Navys

Rearming U.S. Navy warships at sea might be a new mission for its pair of Montford Point class expeditionary transfer dock ships, which it acquired between 2013 and 2014. Four years ago, the service had tried to inactivate these floating logistics nodes, which are unlike anything else in its inventory today, but was blocked by Congress. At that time, TWZ noted that this was a curious decision, given the relatively young age of the ships and their adaptability to supporting new concepts of operations.

The Navy is seeking just over $177.7 million for what is blandly titled “Shipboard Crane Systems/Shipboard Cargo Systems” in its budget request for the 2027 Fiscal Year, which was rolled out last month. This money would go, in part, to completing a demonstration of an At-Sea Reload of Vertical Launch System (ASRV) capability on the USNS Montford Point, also known by its hull number ESD-1, according to the service’s budget documents. No mention is made of any plans to utilize the second ship in the class, USNS John Glenn (ESD-2), as part of this work.

USNS Montford Point, the Navy’s newest afloat forward-staging base

The documents say this same line item would also fund continuing “investigation and demonstration of shipboard crane/cargo system improvements including T-AKE [Lewis and Clark class dry cargo and ammunition ship] Expeditionary Reload and MK 41 Strike Up/Strike Down System.” It would support the initiation of “Naval Strike Missile and MK 48 torpedo reloading system improvements efforts” and the start of a “Mobile Supply Platform (MOSUP) demonstration effort,” as well.

In the current physical year, the Navy also plans to “continue investigation and demonstration of shipboard crane/cargo system improvements including Vertical Launch System (VLS) Rearming and transfer capabilities,” and “initiate design and fabrication for At-Sea Reload of VLS (ASRV) demonstration on ESD-1.”

The budget documents do not provide any further details about the ASRV capability beyond that it will offer a “cost-effective Vertical Launch System (VLS) rearm at-sea solution that will be fully compatible with all CRUDES and Allied/Partner Mk41 equipped vessels.” CRUDES here stands for “Cruiser-Destroyer,” and is a collective term for the Navy’s Ticonderoga class cruisers and Arleigh Burke class destroyers. Whether ASRV is related in any way to the Transferrable Reload At-sea Method (TRAM) that has already been tested in conjunction with Lewis and Clark class ships is unclear.

With 25,000 square feet of open main deck area, the semi-submersible Montford Point class design, derived from the Alaska class oil tanker, is ideally suited to hosting outsized items. They were also designed from the start to conduct operations involving the transfer of cargo from ships sitting alongside. As an aside, it is worth noting that the Montford Point and John Glenn are cousins of the Lewis B. Puller class of Expeditionary Sea Base (ESB) ships.

CNO Talks About the Mobile Landing Platform

In their primary “transfer dock” configuration, the ESDs act as floating self-propelled piers through which materiel and personnel can move from cargo ships to shore via ‘connectors’ like Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC) hovercrafts. They have special docking lanes that allow up to three LCACs to load and/or unload at a time. Amphibious vehicles can also drive right off into the sea and head for shore.

It is worth noting that the Navy’s stated plan now is simply to demonstrate the ASRV capability on Montford Point. At the same time, with all of the above in mind, it is not hard to see the ESDs acting as at-sea reloading nodes operationally in the future. The core transfer dock design could even potentially allow them to offload munitions from one ship on one side, like a member of the Lewis and Clark class, and then load them right into waiting VLS cells on a destroyer or cruiser sitting on the opposite side. They could also help transfer munitions to a separate pier for loading onto ships in need of rearming.

As it stands now, the Navy still has no real capacity to conduct at-sea rearming of VLS arrays on its warships. The service’s Emory S. Land class submarine tenders do have the ability to load missiles and torpedoes onto submarines at sea, but there are only two of these ships in the fleet today, something we will come back to later on. All of this, in turn, creates operational challenges that have become increasingly glaring in recent years.

At the Surface Navy Association’s main annual conference last year, Navy officials disclosed that warships supporting operations in and around the Red Sea had to leave their stations for up to two weeks to rearm in friendly ports. The distances and transit times involved could be much greater in future conflicts, especially in a future fight in the Pacific region against China. In the context of a high-end fight against a major adversary, friendly port facilities might not be readily available at all. Having to sit in an established port waiting for more munitions presents vulnerabilities of its own. A ship in need of rearming is also inherently one with a depleted magazine with which to defend itself, wherever it might be, in the interim.

At-sea reloading, whether it be from an ESD, a Lewis and Clark class cargo ship, or some other platform, would help Navy warships keep up a more persistent forward presence during sustained operations and reduce their vulnerability. There would still be risks entailed, especially if the ships have to be at anchor during rearming operations. The Navy is fully aware that an adversary like China would contest its logistics chains, in general, well into rear areas in any future major conflict.

