Optimizing for the Contested Logistics Mission: The Role of Maritime Autonomous Systems
The U.S. Marine Corps has spent more than 75 years honing the ability to assault a heavily defended beach, beginning with the famed island-hopping campaigns in the Pacific during World War II. In that time, the service has updated its tactics, techniques, and procedures and embraced new technology to maximize the success of these assaults and minimize the loss of sailors and Marines.
Far less attention has been paid to what happens after the initial assault. Enabling Marines to move beyond the beach depends on the assaulting force being able to provide continuous contested-logistics support. Unlike armies in a land campaign, during which various vehicles can provide this support, the expeditionary strike group’s ships must deliver everything Marines need to sustain the fight. Until the Marine Corps can devise a way to do so without unsustainable losses, the assaulting force will never have the weapons, fuel, food, and gear it needs to move inland. Autonomous surface vessels could provide a solution.
The Art and Science of Contested Logistics Support
Marine Corps senior leaders recognize the challenge of providing effective contested logistics support. Former Commandant General David Berger’s Commandant’s Planning Guidance put it this way: “The Navy and Marine Corps will need improved logistics capabilities. We must reimagine our amphibious ship capabilities, prepositioning, and expeditionary logistics so they are more survivable, at less risk of catastrophic loss, and agile in their employment.”
Others have pointed out that reliable contested logistics resupply is vital to the concept of expeditionary advanced base operations (EABO), noting:
The inherent risk in EABO is that traditional maritime logistics will be unable to support and sustain these groups in the contested environment. U.S. forces may not have access to stocks and supplies prepositioned in other nations. Unfortunately, EABO concepts only exacerbate this long-standing problem.
Today, after an initial assault, the ships of an expeditionary strike group would have to stand off the enemy beach to avoid falling victim to A2/AD systems. This means contested logistics resupply must come from air assets like the MV-22 Osprey or delivered by landing craft that must make an agonizingly slow journey from the strike group to the beach. Something better is needed.
The Rise of Autonomous Surface Vessels
The Marine Corps has done more than pay lip service to the need to field emerging technologies to provide sustainable contested logistics support. The Department of the Navy has made a strong commitment to developing and fielding unmanned vehicles, and the Navy and Marine Corps continue to evaluate these systems.
Navy–Marine Corps exercises, experiments, and demonstrations have experimented with using unmanned surface vessels (USVs) to sustain Marines on a beachhead during an amphibious assault. The Valiant Shield joint exercise was the first proof-of-concept for using USVs for logistics sustainment. Marine Forces Pacific used a 12-foot MANTAS USV to deliver supplies to a simulated beachhead. Because the MANTAS could carry only 120 pounds of supplies, Navy and Marine Corps leaders encouraged industry to “scale-up” such systems and has evaluated larger vessels such as the 38-foot Devil Ray, which can carry 4,000 pounds of supplies.
Such efforts are good but cannot provide the sheer volume of logistics sustainment Marines need to push inland beyond the beach. It is long past time for the Navy and Marine Corps to evaluate the ability of large and medium USVs to provide contested logistics sustainment to support Marine Corps amphibious operations.
Bigger is Better
As described in the Navy’s UNMANNED Campaign Framework, the service is committed to developing and fielding large and medium USVs (LUSVs and MUSVs). While some remain on the drawing boards or in early development, others have already been put in the hands of sailors and Marines who are evaluating their effectiveness. LUSVs or MUSVs that show promise as contested logistics sustainment assets include:
- The Navy’s program-of-record LUSV. The Navy envisions an LUSV 200 feet to 300 feet in length with full-load displacement of 1,000 tons to 2,000 tons, which would make it the size of a corvette. The Navy’s fiscal year (FY) 2025 budget submission programs the procurement of LUSVs through the Navy’s shipbuilding account, with the first LUSV to be procured in FY2027.
- Unmanned Surface Vessel Division One has stewardship for two LUSVs, the Ranger and Nomad, as well as two MUSV prototypes, the Sea Hunter and Seahawk. The Navy was sufficiently confident in its LUSV and MUSV prototypes to deploy them to the international Rim of the Pacific 2022 exercise.
- The Devil Ray T82—a scaled-up version of the Devil Ray T38—is an MUSV designed from the keel up as a high-performance, high-speed, contested-logistics vessel. It can carry an approximately 35,000-pound payload or, alternatively, transport up to eight smaller unmanned craft with logistics or kinetic-weapons packages and launching them toward the objective area.
