Unmanned… yeah right. Former Coast Guard Machinery Technician here, Plankowner of USCGC Fir WKB 213. No engine room is going to be reliable enough day after day to be “unmanned”. Coast guard mechanics don’t get to specialize like navy. We work every system from damage control to sewage to main propulsion in the same day. Systems of all kinds fail daily. No grey water, sewage, human firefighting gear, or water desalination would drastically reduce maintenance and repairs workloads though. Plankowner experience on a new ship built in USA: we finished sea trials in the Great Lakes successfully. Had to replace both turbos on the main diesel engines by the time we hit Boston. Ship builder left welding rod stubs in the air ducts, they eventually hit the “fans”. 600lbs each. A 2 month journey to Oregon of constant mechanical failures that could’ve been avoided by quality shipbuilding practices, rather than cheapest.

Why make them like regular ships? Since no one is onboard, make them cylindrical, like a sub, it can roll in high seas (If double hall, the outer shell can roll, inner shell static utilizing bearings), this way no flipping, keeps going, no one to worry about being sea sick? No one can get onboard, till it reaches its destination.

What happens when your unmanned ship suffers an engineering issue and is adrift...and then someone comes along and claims it as salvage before you can get to it? Sovereign immunity only works if the salvor respects the law.

...es gibt intelligentere Sachen die man entwickeln könnte anstatt den Planeten so auszubäuten um noch mehr schaden mit diesen Entwicklungen anzurichtigen... Mutter Planet zerstörer... Peace

What about the human jobs you are eliminating

Bulwark Dynamics will get those containers to shore (in parallel, with EAMP-1, will get smaller payloads to shore and on same vehicle, to other land destinations via roads, with no cranes, docks or any other type of land-based infrastructure needed)

Lewis T, your view may have been true -- before. One Navy admiral, in similar discussions several years ago, summarized that mindset with the observation that he'd never taken his ship across the oceans without his sailors having to fix equipment. One of his colleagues then replied, yes, because typically another sailor had done something precipitating the fault. At least one vendor team has successfully gone from the West Coast to Hawaii to WestPac, then Australia, and back to the West Coast. Accompanied, I'll grant you that because it was a first, but the boats demonstrated sufficient reliability for Navy to push forward and evolve to today. Navy's on the right course, it just needs to speed up acquiring, testing, improving, and letting the fleet fully integrate the capability across the force.

Very cool. Might not be perfect for the first launch but the concept is a must in modern warfare. In the old days threats were over the horizon and we tuned our systems to detect at max range and had time to plan and execute a response. Now the threats are everywhere in every medium at once. Scary.

The ocean is a challenging environment. I wonder what they do when one of these has problems? Have they sped up the procurement process and not allowed the traditional extensive testing before committing to production? In today's combat environment, drones can inflict minor damage, which a crew can mitigate. Navy recruits are trained in damage control for good reasons.

The Navy will look at this like the air force... unmanned aircraft require no pilots, ships without officers... These ships will require a mothership with maintenance and support crew capabilities. So what's the ratio here 5 to 1? 8 to 1? As a US Marine Infantryman... tell me i suppose this idea is resupply forward deployed Marines on Islands.. with low risk to ship crews. . so they will be littoral supply vessels. How will they be offloaded without port facilities?