
Common sense says that underwater unmanned vehicles would best be served by submarines, stealth anyone. Surface unmanned vessels I would think would do ok being operated from current amphibious warfare ships that already have wet docks.
The UCAV is already destined to be deployed on carriers, Granted a 100Kt. behemouths like the CV-21 Class may not be neccessary for the unmanned air vehicles, something in the 15Kt. size might do just nicely, but that’s another dicussion.
This seems to be an idea that died with the old Sea Plane Tenders, anyone for bringing back the U.S.S. Pine Island?
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Well I must admit that those WW2 Sea plane tenders do come to mind, but I think this is an excellent idea. One of these ships sailing in accompany of larger carrier type aircraft, freeing up deck space on the “real” carriers for standard aircraft operations.
Pocket Carrier Anyone?
– Phil
The argument for this vessel over a role swapped phib is speed basically– that a more capable self defense and potentially C3. The Danish Absalon (or is it Absalom) class is another BAe design with a flexible mission deck.
This design seems to have a pretty extreme flight deck design too– that’s a pretty big overhang. The sort of design feature that isn’t very easy to build into a very stable or stealthy design.
Im just sad to see computers take over the role Humans should have. No computer is going to match a human. Unmaned recon is one thing, but unmaned combat is quite another. What happens when the terrorist find a way to hijack the ship, when they figure out how to interfear and kill half of New York with our own ship. Unmaned will never be as effective as Manned.
Hey,we still have the LPH-10 Tripoli above water(meaning that she hasn’t been scrapped or sunk, unlike her fellow Iwo Jima sister ships).Oh wait I forgot,using this ship as a carrier for UAVs violates the Military Industrial Complex agreement to waste billions of dollars on future(?) planned(scammed) carriers of this kind.I guess they better hurry up & sink this mother before somebody decides to save money by actually using what we already have.I guess its time to make the Tripoli a new “‘artificial’ reef.”
If we built some fast container ships, this is just one of the ways we could configure them.