Boeing has delivered a first giant robotic submarine to the US Navy, marking a sea change in how American underwater military missions will be conducted in the future, Defense One reported.
The diesel-electric-powered Extra-Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (XLUUV), based on Boeing’s Echo Voyager and known as Orca, was shipped after completing a series of sea trials, the report said.
Defense One says the XLUUV can be equipped with payload modules of up to 34 feet, bringing its entire length to about 85 feet. The report notes that the Orca is designed to perform long-duration critical missions to achieve undersea maritime dominance in changing environments and contested waters.
Defense One notes that the US Navy has designated the first Orca as Test Asset System (XLE0) and will apply lessons learned from XLE0’s testing to Orca XLUUV 1 through 5, which will be built and delivered to the Navy in the future.
The crewless submarine is designed to remain at sea for months in open, congested and contested waters with little human intervention, the Defense One report said.
Pentagon officials have discussed how large robotic submarines could help the US military increase its capabilities, especially in the Pacific region, and imposed a new challenge to China’s military build-up in recent years.
In 2016, then-deputy defense secretary Robert Work visited the Huntington Beach, California, Boeing factory where the Echo Voyager was first built and the Orca is now being constructed. Defense One notes that the Echo Voyager has spent over 10,000 hours at sea and “transited hundreds of nautical miles autonomously.”
It also notes that in the same year, 2016, Boeing partnered with shipbuilding stalwart Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) to start building the Orca. In early 2021, HII announced it had completed the construction of a factory that would assemble Orca hull structures.
In a July 2023 Hudson Institute report, Brian Clark notes that the undersea challenges posed by Russia and China have made the undersea domain more contested, posing a challenge to US undersea dominance. Clark mentions that unmanned systems can suppress and destroy any undersea defenses that potential adversaries can implement.
The Warzone reported in June 2019 that China had planted two underwater sensors between Guam and the South China Sea that can reportedly track the movements of US submarines and intercept their communications.
The Warzone report notes that one of those sensors is in the Challenger Deep and the other is situated near Yap Island. The report notes that both sensors can detect acoustic signatures as far as 620 miles away (997.8 kilometers), putting crucial US military facilities at Guam within range.
Given that threat, Clark argues that the US should leverage unmanned systems such as the Orca to a much greater degree to suppress and destroy adversaries’ undersea defenses.
He also notes that China’s massive shipbuilding capabilities make it imperative for the US to scale up the production of unmanned systems like the Orca to provide a force multiplier in the event of a great power conflict.
In the same Hudson Institute report, Jamie Foggo notes that 95% of critical communications pass through undersea cables and that any disruption to that critical infrastructure would have severe economic, political and military implications.
Asia Times noted in April 2023 that severed undersea cables can have disastrous consequences for time-sensitive diplomatic or military communications, cause massive financial losses and cut off a defender from its national leadership, intelligence and sensor fusion.
Such an attack could also be highly destabilizing for nuclear stability, as it could sever a nuclear-armed adversaries’ control over its nuclear arsenal, forcing it to maintain a heightened alert and increasing the chances of mounting a pre-emptive strike.
Given those developments, Clark mentions that unmanned systems will be an essential element of undersea warfare, as a crewed submarine is not ideal for going against underwater cables, sonar arrays or naval mines hanging on the water column.
Chuck Fralick notes in the same Hudson Report that using a US$3 billion nuclear submarine may not be the ideal asset for such missions.
Kevin Decker, in the same report, envisions deploying large numbers of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV) to leverage their distributed power, which reduces reliance on a few costly assets, substantially increases underwater situational awareness, confuses enemy detection patterns and avoids risk to crewed naval vessels.
The US may develop underwater drone swarms with Australia and the UK under the AUKUS framework, possibly bringing other Anglophone countries such as Canada and New Zealand into the high-tech emerging defense bloc.
This month, Asia Times reported that the US is getting AUKUS Pillar Two up to speed. In contrast to Pillar One, which focuses on building nuclear submarines for Australia, Pillar Two focuses on advanced technologies such as AI, electronic warfare, hypersonic weapons and quantum computing.
Canada did not join AUKUS due to the high costs of acquiring nuclear submarines. New Zealand has reservations due to its emphasis on maintaining an independent foreign policy, non-nuclear security and cultivating closer ties with Pacific countries. However, AUKUS Pillar Two’s focus on UUVs can more easily bring the two Anglophone countries within the framework.
The Naval Association of Canada notes in an October 2022 article that the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) is exploring the use of UUVs for mine hunting and notes that UUVs can perform underwater surveillance and mapping and contribute to anti-submarine warfare.
UUVs can be a practical focal point for Canada to be integrated into the AUKUS framework, promoting strategic convergence with AUKUS’ approach with Russia in the Arctic and China in the Pacific while bolstering collaboration between the bloc’s defense industries.
Likewise, New Zealand has also been integrating UUVs in its naval operations. Naval News reported that in June 2021, the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN) ordered four REMUS 300 UUVs from HII.
Naval News notes that New Zealand has a fleet of six REMUS 300 UUVs used for mine countermeasures, underwater surveys, and search and rescue.
As with Canada, UUVs can become a focal point for New Zealand’s involvement in AUKUS Pillar Two, with technology sharing within the bloc enabling New Zealand to modernize its UUV fleet further.
