US Navy fires missile from ghost ship. It's actually a robot ship
In early September 2021, the US Department of Defense published a video showing the uncrewed vessel USV Ranger successfully launching an SM-6 missile. It's time to figure out what this was and why the Navy needs it.
The uncrewed surface vessel Ranger is one of at least two robot ships the navy is using to test autonomy in cooperation with the Department of Defense's Strategic Capabilities Office. Testing these ships, from autonomous voyages to operations alongside other vessels, is part of a program with the unusual name Ghost Fleet Overlord ("Overlord of the Ghost Fleet").
Ghost Fleet Overlord began as a US Navy program in 2017. Although all of USV Ranger's operating systems are cutting-edge technology, the hull is actually a commercial design. Like USV Nomad, USV Ranger is a repurposed commercial fast supply vessel, or in other words, a type of ship used for regular, rapid delivery of cargo to oil platforms.
In the video published by the Department of Defense, it's hard to tell that there are no people on Ranger. Its radars rotate and the vessel gently rocks on the waves. These and other signs suggest the presence of a crew and that the ship is not a "ghost". However, a few seconds later the robot raises its weapon and fires an explosive into the sky over the sea. Only a sharp-eyed observer would notice that there is no crew behind the bridge windows.
Like human sailors in the fleet, robot ships must comply with the Convention on the Law of the Sea, a set of rules and tactics agreed with the United Nations, even though the US has not yet ratified the treaty. Virtually all other sailors follow these rules at sea. For peaceful sea voyages, sailors need to know traffic rules, but for robots these rules must be programmed into how they operate.
A missile launch goes far beyond a peaceful ocean voyage. It is a way for people to remotely monitor and control ships to find out whether channels are safe and timely, and whether the robot vessel can work as expected. Checking whether a ship can launch a missile is the first step toward building an armed robot ship. A more complex task is verifying whether this robot can launch a missile in a way that hits its target.
How missile launchers integrate with sensors, and how those sensors transmit information to outside observers, is a big question. When a human approves the robot's target choice in the process, and whether a human can instead reject the attack, is the key point of human control over the whole process and for mitigating errors.
In October 2020, Ranger sailed from the Gulf of Mexico to the US West Coast, autonomously covering all of the route except the Panama Canal, where a human crew was needed on board. Nomad, a sister robot ship, completed a similar transit in summer 2021.
“The Ghost Fleet Overlord program is part of efforts to speed up the Navy's work to bring autonomous vessels into its fleet to better extend the reach of crewed ships. Autonomy involves more than just a straight run across large stretches of ocean. It also includes things like collision avoidance and compliance with maritime rules”
Because Ranger and Nomad are built on existing, familiar and proven ship designs, testing can focus less on the specific design of these robotic vessels and more on how the robotic components work together. By including a familiar missile launcher in this overall package, the navy can see whether a kind of "plug-and-play" approach works. This matters especially because the next two vessels planned for the Ghost Fleet Overlord program will be original prototypes.
In other words, Ranger and Nomad use the "classic" hulls of crewed ships, while the design of the later "ghost ships" is planned with their autonomy in mind.
“The Ghost Fleet Overlord program serves to inform efforts to create a new prototype for the navy by integrating mature technologies to accelerate service priorities, and is a key part of the small build, small test, big learn philosophy set out in the Navy's unmanned campaign framework”
Two specialized robot ship prototypes are already being built for the navy and will be used in further tests. Ranger and Nomad will begin further fleet experiments at the end of 2022.
It is worth noting that the SM-6 missile fired by Ranger can hit air targets at distances of up to 240 km at a maximum altitude of about 33 km. In 2021, the US Navy planned to test a hypersonic version of the anti-missile that can hit enemy ballistic missiles, in particular hypersonic targets. Deploying such systems on a fleet could be a serious breakthrough in missile defense. And what if similar weapons were placed on robotic ships?
