- The U.S. Navy is testing drones that can send cargo from one ship to another at sea.
- Underway replenishments—especially by air—can be dangerous, and often involve moving small cargoes.
- Drones could remove humans from the potentially dangerous work, while still moving vital equipment from ship to ship.
To develop methods for using drones during underway replenishment missions, the U.S. Navy is testing two unique, cargo-carrying drones that can move goods from one ship to another: Shield AI’s V-Bat and the Skyways V2.6. The technology could eventually allow ships to stay on station longer, on the front line, where they are needed most in wartime.
One of the most dangerous peacetime missions in the Navy is the underway replenishment, or UNREP. UNREPs typically consist of a dry cargo/ammunition ship (T-AKE), such as the USNS Lewis and Clark, sailing parallel to another ship, and then passing supplies via helicopter or a cable-rigging system. UNREPs typically take place while both ships are moving.
From storms and rough weather, to the delicate balancing act of sailing alongside an aircraft carrier moving at 20 knots, to equipment failures, UNREPs are rife with hazards. In Silicon Valley parlance, these are missions that are ripe for disruption.
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So far, the Navy is doing exactly that, experimenting with drones to make the entire underway replenishment process safer. The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) recently conducted a series of tests at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland. According to a Navy press release, the tests involved putting the V-Bat and V2.6 drones through a series of missions that replicated naval resupply missions. Shield AI and Skyways Air Transportation “operated their unmanned systems through long-range flights from ship-to-ship, ship-to-shore, and shore-to-ship situations, carrying a variety of objects to mimic critical supplies. Both systems successfully delivered cargo over 200 nautical miles onto a moving ship underway.”
The V-Bat and V2.6 drones are unique in that they are small enough to operate from the flight decks of destroyers and other small vessels. The V-Bat is a tail-sitter aircraft, a drone that takes off vertically, nose in the air, then rotates 90 degrees to transition to more efficient forward flight. The V2.6 drone takes off like a quadcopter and then unfolds a pair of wings for forward flight. The vertical-takeoff-and-landing features of both drones solve the accessibility problem, allowing them to utilize helicopter flight decks—something every Navy ship has.
Each of the drones can carry cargoes of less than 50 pounds; the Navy states that those types of cargoes make up 90 percent of logistics deliveries. These are usually passed via pallet from one ship to another, or slung under a helicopter on a pallet. Passing the equivalent of a pallet could be broken down into a dozen or more drone flights.
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How much the drones can carry right now is largely irrelevant, as drone manufacturers will eventually develop larger, more capable drones with longer ranges and greater load capacities. The important thing is that the Navy is exploring a completely new logistics platform, and scoping out its capabilities. A drone that can fly to meet up with a warship 200 miles from a coastline will spare…
Read More: Underway Replenishment Drones Will Make Resupply Missions Safer