THE NEXT FRONTIER: Uncrewed Systems Integration

In an era of great power competition, uncrewed maritime systems (UMS) have begun to take center stage and are now on an accelerated development path for reasons that are clear. Like their air and ground counterparts, these UMS are valued because of their ability to reduce the risk to human life in high threat areas, to deliver persistent surveillance over areas of interest, and to provide options to warfighters that derive from the inherent advantages of uncrewed technologies. While air, surface, and subsurface systems have undergone extensive evaluation in Navy and Marine Corps exercises, experiments and demonstrations, their development has been somewhat stovepiped, that is, these evaluations have typically occurred in just one domain. Given the new technologies that these systems represent, this"crawl, walk, run" approach has represented best-practices.