There is also a capacity question. Making rearming at sea a more routine affair will require tasking ships to perform those duties, which can only increase the operational demands on the Navy’s existing combat support fleets. As mentioned, the Navy budget documents do show plans to work on expanding at-sea reloading capability on its 14 Lewis and Clark class ships, which are already heavily taxed conducting existing at-sea replenishment activities. They would also be high-priority targets in a major conflict. Recent operations against Iran have underscored threats to existing maritime logistics concepts, which would be far more pronounced in a high-end fight.

Making use of other existing auxiliaries in the at-sea rearming role could help address the capacity question, but there are limits there, too. The Navy only has two ESDs, and while it has backed off from its previous push to inactivate them, they are both currently on reduced operating status, which increases the time it takes to get them ready for deployment.

There is also the mention of demonstrating a “Mobile Supply Platform (MOSUP)” in the Navy’s latest budget request. What this might entail is not entirely clear, but it might point to interest in a new class of auxiliaries.

In terms of additional auxiliaries, the Navy is looking to finally order two new submarine tenders, currently referred to as AS(X), in Fiscal Year 2027, but to replace the aging Emory S. Land class ships. Since January, General Dynamics NASSCO, the shipbuilder behind the new tender design, has been pitching a companion vessel optimized for at-sea arming of surface warships, which it calls AD(X). The Navy has yet to show any formal interest in the AD(X) concept, at least that we are aware of at the time of writing.

Gibbs and Cox, a division of Leidos, has also previously put forward a concept involving repurposing semi-submersible oil rigs as forward logistic nodes, as well as missile defense platforms and sea bases.

Gibbs & Cox MODEP concept at SNA 2025

What is clear now is that the Navy is continuing to explore options for fielding sorely needed at-sea reloading capabilities, which are set to be ever-more critical for supporting future operations. An operational role in all this for the highly flexible and adaptable Montford Point class ships increasingly looks to be on the horizon.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Driven by a race to get ahead of quickly evolving enemy capabilities, the U.S. Navy is now aiming to enter the next step of contracting for its 6th-generation crewed fighter – known as F/A-XX – by August. Despite intervention from Congress, the next-generation carrier-based fighter has remained in limbo since the Pentagon moved to effectively shelve the program last year.

That’s according to Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. Daryl Caudle, who spoke with reporters Monday at the Sea-Air-Space 2026 exposition near Washington, D.C. In response to a question from TWZ, Caudle acknowledged the uncertainty that has kept F/A-XX in a holding pattern, even as the Air Force’s future fighter, dubbed the F-47, has forged ahead. The current competitors for the F/A-XX are Boeing, which is also the F-47’s prime contractor, and Northrop Grumman.

“One of the challenges we’re seeing is, not only [are] our peer competitors improving their capability for anti-air, either air-to-air or surface-to-air, but the lower cost of entry of very capable weapons is also making more players on the field in which that level of stealth and technology is required,” Caudle, the Navy’s top officer, said. “So this is not about the need for a peer adversary. This is just having an aircraft that can operate with a level of uncertainty and with the acceptable level of risk.”

This is in line with arguments Caudle made in favor of moving ahead of F/A-XX in January, where he cited growing threats posed by smaller nation-state adversaries, including Iran, as well as non-state actors.

Today, Caudle again emphasized that he nevertheless had been “very vocal” on the need for a carrier-based next-generation fighter, and had expressed “many times” to Deputy Secretary of War Steve Feinberg that the service had to secure the aircraft. It’s important, Caudle said, for both the future carrier air wing and collaboration and planning with the MQ-25 Stingray, the Boeing-made carrier refueling drone set to reach initial operational capability later this year.

“It ties to our MQ-25 for stealth refueling. It ties to our reach. It ties to the work we’re doing for making the carrier air wing something that remains very effective into the future based on the range in which you can operate safely,” Caudle said. “So the need’s clearly there.”

MQ-25A Stingray first taxi test

While it was recently reported that the Navy, bolstered by funding from Congress for the new F/A-XX, planned to award a contract for the program by year end, Caudle said August was now the likely timeframe.

As noted, the Pentagon had moved to essentially shelve F/A-XX in its Fiscal Year 2026 budget request, with the Navy only requesting a relatively meager $74 million for the program. U.S. officials said at the time this decision had been driven largely by concerns about the ability of the U.S. industrial base to support work on two sixth-generation fighters, the other being the F-47, simultaneously.

