US Navy Takes Delivery of Ship That Can Operate Autonomously for Up to 30 Days

upstart writes:

The Navy is embracing autonomous vessels:

Shipbuilder Austal USA has just delivered a ship to the US Navy that can operate for up to 30 days at sea without human intervention. The delivery comes after the Chief of Naval Operations said uncrewed vessels would start to play an increasingly important role within the military branch.

Austral writes that it has delivered Expeditionary Fast Transport USNS Apalachicola (EPF 13) to the United States Navy. Its 337-foot hull makes it the largest surface ship in the fleet with autonomous capabilities. This class of ship can travel at a maximum speed of 40 knots, has a maximum payload capacity of 544 metric tons, and a daft [sic] - the vertical distance between the waterline and the bottom of the hull - of just 12.5 feet, allowing it to operate in comparatively shallow waters.

The Spearhead-class Expeditionary Fast Transport ships, designed by Austal Australia, already feature automated hull and mechanical & electrical systems, but the Austal USA team added automated maintenance, health monitoring, and mission readiness to EPF 13, allowing it to operate autonomously for up to 30 days.

[...] Admiral Michael Gilday, Chief of Naval Operations, sang the praises of autonomous ships at the West 2023 conference in San Diego. "We're getting to the point, probably within the next four or five years, where we'll begin to deploy unmanned platforms with carrier strike groups," he said. "And the idea is that we need more ships, we need more. We need to distribute ourselves across the Pacific Ocean and across the globe [...] We can do that faster and, we think, more effectively by having a combination of manned and unmanned."

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