Uncrewed Maritime Systems: Navy Should Improve Its Approach to Maximize Early Investments
Fast Facts
The Navy envisions using uncrewed maritime systems—robot ships and submersibles with artificial intelligence instead of sailors—to meet current and future threats at sea.
The Navy estimates it will spend $4.3 billion to acquire 21 uncrewed vehicles over the next 5 years, but this estimate doesn't include the "digital infrastructure"—e.g., data repositories and software—needed for AI.
Now, the Navy is prototyping 6 kinds of uncrewed vehicles. Managing these together as a portfolio could help the Navy balance resources and focus on common elements, such as the digital infrastructure.
Our recommendations address this and other issues we found.
Prototype of a Robot Surface Ship
Highlights
What GAO Found
Other nations are investing in new weapons and technologies designed to disrupt U.S. naval advantages. Consequently, the U.S. Navy is reexamining its maritime strategy to respond to increased competition at sea. Based on the results of its analyses, the Navy determined that surface and undersea vehicles without crew on board—known as uncrewed maritime systems—are necessary to meet future threats (see figure). While the Navy's shipbuilding plan outlines spending more than $4 billion on uncrewed systems over the next 5 years, its plan does not account for the full costs to develop and operate these systems.
Notional Depiction of Uncrewed Surface Vehicle Operations
Once conceived, the Navy must build these vehicles with the information technology and the artificial intelligence capabilities needed to replace crews. While the Navy has established strategic objectives for these efforts, it has not established a management approach that orients its individual uncrewed maritime efforts toward achieving these objectives. As such, the Navy is not measuring its progress, such as building the robust information technology needed to operate the vehicles. GAO has previously found that portfolio management—a disciplined process that ensures new investments are aligned with an organization's strategic needs within available resources—enables agencies to implement strategic objectives and manage investments collectively. However, if it continues with its current approach, the Navy is less likely to achieve its objectives. In addition, the Navy has yet to:
- establish criteria to evaluate prototypes and
- develop improved schedules for prototype efforts.
With detailed planning, prototyping has the potential to further technology development and reduce acquisition risk before the Navy makes significant investments. Since uncrewed systems are key to the Navy's future, optimizing the prototyping phase of this effort is necessary to efficiently gaining information to support future decisions.
Why GAO Did This Study
In March 2021, the Navy published a framework that called for developing and fielding uncrewed surface and undersea vehicles to complement its existing fleet as a key to future Navy capabilities. The Navy intends to prototype these systems to gain knowledge and address technical issues before acquiring systems in significant numbers.
A House Report included a provision for GAO to review the Navy's efforts to develop and produce uncrewed surface and undersea vehicles. GAO's report assesses the Navy's planned investments for these uncrewed maritime systems and its management and prototyping approaches.
GAO reviewed documentation for four ongoing medium and large uncrewed maritime system prototype efforts and the associated information technology efforts that enable these systems.
Recommendations
GAO is making seven recommendations, including that the Navy (1) complete a cost estimate with full costs to develop and operate uncrewed maritime systems, (2) establish an uncrewed maritime systems portfolio and assign leadership to oversee it using portfolio management leading practices, and (3) develop evaluation criteria and schedules for its prototypes. The Navy generally concurred with the recommendations. However, the Navy's planned actions do not fully address three of them. GAO maintains that fully implementing all recommendations is warranted.
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Department of the Navy | The Secretary of the Navy should provide Congress with a cost estimate that includes the full scope of known costs to develop and operate uncrewed maritime systems—including estimated costs for operations and sustainment as well as the digital infrastructure—and develop an approach to refine this estimate over time as part of its next shipbuilding plan. (Recommendation 1) |
The Navy concurred with developing cost estimates for the uncrewed maritime programs. As of August 2023, the Navy is not planning to complete these estimates until these programs enter selected acquisition pathways, which may be several years away for these programs. We maintain that the Navy should develop a rough estimate of the potential costs of these programs now to better understand its long term budget outlook.
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| Department of the Navy | As the Secretary of the Navy considers potential reorganization of the management of uncrewed maritime systems as required by law, it should establish an uncrewed maritime systems portfolio and assign an entity with the responsibility for overseeing this portfolio in line with portfolio management best practices and define the role of key stakeholders. (Recommendation 2) |
The Navy concurred with this recommendation. However, since we issued this report, enabling technologies for Navy's uncrewed systems have evolved throughout the Navy. As a result of these changes, we have determined our recommendation may need to be broader and not be limited to the surface, undersea, and warfare integration domains. We are closing this recommendation as no longer valid as we conduct further reviews of these technologies.
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| Department of the Navy | The Secretary of the Navy should provide details about how it intends to achieve its uncrewed maritime system strategic objectives. Such information should include measures and metrics, as well as a planned process to assess the Navy's progress toward achieving its stated objectives in line with portfolio management best practices. (Recommendation 3) |
The Navy concurred with this recommendation but requested that we remove the recommendation because they stated that it overlaps with our other recommendations. We disagree with the Navy's response because this recommendation focuses on the Navy's strategic objectives, as outlined in its Unmanned Campaign Framework. As we discuss in the report, a key element of managing a portfolio is establishing strategic objectives and measuring progress towards achieving them for the entire uncrewed maritime effort. As of August 2023, the Navy has yet to develop metrics to measure the collective performance of its uncrewed systems.
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| Department of the Navy | The Secretary of the Navy should develop evaluation criteria for assessing each uncrewed prototype effort's readiness to transition to an acquisition program. (Recommendation 4) |
The Navy concurred with this recommendation, stating that it already has transition criteria in the form of knowledge points that will inform its prototyping efforts. We reviewed these knowledge points as a part of our report and found that they were vague and subjective. As we state in our report, DOD guidance emphasizes that transition criteria should include milestones and metrics that describe when a prototype is ready to move to the next phase. We maintain that the Navy should develop transition criteria for its uncrewed maritime efforts that include milestones and metrics. As of August 2023, we did not receive any additional updates regarding this recommendation.
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| Department of the Navy | The Secretary of the Navy should develop a master planning schedule to include each uncrewed maritime system effort. This schedule should establish when the Navy plans to purchase and prototype each vehicle as well as when it plans to achieve desired capabilities, including the digital infrastructure. (Recommendation 5) |
The Navy concurred with this recommendation and stated that it has already completed these tasks. However, as of August 2023, the Navy has provided no evidence of a master planning schedule.
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| Department of the Navy | The Secretary of the Navy should revise the prototyping plans for each uncrewed maritime system to incorporate how it plans to use its prototyping efforts to mature technologies to achieve top level requirements. (Recommendation 6) |
The Navy concurred with this recommendation and stated that it has identified the technologies it needs to mature. However, as of August 2023, the Navy did not provide us with an assessment that identified its key technologies nor has it assessed the maturity of these technologies.
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| Department of the Navy | The Secretary of the Navy should revise its prototyping plans for each uncrewed maritime system to incorporate how it plans to use information gained from prototyping to develop certifications that apply to uncrewed maritime systems prior to investment decisions. (Recommendation 7) |
The Navy concurred with this recommendation and, as of August 2023, stated that it is working on implementing it. This recommendation will remain open until the Navy provides evidence demonstrating how it plans to use information gained from prototyping to develop certifications that apply to uncrewed maritime systems.
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