Congress subsequently interceded, appropriating $1.69 billion for F/A-XX through a combination of regular spending bills and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. From a budgetary perspective, the Navy’s next-generation fighter program remains well behind the F-47, which has already received billions in funding and could be in line to get approximately $5 billion more in Fiscal Year 2027. The Navy only appears to be requesting an additional $140 million for its new carrier-based combat jet in the $1.5 trillion proposed defense budget for the next fiscal cycle.

“We’ve got a lot of airframes out there. We’ve got an F-35 program. We’ve got a F-47 program. You know, we’re still building the [F/A-18 Super Hornet] … there’s a lot of airplanes being built,” Adm. Caudle said today. “The Air Force has got a lot of demand on the system. The Navy’s got a lot of demand … One of the contractors who would make this plane for us is in a place where they really can’t deliver in the timeframe we need it. So there was, you know, a check twice, cut once, kind of mentality here on this decision. And now there, I think we’re all on the same page on the reason why the hard look needed to be done. I’m good with it.”

As noted, Boeing and Northrop Grumman are in competition to produce the F/A-XX, a program that first took shape as a Navy request for information in 2012. An earlier down-select reportedly eliminated Lockheed Martin in March 2025. Last August, Northrop Grumman released a rendering of its concept for the aircraft, showing a streamlined nose and landing gear on the front of a carrier with the tagline, “Project Power Anywhere.” Boeing’s concept, released the same month, drew visual comparisons to its F-47 Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter for the Air Force.

Citing classification, Adm. Caudle said today he couldn’t provide any information on design or payload details that give the Navy confidence in pursuing F/A-XX despite the adversary threats he mentioned. However, he suggested speed was increasingly essential to having a chance at maintaining overmatch.

“We monitor very closely, red-team that very hard, and assess that threat with a predicted trajectory of whether or not the existing designs we’ve seen will still overmatch that,” he said. “So I think we’re okay there, but we do know that our existing airframes could become vulnerable to some of those threats by the time [it’s fielded] … because it takes time to deliver that, that our existing airframes could be vulnerable to some of those threats, and we want to make sure the air wing of the future can still participate.”

Despite Caudle’s comments today, it should be remembered that this is not the first time that major progress on the Navy’s next-gen fighter has supposedly been imminent. Last October, Reuters reported the program had been greenlighted by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, with a contract expected to follow in short order. 

Aside from funding moves from Congress to ensure the survival of the F/A-XX program, no public steps have been taken to advance the program since.

Contact the editor: Tyler@twz.com

Secretary of the Navy John Phelan says his service is looking to wrap up a review of its aircraft carrier plans within the next month or so. The Navy has been taking a deep look at the design and capabilities, and associated costs, of the Ford class as compared to the older Nimitz class. The question has been raised about whether this might point to a major shift in the service’s carrier acquisition strategy on the horizon, including the potential cancellation of planned orders for more Ford class ships and even a transition to a new design.

Phelan talked about the carrier review yesterday at a roundtable on the sidelines of the Navy League’s Sea Air Space 2026 exposition. When asked, Phelan said that there was nothing in particular about the Ford class that prompted the Navy to take a new comprehensive look at the program and that the service is looking for ways to cut costs and be more efficient across the board.

A key question the review has been focused on is “are we getting the appropriate bang for our buck, i.e., how superior is the Ford [class] to the older Nimitz class, etc,” the Navy’s top civilian leader said. “To be honest, we’re reviewing every program, so it’s – carriers [are] just one of them.”

That being said, President Donald Trump has been a vocal critic of the Ford class, and its electromagnetic catapults (also known as the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, or EMALS) and weapons elevators in particular, which have faced serious reliability and maintenance issues. Last October, he pledged to sign an executive order that would compel the Navy to go back to using steam-powered catapults and hydraulic elevators on new aircraft carriers, which has yet to materialize. Two months later, in announcing plans for the Trump class “battleship,” the President also said that “we have the Ford class. We’re going to be upping that to a different class of aircraft carrier,” but did not elaborate.

Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS)

Watch the Advanced Weapons Elevators on the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford

Phelan’s comments yesterday about the ongoing review were prompted, in part, by a question about whether the Navy has actually been looking at acquiring a new class of aircraft carrier. There is no indication that this is the case currently. The service has explored alternatives to the Ford class, including smaller designs, on several occasions in the past decade or so.

“What I would say on the carriers is, we are looking at [CVN-]82 and [CVN-]83 to review the costs, the designs, the systems, to make sure that they make sense and they have all the systems and requirements that we want going forward,” Phelan explained. “I think it’s a prudent and practical thing for us to do, given the costs of them, as a percentage of the budget, and how we are thinking about the force design and our needs going forward.”

