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i 

97–495 2016

[H.A.S.C. No. 114–61] 

GAME CHANGERS—UNDERSEA WARFARE 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND 

PROJECTION FORCES 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

OCTOBER 27, 2015 
(II) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia, Chairman 

K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas 

BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama 

ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California, Vice Chair 

VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri 

PAUL COOK, California 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

JACKIE WALORSKI, Indiana 

RYAN K. ZINKE, Montana 

STEPHEN KNIGHT, California 

STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma 

JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam 

HENRY C. ‘‘HANK’’ JOHNSON, JR., Georgia 

SCOTT H. PETERS, California 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

GWEN GRAHAM, Florida 

SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts 

DAVID SIENICKI, Professional Staff Member 

PHIL MACNAUGHTON, Professional Staff Member 

KATHERINE REMBER, Clerk 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Courtney, Hon. Joe, a Representative from Connecticut, Ranking Member, 

Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces ........................................... 2 

Forbes, Hon. J. Randy, a Representative from Virginia, Chairman, Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces ........................................................ 1 

WITNESSES 

Clark, Bryan, Senior Fellow, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments ..................................................................................................................... 5 

Connor, VADM Michael J., USN (Ret.), Former Commander, Submarine 

Forces .................................................................................................................... 3 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Clark, Bryan ..................................................................................................... 46 

Connor, VADM Michael J. ............................................................................... 37 

Courtney, Hon. Joe ........................................................................................... 35 

Forbes, Hon. J. Randy ...................................................................................... 33 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

Mr. Cook ............................................................................................................ 65 

Mr. Langevin ..................................................................................................... 59 

(1) 

GAME CHANGERS—UNDERSEA WARFARE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES, Washington, DC, Tuesday, October 27, 2015. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:45 p.m., in room 

2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. J. Randy Forbes (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. J. RANDY FORBES, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM VIRGINIA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE 

ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES 

Mr. FORBES. As the members of this subcommittee and our witnesses are well aware, America’s ability to project power overseas 

is currently being challenged by the rapid growth of other nations’ 

military forces and the fielding of novel capabilities that undermine 

our freedom of maneuver and action and threaten to deprive our 

Nation of the many benefits we derive from our command of the 

seas. If we remain on our present trajectory, I fear we may see our 

seapower and power projection capabilities eclipsed and our influence eroded in critical regions overseas. 

In the past, Congress has responded to similar threats by undertaking great expansions of our air and maritime forces. Championed by legislators like Carl Vinson, these buildups reenergized 

American seapower and projection forces and sustained them for 

another generation. 

Given the challenges and constraints we face today, however, I 

believe a different response from Congress and the Pentagon is required. Building more things will be part of the solution, but it is 

my belief that what we really need at present are new things, innovative capabilities and concepts that will, quote, ‘‘change the game’’ 

in the many areas of military competition where the trends are unfavorable. 

Today this subcommittee kicks off a series of hearings examining 

potentially game-changing concepts and capabilities with a look at 

the undersea domain. This is a domain in which the United States 

has for decades been dominant and benefited immensely from it. 

Our superiority in this domain has enabled the United States to 

collect sensitive intelligence, hold at risk foreign fleets, attack targets on land without warning, and maintain the secure secondstrike capability that is essential for deterrence. 

While surface ships and forces ashore are coming under increased threat from anti-access/area-denial [A2/AD] capabilities 

and being forced to operate at longer ranges, U.S. submarines still 

enjoy freedom of maneuver and the ability to operate with near im-
2 

punity under the sea. In the view of many respected defense leaders and analysts, this provides an enduring strategic advantage 

that the United States should leverage to offset competitors’ growing strength in other areas. 

Unfortunately, as with so many elements of our fleet, the demand for undersea forces currently exceeds the supply, and the situation is forecasted to grow worse. At present, the U.S. submarine 

fleet is able to meet only 65 percent of commanders’ requests for 

forces. Under current plans, the Navy’s submarine fleet will shrink 

by 25 percent between now and 2030, with our fleet of attack submarines shrinking from 53 to 41 boats. Over that same period, we 

stand to lose 60 percent of our undersea payload capacity as our 

four SSGNs [cruise missile submarines] are retired from service. 

