The Navy Unmanned Surface Vehicle (Usv) Master Plan

Book excerpt: The nation is faced, currently and for the foreseeable future, with a multitude of military challenges that are unlike any seen in recent history. The enemy is diverse, not easily recognizable, and operates in atypical ways. These assymetic threats have the ability to do great harm to our maritime forces and infrastructure, and the Navy must have the ability to address and defeat them in support of national Defense objectives, while continuing to execute its traditional roles. Unmanned systems have the potential, and in some cases the demonstrated ability, to reduce risk to manned forces, to provide the force multiplication necessary to accomplish our missions, to perform tasks which manned vehicles cannot, and to do so in a way that is affordable to the nation. The Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) Master Plan was chartered by the Program Executive Officer for Littoral and Mine Warfare (PEO (LMW)). It provides the guide for USV development to effectively meet the Navy's strategic planning and Fleet objectives and the force transformation goals of the Department of Defense (DoD)to the year 2020. Plan development was built on the results from Workshops conducted at the Naval War College and the Fleet ASW Training Center in late 2004 and early 2006, respectively, with major analysis, synthesis, and development efforts being conducted by a USV Master Plan Core Team.