CVN-82 and CVN-83 are the hull numbers assigned to a pair of future Ford class aircraft carriers currently set to be named the USS William J. Clinton and the USS George W. Bush. Construction has not begun on either of those ships, and the Navy has not even awarded contracts yet to order them. The service is asking for advance funds to support the future procurement of CVN-82 in its newly released budget request for the 2027 Fiscal Year. The budget documents also still show plans to seek funding for CVN-83 in the coming years.

The USS Gerald R. Ford is the only member of its class currently in service. It is now in the midst of a marathon deployment that has lasted some 10 months already, the longest for any carrier since the Vietnam War. In its time at sea so far, the ship and its air wing took part in the mission to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, and more recently supported operations against Iran. Ford suffered a fire in March, underscoring concerns about strains on the ship and its crew, as you can read more about here.

There are three more Ford class carriers in various stages of being built. The second ship in the class, the future USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), left port for the first time for initial sea trials in January and is set to be formally delivered to the Navy next year.

John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) Successfully Completes Builder’s Sea Trials

Kennedy and all subsequent ships in the class are already set to have notable differences from Ford, including AN/SPY-6(V)3 radars in place of the design’s original Dual Band Radar (DBR). The immensely troublesome DBR is just one of a laundry list of issues that Ford has had to contend with over the years. The Navy has been trying to leverage lessons learned from those experiences to streamline work going forward.

However, Kennedy, as well as the next two ships in the class after that, the future USS Enterprise (CVN-80) and USS Doris Miller (CVN-81), have all continued to suffer further delays. As of last year, the estimated total procurement costs for Kennedy, Enterprise, and Doris Miller were nearly $13.2 billion, almost $14.25 billion, and just over $15.2 billion, respectively, according to the Congressional Research Service.

This, in turn, has created complications for Navy plans to begin retiring Nimitz class carriers. In May, the service announced it was extending the USS Nimitz‘s service life into 2027, in line with the latest delivery schedule for Kennedy.

“So the President knows we’re reviewing it [the carrier plans], and want [sic] us to put in a review,” Phelan said. “And I think, like any businessman, he’s – okay, make sure you look at all these programs, understand the capabilities and what they’re doing.”

The Secretary of the Navy was asked what metrics the service might be looking at in order to assess the comparative capabilities of the Ford class and the preceding Nimitz class. Phelan was given, as an example, statements the Navy has made in the past about the new EMALS catapults offering improved sortie generation rates and reducing wear and tear on aircraft during launches.

“I think you’ll see the sortie rate come out and it will be eye-watering,” Navy Rear Adm. Ben Reynolds said just yesterday at the Pentagon during the rollout of the service’s proposed budget for the 2027 Fiscal Year, according to USNI News. “The capability is just absolutely incredible.”

Reynolds is currently serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Budget and Director of the Fiscal Management Division within the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations.

USS Ford Launches, Recovers Fighters With Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS)

“So these are all things you’ve heard. These are all the same things I’ve heard,” Phelan said at the roundtable at Sea Air Space. “I go to the Ronald Reagan School of trust, but verify. That’s what I’m doing.”

“Trust me, we measure and monitor a lot of things in the Navy, including that – the airframes and how that works. So I think it’s a function of just understanding it, for example, is the sortie rate generation that much greater? And then what are the cost implications of this electric catapult, and did it really generate the savings?” Phelan continued. “You know, the Navy would like to say we’ve saved $5 billion in terms of savings in number [sic] of men and maintenance. I just need to check that back up, and that’s what I mean by that.”

“I think, like anything, it’s both understanding the cost-benefit analysis of it, because we really want to make sure we’ve got a good handle on the costs,” the Navy Secretary added. “I think one of the things we have to do a better job of in the Navy is kind of what I call total cost of ownership. So what does it really cost to sustain and maintain these things? I think we do a reasonable job at that, to be honest. But the infrastructure needs on these are also costs you have to understand going in.”

As Phelan noted, the Navy has been conducting reviews of major programs across the service. The Navy Secretary has also shown a willingness to curtail high-profile, but seriously underperforming efforts despite high sunk costs. Last November, the service axed the Constellation class frigate program, long touted as a major priority, but which had become mired in delays and at risk of ballooning costs. Earlier this month, the Navy finally abandoned plans to return the Los Angeles class attack submarine USS Boise to active service, closing out a more than 10-year-long saga that had already cost it $800 million.

Yesterday, Phelan was also asked whether the Ford class could be curtailed as a result of the ongoing review. The possibility of truncating the program has been raised in the past.

