Transcription
We are out here in the Persian Gulf with the US Military. This might look like a normal boat, but it is actually a drone boat. Just a few yards away, more than a dozen other state-of-the-art robots that are expected to completely change the nature of surveillance and warfare on the water. We are getting a rare look at the cutting-edge technology the U.S. is testing, technology that other nations are competing to develop too.
Well, right now, we're on the leading edge of it, and our goal is to stay on the leading edge. Here in Bahrain, a U.S. Navy team known as Task Force 59 has created a test bed for some of the latest and greatest commercially made marine drones. The drones here aren't armed for now. They're loaded with high-tech radios, cameras, radar, and all kinds of other sensors to help expand the Navy's eyes and ears in the ocean. There are more than a dozen unmanned platforms being tested by the Navy as part of an effort to develop the world's first big unmanned fleet of these boats.
"We're using a model which I just call a factory to fleet." This is Vice Admiral Brad Cooper. He established Task Force 59 to rapidly integrate unmanned technology and artificial intelligence. "We're bringing things here very quickly and then testing them in the environment that would ultimately serve and quickly determining can they show promise and be effective in this environment because it's a tough environment here in the Middle East."
From this Navy base in Bahrain, Vice Admiral Cooper commands the Fifth Fleet, which covers some of the most dynamic, dangerous, and commercially important waters in the world. There are three key choke points here, all vital to the global supply chain. There are also a number of hostile actors, most notably Iran, which poses all kinds of maritime threats. In recent months, the Navy has seen record drug and weapon seizures, including from boats traveling from Iran to Yemen with large amounts of explosive material, ammunition, rocket fuses, and AK-47s. And that has all been since the Navy has put some of the drones into operation.
"Ensuring maritime security here is job one for us. A key aspect of that is understanding what's happening on the water, and this is where these unmanned systems and artificial intelligence can be helpful."
"All right, you ready?" "I'm ready." To see those unmanned systems being tested in an exercise called Digital Horizon, we climbed into a rigid-hull inflatable boat, or a RIB. Here it goes, doors opening and dropped out of the back of a Coast Guard cutter to get closer to the action. It was sort of like a drone safari.
"So, this is the Triton, and it is both a surface vessel and an underwater vessel." We saw what's hailed as the only vehicle that can sail on the surface and also operate in submarine mode. "All right, so that is the Martek." We also saw autonomous speedboats like this Interceptor, which can travel more than 80 miles per hour, and small solar-powered vessels capable of collecting information on the water for months at a time, according to the companies that make them. There was also this larger boat, which can deploy smaller robots to detect and neutralize mines and submarines.
"See this photo? That's us. The drone, on its own, flagged our boat as a potential threat." All right, so on some of these boats, you see a big green box, and that box actually houses an aerial drone. The Navy's goal is to use these drones, sort of stack these drones together, so that they can extend the Navy's eyes and ears out in the ocean farther and farther. This so-called drone in a box was tested on top of a few different drone boats. This vertical-launch drone took off and landed for the first time in windy conditions from the small deck of a Coast Guard ship.
The drones are all connected by Silvus radios, creating a resilient mesh network. If one boat goes down, the mesh network self-heals and continues working. The aerial drones extend that network even further, which can help enable over-the-horizon operations. This network allows all of the drones to relay everything they're seeing and sensing back to the Navy's Robotics Operations Center, or The ROCK.
"Well, welcome to The ROCK. This is where we bring together all the data and all the sensor information." This is Captain Michael Brasser, Commodore of Task Force 59. He's in charge of overseeing top talent from the Navy. "We're pulling in, you know, track data from AIS, from radars, from the cameras, and bringing together commercial drone companies, which are competitors, to help the Navy see what's going on on the water." You see a few streams of live video. So, this is happening right now. The Navy is able to visualize everything the drones are picking up with the help of partners like Accenture Federal Services and Big Bear AI.
And here's where things get really interesting. By harvesting millions of data points coming in from the drones, they're able to learn normal patterns of life in the ocean so that they can recognize when things are off. "We're talking about data, cloud, compute, machine learning, AI, and when all of those come together, you start to get in the predictive space. The end state is an understanding of the environment so rich that we're anticipating things to happen so we can prevent them from happening."
Defense experts tell me the need for this kind of technology has become clearer in the wake of the war in Ukraine and escalating tensions over Taiwan. In the past year, we've seen how Russian ships go dark to skirt sanctions, internet cables running along the seabed lie vulnerable, and critical underwater gas pipelines can be damaged. We've also seen claims of armed unmanned vessels operating in Ukraine. In October, Russia said Ukrainian drone boats attacked its warships on the Black Sea. That attack involved nine unmanned terrible vehicles and seven autonomous maritime drones. United 24, a Ukrainian group close to President Zelensky, praised the attack and began crowdfunding for more naval drones.
While the U.S. Navy isn't currently arming these commercial drone boats, some of the drone companies say they've already developed those capabilities. "Yeah, so the 'Seagull' is the only unmanned surface vehicle in the world that has actually launched a torpedo." "So, the 'Arabian Fox' is a multi-mission capable platform. It is capable of carrying a variety of payloads to include weapons systems. Yet, before most of the work that we've been doing on the platform was focused on that intelligence mission set, and now we're starting to look at some other kinetic options."
Analysts expect the use of drone boats to explode worldwide in the coming years, not just because of their capabilities, but because they offer militaries a way to cut costs and reduce risk to human life. Check out this chart. It shows the approximate growth of the unmanned aerial vehicles market, and right here is when UAVs were taking off. Compare that to the growth of the unmanned marine vehicles market, which emerged more than a decade later. The data suggests that the growth rates are similar.
Other countries are racing to catch up with the United States. In June, China's state-run media published video of its first drone mothership completing an autonomous trial. Russia has been working on a nuclear-tipped underwater drone called the Poseidon, and Turkish officials have touted unmanned surface vehicles that can swarm on their own. The technology is evolving, but confrontations have already begun. These videos show an Iranian ship towing a U.S. drone boat back in August. Iranian media said it impounded the drone to secure safe shipping lanes.
"As you put more unmanned vessels in the water, does the potential for conflict increase?" "Yeah, I think it's first important to note that from our interaction with Iran, that their actions were flagrant, they were unwanted, their actions were a violation of international law. Beyond that, we have not changed our operating patterns. The United States Navy and our partners fly and sail with international law allows, and that's what we'll continue to do in the future."
As for the near future, the Secretary of the Navy said he said Task Force 59's efforts will be replicated in other hot spots, and "we will soon expand that capability to other regions of the world, which is Central and South America and the Indo-Pacific, and in the Middle East." New task forces in the Army and Air Force are working alongside Task Force 59 with unmanned ground vehicles and aircraft, and that helps the Navy and the U.S. military broadly see ocean floor to space. "Absolutely, seabed to space, integrating sensors in the most dynamic, vibrant way that we can."
All right guys, if you want to see more from my interview with Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, check out this video. I'll see you next time.