May 14, 2020
The Navy Wants Dispersible Robotic Warships To Push Back On Chinese Missiles
And quickly strike back.
by David Axe
Here's What You Need To Remember: The Navy is putting serious money behind its new fleet architecture, O’Rourke explained. The Navy is requesting $629 million in 2020 for research and development for three major unmanned ship programs and their enabling technologies. The service wants to spend a total of $4.5 billion on the efforts though 2024.
While the American fleet throughout its history has shifted back and forth between naval concepts favoring fewer large ships or more smaller ones, the fleet architecture currently under development for the first time includes large numbers of robotic vessels.
The goal, according to a June 2019 report from Ronald O’Rourke, a naval expert with the Congressional Research Service, is to deploy a fleet that can spread out during wartime, absorb Chinese missile attacks then quickly strike back.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/navy-wants-dispersible-robotic-warships-push-back-chinese-missiles-153756