“It’s too early to say, but we will have carriers. So, carriers are an important component to [sic] the force, and we will need that,” the Navy Secretary said. “I think it’s more, how do we figure out – like, again, this comes back to every program we’re looking at. What can we do to cut costs? What can we do to make this more efficient? What can we do to make the design more simple [sic]? What are the areas where we think we can save or not save?”

Even just cancelling future orders for Ford class ships would have major downstream impacts, including on the shipbuilding industrial base and its many suppliers. At the same time, the Navy’s shipbuilding priorities also now include the Trump class “battleships,” the first of which may cost $17 billion, according to the latest official estimates. If that price point holds, these large surface combatants will be more expensive than a Ford class aircraft carrier.

“These are very important decisions to be made, and you’re locking into very big contracts and very big platforms that are going to be around for a long time. And so I just think we’re trying to make prudent decisions across everything,” he added. “I think what I found a little bit is, I have a lot of people who know how to do finance. I don’t have a lot of people who necessarily understand finance, understand incentives and deal structures, and that’s something we just need to fix.”

How the Navy’s plans for the Ford class, and aircraft carriers in general, may evolve going forward will likely become clearer after the current review is completed.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

A collaboration between relative military newcomer Saildrone and defense contracting giants Lockheed Martin and Fincantieri has resulted in Spectre, a 170-foot drone boat capable of traveling nearly 35 miles per hour and optimized for anti-submarine warfare.

Spectre can also come loaded for bear for a multitude of missions, with space for an optional payload of two Lockheed Mk 70 vertical launching system (VLS) containers. These are capable of slinging everything from Tomahawk cruise missiles to long-range SM-6s air defense and surface strike missiles. Other potential payloads, according to Saildrone, include twin-line towed sonar arrays like the TB-29 and Lockheed’s Joint Air-to-Ground Missile (JAGM) Quad Launcher (JQL, pronounced jackal), which is in the process of being integrated on Saildrone’s smaller Surveyor platform. Total payload is two 40-foot containers, five 20-foot containers, or a configurable mixture of both.

Saildrone Spectre: A new class of unmanned surface vessel

The Navy’s work with far smaller Saildrone platforms dates to 2021. In the Middle East, the 33-foot Voyager, specializing in persistent surveillance, has been at the heart of testing and experimentation by the service’s Task Group 59, focused on unmanned capabilities and teaming.

In the U.S. 4th Fleet area of responsibility, which includes the Caribbean and Central and South America, solar-powered Voyagers have been the USV of choice for Operation Windward Stack. This is an effort to integrate uncrewed systems into the work of apprehending drug trafficking and illegal fishing.

The Spectre design, which was unveiled Monday at the Sea-Air-Space Exposition near Washington, D.C., at which TWZ was in attendance, is the result of two years of work. It precedes the Navy’s current competition for a family of Medium Unmanned Surface Vessels, which formally launched last month. However, company executives said they now plan to enter Spectre.

“We didn’t fit to that. We didn’t change our course,” Saildrone founder and CEO Richard Jenkins said. “Now it’s changed, MUSV … it actually fits perfectly. We meet 100% of all the specs.”

Spectre comes in two variants. One is the Silent Endurance variant with the trademark sail, or “wing.” The other is the Stealth Strike variant that relies totally on its more powerful internal propulsion. While the sail-equipped variant is more focused on anti-submarine warfare and surveillance, it too can be equipped with modular VLS cells or other “concealed payloads.” The Stealth Strike variant possesses “higher-speed” and is capable of “low observable missions,” according to the company.

Powered by a 5,000-horsepower Caterpillar diesel engine, the Stealth Strike variant is designed to cruise at around 25 knots, or just under 29 miles per hour. The 30 knot, or around 35-mile-per-hour, speed that the company cites as the maximum for Spectre is likely reserved for brief “sprints” that the Stealth Strike variant may execute during operations.

The Silent Endurance variant is optimized for “infinite endurance,” Jenkins said, with an electric engine that can maintain speeds of 12 knots, or about 14 miles per hour, or the signature wing, a 43-meter composite structure made by yacht racing team American Magic Services that can harness the wind for propulsion “without any engine at all.”

Tony Lengerich, vice president of Naval Programs at the United Kingdom-based Thales Defense and Security, which made the active sonar for Spectre, described the drones as a forward lookout presence for conventional Navy ships. 

“We’re looking forward to bringing that capability in active sonar … to the Navy fleet, particularly in the theater ASW context, where you really need a vessel that can take a sensor far out ahead of the battle group, if you will, loiter there, deploy the sensor and then move again,” he said. “That’s exactly what Saildrone brings to the table, and it’s exactly what we think the Navy needs.”