So, at a time when our submarine force will likely be called upon 

to do more than ever, it is also going to be at its smallest size since 

World War II. At the same time, our existing sensors and weapons 

should be expected to decline in effectiveness as our adversaries’ 

own capabilities improve. 

Fortunately, the submarine community is aware of the challenges and opportunities it faces, and we are privileged to have two 

of its leading thinkers here before us to discuss them: Retired Vice 

Admiral Michael J. Connor, former commander of Submarine 

Forces—Admiral, thank you for being here today—and Mr. Bryan 

Clark, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments [CSBA]. 

Bryan, thank you for joining us. 

These two submariners have been at the forefront of undersea innovation, and I am eager to hear from them as to what new undersea concepts and capabilities the Navy is currently developing and 

what more might be done to sustain and exploit our dominance in 

that critically important domain. 

And, with that, I turn to another leading proponent of America’s 

undersea power, our ranking member, Mr. Joe Courtney of Connecticut. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Forbes can be found in the Appendix on page 33.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. JOE COURTNEY, A REPRESENTATIVE 

FROM CONNECTICUT, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE 

ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES 

Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I have a statement, which, again, I am going to have introduced 

into the record, and just really summarize really quickly by saying, 

you know, over the last 7 or 8 years, with the help of both of our 

witnesses here, you know, we actually, I think, have sort of reasserted the priority of our undersea force, kick-starting the Virginia-class production program to two a year, getting the design 

work on track for the Ohio Replacement Program. The Virginia 

Payload Module [VPM], which the chairman referred to, is, you 

know, filling a critical payload gap which is going to occur when 

the SSGNs go offline. 

But the fact is we still have other challenges ahead of us, as I 

think we will hear from the witnesses. You know, the rest of the 

world has not sort of stayed frozen in the post-Cold War era. And, 
3 

again, we can’t have two better witnesses to sort of walk us 

through about where, you know, this committee should be focused 

in terms of trying to have a force multiplier to fill those gaps that 

the chairman referred to in terms of the combatant command 

[COCOM] and its requests, which are not going to be met, and that 

is probably going to get a little tougher as the fleet size declines 

in the next few years or so, and really trying to get, again, Congress focused on this, just like we were able to with the Virginia 

program and with the Ohio Replacement Program. 

And that is really, I think, the purpose of this hearing. And hopefully we are going to get some good ideas in terms of ways we can 

improve, you know, our budgeting and authorization process to 

make sure that, again, we just don’t lose that, you know, incredibly 

important edge that our country has in terms of the undersea domain. 

So, again, I want to thank both witnesses for being here today, 

and particularly Admiral Connor, who is now, you know, back 

where he belongs, in southeastern Connecticut, and, obviously, 

though, here today still helping our Nation. 

So, with that, I will yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Courtney can be found in the Appendix on page 35.] 

Mr. FORBES. Joe, thank you. 

And one of the things that we often say for opening statements 

is we tell our witnesses: You don’t need to read your opening statement. You can make it a part of the record and just talk to us. 

But today I want to emphasize how important both of these 

opening statements are. They are two of the best that I have read 

in a long time. And we are going to be encouraging our subcommittee members to read both of your statements, because I 

think they were just both excellent. So I thank you for the thought 

that you put into those statements and for the ideas contained in 

there. 

And I encourage anybody today who hasn’t read them to make 

sure you get a copy and read the full text that both of these gentlemen have put in their statements, because they are both excellent. 

And, with that, Admiral Connor, I think we are going to start off 

with you, and we would love to hear your thoughts and comments. 

And thank you once again for your service to our country and for 

being here today. 

