Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force Volume 2: Technology (1997) / Chapter Skim
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5 AUTOMATION
5 AUTOMATION
Pages 181-203
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From page 181... ...
Key areas involving automation technologies include (1) unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs)
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From page 182... ...
UNMANNED UNDERWATER VEHICLES Description of the Technology Unmanned underwater vehicle technology is actually a combination of a number of emerging technologies that can provide the naval forces with new operational capabilities in undersea warfare, reconnaissance, and surveillance. During the latter days of the Cold War, UUVs were envisioned as force multipliers for the blue-water antisubmarine warfare (ASW)
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From page 183... ...
Autonomous, independent UUV operations, without a host platform, are also likely for certain missions. UUVs will provide economical force multiplication, increased battlespace awareness, reduction in exposure to hostile action, and extend operational capability.
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From page 184... ...
Foreign Technology Status and Trends In general, foreign developments in UUV technology have lagged significantly behind the work conducted in the United States. The United States has made a significant technology investment in the military application of unmanned undersea vehicles, whereas most foreign UUV research has been at the university level, and much has been oriented toward scientific and oceanographic uses of the technology.
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From page 185... ...
A future vision of the UAV for naval operations might be as follows: Navy and Marine Corps forces will control a host of UAVs sweeping the combat areas around the battle group and onshore with electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) and synthetic aperture radar (SAR)
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From page 186... ...
The free-wing combined with another new concept called the tilt body, which adds trim tabs to the fuselage, provides a capability for small-area launch and recovery as well as a simple transition from helicopter-like flight to conventional flight. UAVs with VIOL capability would bring a new dimension to Navy and Marine Corps missions.
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From page 187... ...
Relevance to the Naval Forces The implementation of ship automation will significantly reduce manning, currently the highest cost element of naval ship operations. The reduction of personnel aboard ships will also reduce casualties in future hostile actions.
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From page 188... ...
Significant reduction of people from ships requires not only definition and development of the technologies required but also acceptance of the manning philosophy and doctrine to make autonomous ship operations a reality. Technology Status and Developments Needed The technology status and the developments necessary for autonomous ship operations are as follows: · OTH communication capability exists today; however, the issues of being noninterruptable, jam resistant, damage tolerant, and all-weather capable must be addressed.
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From page 189... ...
The Kalman filter provides an opportunity to calibrate some of the GPS errors, such as clock and ephemeris errors, as well as several of the inertial system errors, and when properly implemented, CEPs of better than 8 m have been observed. Relevance to the Naval Forces The ability to provide precise navigation for Navy and Marine Corps platforms anywhere in the world and to deliver precision weapons on target through combinations of external GPS and internal INS navigation is essential to future naval operations.
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From page 190... ...
In general, a GPS receiver cannot be expected to acquire the C/A signal in a hostile environment. For long-range navigation applications, the C/A signal acquisition could be accomplished outside hostile territory, with a transition inside hostile territory to military P(Y)
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From page 191... ...
In the terminal flight area, the GPS receiver will probably be jammed and the weapon or platform will have to depend on inertial-only guidance or the use of a target sensor. Thus, it is important to make sure that adequate backup vehicle guidance and navigation capability is provided to meet military mission requirements against adversaries who are willing to invest in electronic countermeasures.
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From page 192... ...
NAVY AND MARINE CORPS · VOLUME 2 (JPO) are in place to accomplish the latter.
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From page 193... ...
Autonomous and teleoperated vehicles (ground vehicles, underwater vehicles, and aerial vehicles) allow extension of human presence into environments that are dangerous, e.g., battlefields, or inaccessible by other means, e.g., deep oceans.
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From page 194... ...
Fuzzy control applies fuzzy membership functions for the determination of control structures, and neural-network control uses neural networks for functional approximations in the identification and control processes. With the advances in the enabling technologies outlined above, current robotics research is focused on the development of talkable, cooperative, autonomous devices in a variety of environments.
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From page 195... ...
This brings together the problems of mobility in restricted spaces, sensing, and interpretation of sensed data into a single application. Munitions Handling One critical and dangerous military task is the handling of munitions, especially on the flight deck of aircraft carriers.
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From page 196... ...
More challenging is the use of robot devices that can make intelligent decisions about the nature of the environment and can position sensors in close proximity to, or even inside, the shell of explosive devices. Such robots require significant dexterity to manipulate the explosives, penetrate the outer shells, and position sensors inside the shell with high precision.
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From page 197... ...
Mines continue to be a very costeffective defensive weapon and hence are deployed by many adversaries. Of particular interest to the Navy and Marine Corps, therefore, are the detection and clearance of various mines in surf zones, in shallow waters, and in deep waters.
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From page 198... ...
AUTOMATIC TARGET RECOGNITION Description of the Technology Automatic target recognition is the use of computers to process outputs of one or more sensors to locate or identify specific objects. The problem is made difficult by the presence of sensor noise, degradation of sensor responses resulting from adverse sensing conditions or countermeasures, and scene clutter.
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From page 199... ...
Improvement in recognition algorithms means that human operators are required to do less and less, freeing them to attend to other problems. Hence, ATR gives the Navy and Marine Corps leverage in solving their increasingly complex resource allocation problems.
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From page 200... ...
· Intelligence databases and simulations are updated from the information sent back by weapons approaching the target and from platforms assessing damage. · Updated scene-and-target models are unloaded into subsequent rounds of smart weapons and submunitions.
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From page 201... ...
The need to rapidly furnish smart weapons with accurate target-and-scene models is a requirement of the future naval forces' global surveillance and communications mission. In any area of conflict, the naval forces must know what information exists and what information must be collected to create accurate models.
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From page 202... ...
An advanced planning and scheduling system to identify missing information would take far longer perhaps 5 to 7 years. Maturation of flexible recognition systems is expected to be a continuing process, taking advantage of more capable sensors and fusion calculi as they become available.
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From page 203... ...
Unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned underwater vehicles will play a major role in future naval warfare as surveillance, communication, targeting, and weapon-guidance platforms. The Department of the Navy should support technology developments to increase mission duration and operational capability, enhance sensor payloads, and increase survivability.
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