Paul Lemmo, vice president and general manager for sensors, effectors & mission systems (SEMS) at Lockheed Martin, called the drones a cost-effective way of “putting more players on the field.”

“The Chief of Naval Operations [Navy Adm. Daryl Caudle] has said it’s an important thing, so you’ve got more shooters on a fairly inexpensive platform instead of a multi-billion dollar destroyer,” he said.

From an ASW perspective, Lengerich said, the platform works for clearing and assessing “broad ocean areas” before moving a manned battle force in.  

“This provides that capability to take an active sonar source forward – ping, if you will, and then your shooters … pick up the ping and identify where you have an adversary in an area that you eventually want to move the force to. So we think of this as a theater asset, one that means far ahead of the force, both in time and space, and then advances the ability for the battle force to move in and be certain of what’s waiting for them.”

The unit price of Spectre is around $40 million, Jenkins said. That’s compared to about $7.5 million for the unarmed, much smaller 20-foot Surveyor.

The Navy has struggled to get its arms around what it wants out of its drone ships and how exactly they will integrate with the manned fleet. One of its earliest unmanned surface vessel test articles, Sea Hunter, was christened a decade ago. Navy officials announced earlier this year that Sea Hunter, a medium-sized USV, and its sister ship, Seahawk, would finally leave experimental status in 2026. One of these vessels, reportedly Seahawk, is expected to deploy this year with a carrier strike group. 

Last year, the Navy unveiled plans for a family of uncrewed Modular Surface Attack Craft (MASC), emphasizing containerized missile launchers and highly configurable payloads. The service replaced this strategy last month, however, with what it called a “marketplace” for MUSVs, giving would-be competitors a matter of weeks to submit proposals for mature vessels that could be fielded in Fiscal Year 2027. Core requirements were laid out for seakeeping, long range and endurance, and cargo capabilities, as you can read more about here. The need to be able to carry two forty-foot equivalent unit (FEU) containerized payloads is a key demand, though the Navy has not yet specified publicly what might go in them.

“Honestly, inside you could have a sensor, you could have repair equipment for ships,” Rebecca Gassler, the Navy’s Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Robotic and Autonomous Systems (PAE RAS), told TWZ and other outlets during a press call in March. “You could have any number of payloads inside those, and you basically are able to just swap them on.”

Navy officials have said they want 11 operational MUSVs by next year, and have projected that half the surface fleet will be uncrewed by 2045.

Saildrone has plans to demonstrate the ability of Surveyor to carry a JAGM launcher at the joint Rim of the Pacific exercise in July. Lemmo said the team plans to demonstrate the same capability on Spectre soon. The company says construction on Spectre is about to begin shortly, with sea trials for the first vessel set for early next year.

Contact the editor: Tyler@twz.com

The U.S. Navy has unveiled a “marketplace” model for acquiring future fleets of uncrewed surface vessels (USV), which could be owned and/or operated by the service or contractors. The Navy is applying this approach first to the procurement of medium-sized designs, or MUSVs, which could be configured for a variety of missions with the help of containerized payloads. The new strategy, which supplants the Modular Surface Attack Craft (MASC) plan laid out just last year, and aims to cut down on lengthy prototyping requirements, is the latest in a series of Navy efforts to try to speed up the fielding of new USV capabilities at scale.

“The character of warfare is changing rapidly. The Department of the Navy is adapting its acquisition system to deliver capability to our warfighters faster,” Secretary of the Navy John Phelan wrote in a post on X this morning, marking the official roll-out of the new USV acquisition plan. “We are harnessing the talent and ingenuity of the American tech sector by launching a market competition for the Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel (MUSV) Family of Systems. This new approach will leverage private investment and accelerate the delivery of real capabilities to the Fleet. We will reward the companies who are able to deliver capability at the speed of relevance.”

“Our goal is to create a regular, recurring marketplace, not just for the MUSV, but for other classes of vessels, as well, over time, designed to match the growing demand for unmanned systems across a range of missions,” Rebecca Gassler, the Navy’s first-ever Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Robotic and Autonomous Systems (PAE RAS), also told TWZ and other outlets during a press call today. “This model that we’ve posted rewards demonstrated performance at sea, not just development, and is not another prototyping award. And it creates a direct path from what’s demonstrated on the water to putting those vessels into the fleet.”

The use of “marketplace” here should not be confused with how the U.S. Army is also now using that term to describe an actual online storefront-style system for ordering small uncrewed aerial systems. “I don’t know how many customers other than PAE RAS there are right now that actually have the funding to go buy or lease an MUSV,” Gassler said in response to a question about whether any kind of comparison between the two might be appropriate.

