US Navy 'Ghost Fleet' ships make first-of-its-kind visit in the Western Pacific as Pentagon looks to
- US Navy drone boats made a first-of-its-kind visit to a key US ally in the Western Pacific.
- The two ships are part of a project that focuses on integrating large drone boats into the Navy.
- The Pentagon is looking to a new drone initiative as a way to counter China's growing military mass.
US Navy drone ships, or unmanned surface vessels (USVs), made a first-ever visit to a key ally in the Western Pacific this week as the Pentagon takes a hard look at drones as tools to counter China's military mass.
Ranger and Mariner, two USVs, arrived at Fleet Activities Yokosuka in Japan on Monday, the Navy's 7th Fleet said in a statement on Thursday. The scheduled port visit came during Integrated Battle Problem (IBP) 23.2, which is an ongoing event that focuses on testing, developing, and evaluating the capabilities of drone boats.
The two ships, like several others, are part of a project called Ghost Fleet Overlord, which began in 2018 and is a way to integrate large unmanned surface vessels into the Navy. Ranger and Mariner are part of Unmanned Surface Vessel Division ONE (USVDIV-1), a unit that manages drone boat integration and experimentation.
"Unmanned and autonomous technologies are key to growing our distributed maritime operations framework." said Rear Adm. Blake Converse, deputy commander of US Pacific Fleet, in the statement. "By proliferating our presence in the Pacific and increasing the fleet's situational awareness and lethality, we give ourselves more options to make better decisions at all levels of leadership."
IBP 23.2 is the first time that USVs have been employed in the 7th Fleet area of responsibility, which covers an area of more than 124 million square kilometers across the Indo-Pacific region and encompasses 36 maritime countries.
Before arriving in Japan earlier this week, the Navy said USVDIV-1 participated last month in joint exercises with the Navy and US Marine Corps, where the drone boats were integrated with Carrier Strike Group One organized around the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson.
"Through the integration of unmanned platforms in our operations, we continue to forge a culture of learning and innovation within our Navy and with joint partners to deliver warfighting advantage." said Rear Adm. Carlos Sardiello, commander of Carrier Strike Group One, in the statement. "Testing and integrating emerging technologies in a demanding, real-world operational environment is vital to providing feedback that informs our progress in this domain."
The Navy's continued experimentation with USVs comes amid a push from the Pentagon to counter China's growing military by fielding more drones in the future. Beijing in recent years has surpassed the US in the number of ships and submarines it has, and it tends to build them faster than Washington, only widening the gap.
Faced with this problem, and the increasing threat of a potential war over Taiwan, the Pentagon in late August announced a new vision known as the 'Replicator Initiative,' in which the US plans to eventually field thousands of autonomous systems like unmanned aircraft and boats in the coming months.
"We've set a big goal for Replicator: to field attritable autonomous systems at a scale of multiple thousands, in multiple domains, within the next 18-to-24 months," Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said at a conference in early September. She said the initiative will help the US "overcome the PRC's advantage in mass: more ships, more missiles, more forces."
"Now is the time to scale, with systems that are harder to plan for, harder to hit, and harder to beat than those of potential competitors," Hicks said. "And we'll do so while remaining steadfast to our responsible and ethical approach to AI and autonomous systems, where DoD has been a world leader for over a decade."
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