STATEMENT OF VADM MICHAEL J. CONNOR, USN (RET.), 

FORMER COMMANDER, SUBMARINE FORCES 

Admiral CONNOR. Well, thank you, Chairman Forbes, Congressman Courtney, and, really, all the members of the committee and 

staff. I would like to just briefly thank you for the support that I 

saw very clearly during my tenure as commander of the submarine 

force, as this committee reversed the decline of the submarine 

force, got us back to two a year, and has us—although the numbers 

will go down for a while, you stabilized the situation. 

And it is your long-term commitment to Navy shipbuilding that 

is allowing things like the Virginia-class program to deliver such 

high-quality submarines ahead of schedule and under budget. It is 

because we have a fairly predictable future. Thank you for that. 
4 

I have a few suggestions. They are contained in my statement 

that I have submitted for the record. I will summarize them here. 

The first point is that, while we talk about game-changing capabilities, many of which come in the form of vehicles, manned and 

unmanned and so forth and things we called payloads, it is important to keep in mind that those game-changing capabilities rest on 

the foundation of superior platforms that give us an operational advantage when we go head-to-head with the adversary. And the 

things that we bring to bear after that tend, in many cases, to leverage that capability. And it is a very important part. The other 

capabilities are not standalone. 

The first point I want to make is that, in the game-changing capability, we need to start thinking in terms of range—range of 

weapons that we deliver under the water and above the water. It 

is important from the perspective that, as we look forward into a 

world where we present asymmetric challenges to our adversaries, 

that we take our superior platforms and then extend the range at 

which they can impart their effects across the theater. That is a 

true quandary for our adversaries, when they know that a submarine, for example, that they cannot detect has the ability to 

strike on short notice across a very wide area. 

So, in the area of torpedoes, we are looking at, as the Navy restarts heavyweight torpedo production, they do that with a mind 

to increase the range of those weapons and then increase the ability to communicate with those weapons when they are far, far from 

the ship that launched them, even to the point where another aircraft or satellite relay may actually determine the final homing of 

that weapon. 

The next point is that we need to get back into the business of 

submarine-delivered anti-ship missiles that can strike at very long 

ranges. This presents a huge quandary for our adversaries, who 

have to maintain an air defense posture if they are concerned that 

there might be a submarine in the area even if they can tell that 

there are no surface ships in the area. That is a true tax on their 

system. It changes their weapon load-out, it changes their radar 

posture, and it significantly helps our ability to track them. 

The next point is, as we look at how in this world going forward 

where we have many, many commitments to know what is going 

on under the water in more areas than ever before, we have to 

change the way that we do that. We have to shift from relying on 

a small number of highly capable but fairly relatively expensive 

platforms to do it in a much more pervasive way with large numbers of smaller, less expensive things. 

The good news is that the technology that we have today will 

allow us to do that. The advancements that have been made in robotics and autonomy and propulsion, in harvesting ocean power, 

have opened the door for those who are creative to make major, 

major improvements in how we sense what is going on in the 

ocean. 

And my last major point is that, if we are going to leverage this 

type of opportunity, we have to be able to move much faster in the 

future on the technological front than we did in the past. And we 

will certainly need the help of the Congress in doing that. 
5 

We live in a world where the technology cycle is about 2 to 3 

years long, and we also live in a world today with a typical program cycle, from inception of idea to funding and production, that 

can be 3 to 5 to 7 years. We cannot live in that world and keep 

pace with the technology of today. We will need your help in that, 

and we can talk about that later. 

That summarizes my statement. I am ready for your questions, 

Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Admiral Connor can be found in the 

Appendix on page 37.] 

Mr. FORBES. Admiral, thank you so much. 

And, Mr. Clark, you are not a stranger to this subcommittee. We 

thank you for being here again and look forward to your comments. 

And, with that, we yield you the floor. 

STATEMENT OF BRYAN CLARK, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR 

STRATEGIC AND BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS 

Mr. CLARK. Thank you, Chairman Forbes and Congressman 

Courtney, for inviting me to testify today. And I am honored to be 

here with Admiral Connor, who is my former boss and a visionary 

leader in undersea warfare. It is truly a great honor for me to be 

here with him today. 

