The U.S. Navy’s New “Hybrid Fleet” Concept: Implications for Industry

The U.S. Navy has embarked on a sea change in the composition of the future fleet, indicating that the Navy-After-Next will be a “Hybrid Fleet.” This concept was first articulated by then-CNO Admiral Michael Gilday, embraced by his successor, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, and has now gained purchase with current Navy leadership. The basics of this initiative were described in the Chief of Naval Operations Force Design 2045 which calls for 350 crewed ships and 150 large uncrewed maritime vessels for the “Navy-After-Next.”

This innovative concept was born out of necessity. The concept of Hybrid Fleet evolved due the U.S. Navy’s ongoing challenge of building enough crewed ships to adequately meet the Navy’s global commitments, and especially the demands of U.S. Combatant Commanders. The Chief of Naval Operations Navigation Plan for America’s Warfighting Navy put it this way: “We cannot manifest a bigger traditional Navy in a few short years.”

The reason for this commitment to uncrewed maritime vessels is clear. During the height of the Reagan Defense Buildup in the mid-1980s, the U.S. Navy evolved a strategy to build a “600-ship Navy.” That effort resulted in a total number of Navy ships that reached 594 in 1987. That number has declined steadily during the past three-and-one-half decades, and today the Navy has less than half the number of commissioned ships than it had then. However, the rapid growth of the technologies that make uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) increasingly capable and affordable has provided the Navy with a potential way to put more hulls in the water.

In 2025, the concept of a Hybrid Fleet has gained purchase within the Navy as well as with U.S. Combatant Commanders.

For example, in an article in U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander, Admiral Samuel Paparo, explained the Navy’s emphasis on scaling robotic and autonomous systems in order to achieve a Hybrid Fleet, noting: “The CNO is focusing on rapidly developing, fielding, and integrating UxSs. These systems will augment the multi-mission conventional force to increase lethality, sensing, and survivability. Project 33 [part of the Navigation Plan] will allow the Navy to operate in more areas with greater capability. Unmanned systems provide the ability to project fires and effects dynamically, at any time, from multiple axes, and with mass.”

Juxtaposed against this aspiration is the fact that the U.S. Congress has been reluctant to authorize the Navy’s planned investment of billions of dollars in USVs until the Service can articulate a concept-of-operations (CONOPS) for using them. Congress has a point. The Navy has announced plans to procure large numbers of uncrewed systems—especially large and medium uncrewed surface vessels—but a CONOPS, one in even the most basic form, has not yet emerged.

The U.S. Navy’s Commitment to Uncrewed Maritime Vessels

The U.S. Navy has taken several actions to define what uncrewed maritime vessels will do and thus accelerate its journey to have uncrewed platforms populate the fleet. These include: publishing an UNCREWED Campaign Framework; standing up an Uncrewed Task Force; establishing Surface Development Squadron One in San Diego and Uncrewed Surface Vessel Division One in Port Hueneme, California; and conducting many exercises, experiments and demonstrations where Navy operators have had the opportunity to evaluate uncrewed maritime vessels.

These initiatives will serve the Navy well in evolving a convincing CONOPS to describe how these innovative platforms can be leveraged. Fleshing out how this is to be done will require that the Navy describe how these platforms will get to the operating area where they are needed, as well as what missions they will perform once they arrive.

An evolving concept of operations is to marry various size uncrewed surface, subsurface and aerial uncrewed vehicles to perform missions that the U.S. Navy has—and will continue to have—as the Navy-After-Next evolves. The Navy can use a large- or medium-sized uncrewed surface vessel (LUSV/MUSV) as a “truck” to move smaller USVs, UUVs and UAVs into the battle space to perform several important Navy missions such as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and mine-countermeasures (MCM).

Further, the Navy does not have to wait for a lengthy acquisition process to field capable USVs. Rather, it can use commercial-off-the-self (COTS) USVs and field them soon. One candidate MUSV that as keen interest in Navy circles is the MARTAC T82 Leviathan, a purpose-built autonomous surface vessel capable of carrying 35,000 pounds of cargo, or a number of smaller USVs.

An Evolving Concept-of-Operations

How would this CONOPS for a hybrid fleet evolve? Consider the case of an expeditionary strike group (ESG) comprised of several amphibious ships underway in the Western Pacific. This strike group includes several LUSVs and/or MUSVs. Depending on the size that is ultimately procured, these vessels can carry several smaller USVs and deliver them to a point near the area of operations.

These vessels can then be sent independently to perform the ISR mission, or alternatively, can launch one or more smaller USVs to perform this mission. Building on work conducted by the Navy laboratory community and sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, these vessels will have the ability to launch uncrewed aerial vehicles to conduct overhead ISR.

For the MCM mission, the LUSV or MUSV can deliver several smaller MUSVs equipped with mine-hunting and mine-clearing systems (all of which are COTS platforms such as the MCM-USV, T38 Devil Ray, Shadow Fox and others tested extensively in Navy exercises). Indeed, the T38 Devil Ray has performed this mission in Pacific Fleet-sponsored exercises. These vessels can then undertake the “dull, dirty and dangerous” work previously conducted by Sailors who had to operate in the minefield.

While the full details of how this CONOPS plays out is beyond the scope of this article, this innovative approach accomplishes an important goal. If the U.S. Navy wants to keep its multi-billion-dollar capital ships out of harm’s way, it will need to surge uncrewed maritime vessels into the contested battlespace while its crewed ships stay out of range of adversary anti-access/area denial platforms, systems, sensors and weapons.

To be clear, this is not a platform-specific solution, but rather a concept. When fleet operators see a capability with different size uncrewed COTS platforms in the water working together and successfully performing these missions, they will likely press industry to produce even more-capable platforms to perform these missions, thereby accelerating the fielding of a hybrid fleet.

Implications For Industry

This U.S. Navy Hybrid Fleet initiative has significant implications for the industry. Anticipating the Navy’s need for unmanned maritime vessels (UMVs), the maritime industry has been proactive in developing small, medium and large UMVs to the extent that the Navy has “an embarrassment of riches” to choose from for a plethora of missions.

That said, industry has thus far produced only limited numbers of UMVs and fielded them in Navy and Marine Corps exercises, experiments, and demonstrations. With only a few exceptions, there are no USVs currently being produced “at scale” as industry waits for stronger signals from the Navy and Congress that funding for UMVs will reach higher levels.

The reason for optimism is that the demand function for UMVs of all sizes will materialize in the near future. The extensive use of unmanned systems in current conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, as well as the commitment interest of nations around the world to have UMVs complement their military capabilities, has sent a strong signal regarding the potential of these systems to change the character of warfare.

As UMVs begin to be produced at scale to meet Navy and Marine Corps operational requirements and instantiate the Hybrid Fleet, industry will be a serendipitous beneficiary. As the sea services purchase more UMVs, this will drive down the unit cost of these vessels which will, in turn, make them more affordable for civilian uses such as remote ocean monitoring, oceanographic surveys and sensing, protecting offshore infrastructure and a host of other missions currently conducted by crewed vessels.

This article was originally published in Ocean Robotics Planet and is republished with the author’s permission.