What will the Royal Navy’s ship of the future look like
Towards large unmanned ships for the Royal Navy. Gabriele Molinelli's article for Rid
The “Special Purpose Ship” will serve as a demonstrator and laboratory for the development of autonomy at sea. The Royal Navy intends to purchase a small ship to be used as an experimental platform for the development of the Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy needed to deploy large-scale Uncrewed Surface Vehicles in future.
The published requirements require the unit to be, essentially, newly built – it must not have had previous owners. The desired dimensions are contained within 48 meters in length and 500 tons, with a maximum draft of 3.5 meters.
The ship must be able to sail at least 2,500 nautical miles and touch at least 20 knots. To facilitate its possible transformation into a USV, digital machine controls and a fully digital autopilot are required. The unit is required to have a cargo deck of at least 120 square meters, which can accommodate at least 2 40-foot containers and which is set up with electrical and hydraulic connections and with a crane capable of lifting at least 3.5 tons to 4.5 meters. Internally, a modular space will be created to be used as a laboratory.
The ship will be able to support a crew of 8 and an onboard team of 12, with 6 sailors sufficient to lead the unit. The MOD wants to finalize the purchase by March 31, 2022 and have the unit modified by March 2023 at the latest.
Given the characteristics required, the unit will probably be a “Crew Boat” of those commonly used for the transport of personnel and materials to and from the offshore extraction platforms. The cargo deck will be useful for testing the modular loads NAVYPODs (Navy Persistent Operational Deployment System) that the Royal Navy is developing in parallel. The US Navy's Large USV demonstrators are conceptually similar, albeit larger, units. One of the American demonstrators, RANGER, distinguished himself by launching an SM-6 missile from a containerized launcher.
Article published on Rid.it
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/come-sara-la-nave-del-futuro-della-royal-navy/ on Sat, 29 Jan 2022 07:07:56 +0000.