There has been significant media discussion (including P&I) of Defence Minister Marles’ recent announcement of the Surface Ship Review for the RAN – a step towards remedying the Defence procurement shambles inherited by the Albanese government and conducted by yet another retired US admiral! But there has been scant attention to the rabbit out of the hat Marles produced to provide six large unmanned ships of an as yet undecided US design – let alone a concept of how they might best be deployed. All of which has been the subject of long and often acrimonious debate in the US.

Not surprisingly, Marles provided only limited detail about these new ships:

“We’re also procuring six large optionally crewed surface crewed- surface vessels. The LOSVs are in development with the United States…They have the capacity to operate in an uncrewed fashion, but it is the intention of the Royal Australian Navy to crew these vessels. They will operate in combination with the Hobart-class anti-warfare destroyers, Air Warfare Destroyers and they will also operate in conjunction with the Hunter-class frigates. These ships in combination with the three existing Air Warfare Destroyers will take our service fleet of warships to 26. It is the largest fleet that we will have since the end of the Second World War.”

There has been confusion about the generic name for these new ships because of uncertainty about how they would be operated. Early US thinking about these vessels was that they could operate completely unmanned – driven like other drone forms by US based operators or from nearby regular USN vessels. But the USN came to the firm view eventually that there must be a manned presence on any LUSV before it could be used to fire missiles. That then led to the US introduction of the key words of “optional” and “lightly manned” with an emphasis on a........

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