The Navy also posted a contracting notice regarding what it is now calling the Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel (MUSV) Family of Systems (FoS) program, specifically, online today. Potential offers only have another three weeks or so to submit proposals that involve designs that can be ‘on the water’ by the end of September, underscoring the service’s interest in already highly mature capabilities.

In terms of the actual uncrewed vessels the Navy is seeking through this effort, threshold requirements include a range of at least “2500 nm [nautical miles] at 25 knots while carrying a 25 MT [metric ton] load on the payload deck in NATO STANAG 4194 Sea State 4.” Per this NATO standard, Sea State 4 is characterized by wind speeds of 17 to 21 knots and wave heights between four and eight feet.

The MUSVs also need to be able to carry forty-foot equivalent units (FEU) containerized payloads and to refuel at sea at a rate of “2,000 gallons per minute of fuel through deck connections,” according to the contracting notice. We’ll come back to what might be in those payloads later on.

The Navy also wants designs that are “capable of fully autonomous operations both day and night in varying weather conditions complying with COLREGs [Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea], can prescribe keep out and keep in zones, and perform pre-defined behaviors,” per the notice. They also have to be “capable of restricting all Radio Frequency (RF) emissions when commanded while continuing to autonomously operate, perception system for autonomy has a passive mode with no RF emissions.”

In addition, the Navy has outlined a number of desired attributes, including “interfaces between C2, Perception, Machinery Control System, and Autonomy Control System software and hardware systems [that] conform to an open architecture standard with
Interface Control Documents (ICD)” and an overall “autonomous system solution [that] enables integration with third party applications, modular upgrades, and component-level interoperability.” The service is also interested in the ability of the MUSV to monitor “health and status and autonomously reports conditions to the offboard C2 station, providing situational awareness of the condition of the vessel to the operator.”

“Vessel can execute 5 days of pre-planned maneuvers without communication connection” and “vessel provides emergency stop functionality to the offboard operator,” defined as “the rapid shutdown of propulsion engines putting the USV into a drift,” are also on the desired attributes list. There are production and operational aspects the Navy is also interested in, such as the ability of a selected contractor to supply between five and 10 operational MUSVs by the end of Fiscal Year 2027 and designs that can be “nested five abeam when moored.”

“We believe a number of them [potential offers] will test on production representative, but not full production[-ready designs,] or they’ll test in [sic] surrogate boats, so that we can see the autonomy that they’re bringing, even if it’s not the full production vessel,” Gassler noted today. So, acceptance of a finalized design will include a requirement “to do the full endurance test again, and any additional mission profiles that we have gotten from the Fleet, we will test at the time. And then we will do a full regression test on the autonomy now that it has been connected into the production boat controls.”

Overall, many of the stated threshold requirements for the MUSV FoS are similar, if not identical, to what the Navy had previously outlined for the initial baseline MASC design. The MASC plan was a three-tier approach that also included larger and smaller types, all of which would be configurable for different missions using containerized systems.

At the same time, the new strategy laid out today “is a replacement for MASC, absolutely,” PAE RAS Gassler stressed. MASC “was tailored towards a very specific mission and a very specific ask from the Fleet, [and a] very specific quantity. And we have a much wider variety of requirements for these vessels and missions that they need to accomplish as part of the Golden fleet. And so this is a replacement for that.”

“So, I won’t talk about specifically what mission we’re going after now that kind of gets out of the unclassified realm, but know that we are looking at specific mission profiles,” Gassler added. “For example, some require more complexity in their autonomy features than others, and so when we put these vessels through their tests, those tests will be a superset of those requirements such that we understand they will meet each of those missions.”

“Honestly, inside you could have a sensor, you could have repair equipment for ships,” she also said, speaking more generally about containerized payloads. “You could have any number of payloads inside those, and you basically are able to just swap them on.”

It should be noted here that the Navy did say its initial focus for MASC was on Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Targeting (IRS&T), Counter-ISR&T, and Information Operations missions. At the same time, the three-tier approach and focus on containerized systems had certainly pointed to additional missions, including surface-to-surface strike and electronic warfare, down the line. The Navy already has a containerized launcher capable of firing SM-6 multi-purpose missiles and Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles that it has been working to field on crewed ships, as well as in a ground-based configuration. The Navy has test-fired that launcher from an optionally crewed ship in the past.

“As we look across how the Golden Fleet capability, or the Golden Fleet concept, has matured, and we look across where we could use these vessels as part of CNO’s [Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle] tailored offsets and tailored forces, we bring ourselves to realize there’s a number of missions that we could immediately use these vessels for,” Gassler said. “That is, that is part of the strategy now, is that we will now have a scalable way to procure vessels that meet specific mission profiles.”

