Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV)
Abstract
The Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) program has three primary goals: (1) to build and demonstrate an X-Ship with beyond state-of-the-art platform performance based on clean sheet design for unmanned operation, (2) demonstrate the technical viability of operating autonomous unmanned ships at theater or global ranges under a sparse remote supervisory control model, and (3) leverage unique ACTUV characteristics to transition a game changing ASW capability to the Navy. By establishing the premise that a human is never intended to step on board at any point in the operational cycle, ACTUV concepts can take advantage of an unexplored design space that eliminates or modifies conventional ship design constraints such as internal arrangement, reserve buoyancy, and dynamic stability in order to achieve disproportionate speed, endurance, and payload fraction. The resulting unmanned naval vessels must possess sufficient situational awareness and autonomous behavior capability to operate in full compliance with the rules of the road and maritime law to support safe navigation for operational deployments spanning thousands of miles and months of time. When coupled with innovative sensor technologies, the ACTUV system provides a low cost unmanned system with a fundamentally different operational risk calculus that enables game changing capability to detect and track even the quietest diesel electric submarine threats. Key technical areas include unmanned naval vessel design methodologies, ship system reliability, high fidelity sensor fusion to provide an accurate world model for autonomous operation, novel application of sensors for ASW tracking, and holistic system integration due to unique optimization opportunities of the ACTUV system. This effort will also explore a Tactically Expandable Maritime Platform (TEMP) concept to develop and demonstrate macroscopic integrated systems built up from International Organization for Standardization (ISO) modular technologies that can be operated from unmodified commercial container ships and deliver credible naval capability for high priority missions. TEMP will develop critical enabling modular technologies and evaluate the feasible range of naval missions that can be serviced from this highly flexible and cost effective unconventional force structure model. An initial mission to be explored will be the modular sea depot concept to enable a remote unmonitored refueling capability for small craft; enabling independent operation from host ships. TEMP will also evaluate a Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HA/DR) mission, engineering a modular first responder capability that allows the rapid force closure capability of TEMP to deliver immediate life saving operations in the hours and days following a disaster event, prior to the time that conventional platforms and organizations are able to respond.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Accomplishment
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2012
- Source ID
- 8719e8837b5552bbfa435b7a9b827674
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- Root: TACTICAL TECHNOLOGY