This is a terrific topic for the first in the series of game-changing 

warfare area examinations, because today undersea warfare is 

something that the United States depends upon fundamentally for 

a lot of its war plans and a lot of its defense strategies as our way 

to get access to places that enemies with growing anti-access capabilities want to keep us out of. So we have to be able to sustain 

our level of dominance that we currently have in the undersea. 

That dominance is likely to be challenged here in the coming 

years, with the advent of new technologies and the advent of more 

visionist powers. And you have heard of deployments of Russian 

submarines out of their normal bastions or out of their normal local 

areas, deployments of Russian ships that are, you know, potentially 

looking at undersea cables, and the growing Chinese submarine 

fleet. 

So, clearly, there are competitors to the United States in the undersea domain that are going to look to take advantage of emerging 

technologies to establish their own capabilities to either deny us 

the ability to use the undersea or to use it to their own advantage. 

So we can look at opportunities here, some game-changing opportunities, to sustain our undersea advantage that we enjoy today 

and then to, going forward, establish an enduring advantage 

against those new competitors. 

I think there are three major areas where these technological 

changes are coming that our adversaries might be able to leverage, 

with the leveling of the technological playing field, but that we can 

also take advantage of ourself and that we need to. 

The first one is new capabilities to detect submarines and also 

in technologies that would prevent detection of submarines. So you 

will see a competition ensue between detection and counter-detection, which wouldn’t be dissimilar to what we see above the water 

when it comes to radar and electronic warfare that we are sort of 

familiar with. 
6 

The second area is in the power and autonomy of unmanned systems, so unmanned undersea vehicles as well as unmanned systems that you would deploy on the sea floor, like sensors or modules that would contain weapons and other payloads. 

The third major area—and this gets to something Admiral Connor just talked about—is in the area of payloads, so in the kinds 

of things that you would carry on an undersea platform or on a 

ship that would deploy things undersea, so advancements in communications technology for under the water, advancements in the 

capability of weapons to be able to go long distances and to also 

be able to find targets undersea, and then also in the ability of 

these systems to communicate with one another and network with 

one another and coordinate their operations undersea. 

So those three main areas of technology development offer opportunities for us as well as to our adversaries. These new technologies, though, will not make the oceans transparent in the near 

term or anytime in the future, probably, and they are not going to 

erode our dominance overnight. So we can take advantage of this 

time period in which we still have the advantage to invest in them. 

What we need to do is—or just some key features of this future 

competition that are likely to occur are six major areas, so what I 

think we are going to end up with as a new basis for submarine 

detection that is going to emerge out of these sets of game-changing technology. 

So we are used to passive sonar being the primary means by 

which we detect a submarine. So we listen under water, a submarine makes noise, we detect that noise and go attack the submarine. Well, as submarines have become quieter, that has become 

less possible. And, also, as adversaries have tried to develop their 

own anti-submarine warfare [ASW] capabilities, they are moving 

into new areas like active sonar and getting away from the idea of 

listening for the submarine and, instead, just using active sonar to 

bounce sound off of a submarine. 

So that is going to create new requirements for the U.S. to be 

able to protect their submarines from detection. That is going to 

create a counter-ASW competition, and so that is something that 

we can look at both gaining advantage in and being able to use 

against our enemies. 

We are also going to see the advent of undersea families of systems, or undersea systems of systems, where you have submarines 

and unmanned systems both on the sea floor and mobile ones, like 

unmanned vehicles, working with one another, communicating 

with one another to accomplish a mission, not dissimilar from how 

you see aircraft today. 

So, today, with integrated fire control systems, you see an 

AWACS [Airborne Warning and Control System] aircraft being able 

to find targets and then direct fighter aircraft to go intercept those 

targets. You will see a similar emergence in the undersea, where 

manned platforms and unmanned platforms are going to be interacting in these families-of-systems constructs. 