Adm. Caudle publicly announced that the Navy would be moving toward a more flexible deployment model using tailored force packages at the Surface Navy Association’s (SNA) annual conference in January. At that same event, he also laid out a new “Hedge Strategy” to try to better maximize Navy resources through a major overhaul of how existing forces are utilized and how new capabilities are acquired and fielded. You can read more about all of this here.

Last week, Caudle also rolled out another new initiative, the Containerized Capability Campaign Plan, which puts new emphasis on containerized weapons and other capabilities, specifically, as a means to help the Navy achieve these broader goals.

Perhaps the biggest change the Navy is hoping to see with its USV marketplace strategy is in the processes through which it acquires and fields USVs. This reflects a broader push by the service to shake up how it buys vessels, crewed and uncrewed, to try to avoid the kinds of serious setbacks that have plagued Navy shipbuilding programs in recent years.

From what Gassler said today, the MASC program had been progressing along largely traditional lines, with plans to issue contracts to multiple vendors for a prototyping phase ahead of choosing one or more designs for production. She made clear that the new strategy aims to skip the prototyping phase to the fullest extent possible.

“Industry has leaned forward and has built boats or has built the technology already,” leading to the assessment that “we no longer needed to go through the prototyping phase,” she said. “So this will allow us to test the capability on water and go straight into production. And that will save us approximately on the order of a year, and we will get capability to the fleets faster.”

“What we want to do is capitalize on that investment. So the marketplace will look for several things,” she added. Beyond the “technical design that meets the specifications,” the Navy is also “looking for a variety of business models. So in this case, the [MUSV FoS] solicitation asks for what does a government-owned, government-operated model look like, types of data, rights, things like that, as well as a contractor-owned, contractor-operated model.”

Then there’s “manufacturing readiness. When we go through a normal development program, you don’t consider that until much further into the life cycle of development. Here we’re considering it up front,” she continued. “So we’ll be looking at your staffing, the supply chain, and whether you’ve got any fragility in the supply chain. We’ll be looking at facilities and capacity. So if you say you can produce X number of boats per year, can we really see that in the laydown of your facility, or that of those who you’ve partnered with.”

Gassler says that vendors that successfully complete the on-water test requirements will receive a fixed-price payment as a “reward” to help foster competition. The Navy will then have the option of entering into a production or leasing agreement for the design in question.

With all this being said, as mentioned, this is not the first time the Navy has attempted to accelerate the acquisition and fielding of USV capabilities, especially when it comes to larger types. The service already has a number of smaller USVs with speed boat and jet ski-type designs in service today.

When it was rolled out last year, MASC was presented as finally offering a path forward after more than a decade of prototyping and experimentation efforts that have yet to lead to meaningful operational capabilities. As a prime example of how things have progressed previously, in January, the Navy triumphantly declared its intention to employ two MUSV-type vessels it has in inventory now – Sea Hunter and Seahawk – operationally. Sea Hunter has been sailing since 2016. The Navy acquired Seahawk in 2021.

Sea Hawk and Sea Hunter Participate in Unmanned Systems Exercise

With MASC, the Navy had also hoped to leverage those prior investments, including work that had been led by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU). DARPA’s ongoing No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) program, which the Navy is also involved in, continues to be particularly relevant in terms of the new operational and production concepts it is seeking to prove out. The NOMARS test ship, the USX-1 Defiant, was designed to be a lower-cost and readily producible design capable of operating without humans ever being on board, as you can read more about here.

USX-1 Defiant At-Sea Overview – No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS)

Overall, as TWZ wrote back in July 2025 when the MASC plan broke cover:

“All of this comes as USVs have now long been seen as a key way for the Navy to bolster its surface fleets. Distributed fleets of USVs configured for strike and ISR missions, and capable of operating independently or in groups, as well as together with crewed warships, open a door to significant new operational possibilities. Members of the MASC family could also help reduce risks to crewed assets. Modular designs that can be readily configured and reconfigured for different missions using containerized payloads also present targeting challenges for opponents.“

…

“The United States’ worrisome and still-widening gap in shipbuilding capacity with chief global competitor China has also been putting new emphasis on USVs. The U.S. government has been trying to take steps to reverse this trend, including exploring the potential of leveraging foreign shipyards to produce more crewed warships, in recent years. In the meantime, the Navy’s traditional shipbuilding programs continue to be beset by delays and cost growth, on top of being expensive long-lead-time efforts, in general.“

The Navy is clearly hoping that it has found the right formula with its new marketplace strategy to finally get larger and more capable USVs into service.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com