While these LUSVs and MUSVs are not the only candidates for the contested-logistics mission, they are the ones the Navy is currently focusing on to accelerate the transition to a hybrid fleet. That said, except in the case of the T82, it is not yet clear that the Navy has prioritized the contested-logistics mission for these craft.
For example, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report, missions for the program-of-record LUSV include those focused on antisurface warfare and strike payloads, meaning principally antiship and land-attack missiles. The LUSV described in the report became a Navy program of record in 2020. The Navy acquired the MUSV Sea Hunter in 2016 and began sea trials the next year. Nomad, one of two Ghost Fleet Overlord test ships developed by the Department of Defense’s Strategic Capabilities Office, first went to sea in 2019.
Given the Navy and Marine Corps’ search for new means to sustain Marines on the beach, it is unlikely that these will be the only USVs adaptable for the contested-logistics mission. Industry is already keen to produce LUSVs and MUSVs for a plethora of missions. Witness Huntington Ingalls Industry’s acquisition of USV manufacturer Spatial Integrated Systems.
The old saw, “When everything is important, nothing is important,” applies to the Navy’s vision for unmanned surface vessels. Numerous Navy documents describe many important missions that USVs can perform. But it is long past time to focus more intently on one mission where these platforms can make a profound warfighting difference—contested logistics—and to put existing LUSVs and MUSVs in the hands of sailors and Marines.
This will help industry design vessels optimized for contested logistics. These vessels must be fast and stable in higher sea states. They must be able to transition turbulent surf zones, and they must be stealthy. Most important, they must be readily loaded and unloaded. Rather than try to design, develop, and field USVs that can be “everything to everyone,” a craft suitable for contested logistics should be optimized for that mission alone.
Optimizing for the Contested Logistics Mission
The impetus for evaluating USVs for contested logistics is clear. Using manned naval craft for this mission puts operators at unnecessary risk. It also takes them away from other necessary roles. Having a continuous, preprogrammed resupply process available to perform a dangerous function key to an amphibious assault also enables the expeditionary strike group commander to focus on other warfighting tasks in the heat of battle.
Not every promising new technology proves useful to sailors and Marines in the fight against a determined adversary, and Congress has been reluctant to fund some USVs absent a convincing concept of operations. This is why Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro introduced a “show, don’t tell,” philosophy for USVs—a concept built on continuous exercises, experiments, and demonstrations. As Del Toro has noted, “The Navy has a responsibility to be able to prove that the technology that Congress is going to invest in actually works and it meets what we need to address the threat.”
Now it is time for the Navy and Marine Corps to show how LUSVs and MUSVs can perform the contested-logistics mission and deliver large quantities of supplies to a substantial Marine Corps force attempting to move beyond the beach. The evaluation can begin immediately with Unmanned Surface Vessel Division One MUSV vessels already in the water. This should be followed by program-of-record LUSVs, the Devil Ray T82, and other projects on industry drawing boards.
Prioritizing Contested Logistics as a “Can’t Fail” Navy-Marine Corps Mission
The imperative to update the contested-logistics capability has the attention of the highest levels of Marine Corps leaders. Speaking at Modern Day Marine Expo last year, Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Eric Smith, emphasized the importance of USVs to deliver contested logistics at scale to Marines in the high-end fight in the Pacific.
The Navy and Marine Corps plan an ambitious schedule of exercises, experiments, and demonstrations in the years ahead. Based on the promising performance of small and medium-size USVs in events designed to demonstrate how USVs can provide contested logistics support for expeditionary assault forces, the Sea Services would be well served to experiment further with larger USVs to perform this vital mission.
It is unlikely that a skeptical Congress will be forthcoming with funding to procure large numbers of unmanned vessels for the Navy and Marine Corps unless or until the Sea Services can follow Secretary Del Toro’s “show, don’t tell,” philosophy and demonstrate the ability of LUSVs and MUSVs to deliver contested logistics to Marines on the beach. This is the only way that these forces will be able to move beyond the beach and seize objectives inland.
This article was first published in USNI’s Naval Proceedings on January 2025 and is republished with the author’s permission.
Featured photo: MARTAC USVS are not built as single platforms but to operate as a mesh fleet carrying diverse payloads. Here two of the MARTAC platforms are seen with the smaller MANTAS operating with a DEVIL RAY. Credit Photo: MARTAC
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