Published on July 7th, 2022 📆 | 3158 Views ⚑
0Top Marine expects unmanned technology to spur change in designs of amphibs
Jon Harper
The development and fielding of new unmanned systems will likely lead to changes in how the Marine Corpsâ next generation of amphibious ships are designed, the serviceâs top officer said Thursday.
Future amphibs will need to be able to launch and recover a variety of robotic platforms â including aerial drones and surface and subsurface vessels â that the U.S. military intends to field, Gen. David Berger noted an event hosted by the Hudson Institute when asked for thoughts on what a future âLXXâ amphib might look like.
âWeâre going to use the amphibious ships we have right now in ways we have not used them in the past. Think unmanned. Okay, now think if you designed a ship that was designed with unmanned [platforms] in mind, what would that look like? Probably a little bit different,â he said.
If âyou had a clean sheet of white paper here ⌠what would that vessel look like? Probably different than what we have right now. So my point of departure is not the vessel we have right now [or] the next best version of it â itâs how do we think weâre going to need to operate in the future? What would that look like? My guess is more of them, [but] smallerâ than todayâs amphibs, he added.
Berger envisions amphibs as part of a larger network of launch and recovery sites for unmanned systems. But they donât necessarily have to function as âmothershipsâ for drones or other robotic platforms.
âTo date, we primarily thought of amphibious ships somewhat like [aircraft] carriers where you leave the mothership and you come back to the mothership. We need to look at them as theyâre part of a whole network of portable airfields, plus the fixed ones and harbors. So if weâre going to launch these unmanned platforms, they donât need to come back to the same ship. They could go ashore, they could go to somebody elseâs ship, they could go to an Australian ship,â he said.
Similarly, allied militaries could potentially land their drones on U.S. amphibs, he noted.
Not having to return to their launch sites could enable robotic systems to operate farther away from their point of departure.
âWe can actually extend these ranges if we open crack our minds open a bit,â Berger said.
Drones could also potentially refuel other drones, further extending their range. âTechnology wise, weâre not farâ from being able to do that, Berger said.
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