We are going to see probably the advent of seabed warfare, 

where the ability to find things underwater becomes very important and the ability to install them or remove them becomes very 

important, and whoever can do that better than the other compet-
7 

itor is likely to gain an advantage going forward. And you can see 

that even right now with the efforts the Russians are taking to try 

to identify and locate undersea cables. 

And the last feature of this competition you are likely to see is 

the focus on cost imposition rather than attrition. So our normal 

model of warfare is we try to destroy the other guy’s forces, kill as 

many of his people as possible, break as much of his stuff as possible. In the undersea, it is different because it is very hard to find 

things undersea, it is very hard to close the kill chain to destroy 

them. And so, as a result, you are going to see efforts to try to just 

impose costs on the enemy, force them to be always on the defensive, as Admiral Connor said, rather than trying to kill them outright. So we can look for ways to take advantage of that as the 

U.S., as opposed to that being used against us. 

Some things that the Navy should do to take advantage of the 

technologies that are available and get ahead in this next phase of 

competition are five main things. 

So first is to sustain and expand our submarine capacity. Because, as you noted, Congressman Forbes, we are going to have a 

reduction in overall submarine capacity here in the coming years 

where it is just actually going to go below the Navy’s identified requirement of 48, and then we are also going to have the reduction 

in overall capacity with the retirement of the SSGNs. So looking 

at ways to be able to mitigate that reduction in overall submarine 

capacity will be important. 

We need to achieve organizational alignment in the development 

of our undersea systems. Today, it is sort of a letting-all-the-flowers-grow effort, where we try to let everything come up and see 

which of these undersea systems, like an unmanned system or a 

sensor, is going to show promise. And, instead, we need to be a little bit more focused about how we manage and structure that effort. 

We need to ensure that the new SSBN [ballistic missile submarine] will be survivable in an environment where new ASW 

methods, new submarine-detection methods are becoming common. 

And looking out 50 years or more into the future for that new 

SSBN, it is going to be hard to figure out what is the new ASW 

technique of the future going to be, but we have to have that determination and make those systems part of that submarine. 

We need to establish priorities for unmanned underwater vehicle 

design and where they should be focused, for example, what mission should they be focused on and what sizes and capabilities do 

they need to have, as opposed to kind of the bottom-up approach 

that is proceeding today. 

We need to look at how we evolve our SSNs [attack submarines] 

for new roles. Our attack submarines are going to be the heart of 

this undersea family of systems, so they need to be equipped and 

have the payload capacity to do so. So things like the Virginia Payload Module are very important. Maybe that should be part of 

every Virginia-class submarine in Block V rather than simply half 

of them. 

And then the last thing is moving undersea systems from the research and development [R&D] community into acquisition. Because today a lot of these systems are languishing, waiting to tran-
8 

sition into acquisition programs because of a lack of requirements 

or a lack of organizational wherewithal to push them across the 

‘‘valley of death’’ and become something that is actually fielded as 

part of the fleet rather than an experiment that is done once or 

twice and looks good but never actually becomes part of our overall 

approach to undersea warfare. 

So, in conclusion, I would say that the undersea—you know, 

America can certainly sustain its undersea advantage and impose 

costs on its enemies using the undersea, but we have to evolve our 

approach and evolve the capabilities that we are developing to be 

able to take advantage of the technologies that are emerging and 

be able to do that in the future. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Clark can be found in the Appendix on page 46.] 

Mr. FORBES. Thank you, Mr. Clark. 

And to our witnesses, again, thank you for being here. 

This subcommittee is one of the most bipartisan subcommittees 

in Congress. And while we go outside these doors, we maybe differ 

on a lot of different things, we may be parochial in nature, we may 

have other issues, when we come in here, we are pretty much 

Team USA, you know, in how we do the best that we can do to defend and protect the United States of America. 

One of the things I want to encourage subcommittee members to 

do—and Mr. Courtney and I both concur in this—for those of you 

who might have gotten here after our opening, we normally don’t 

emphasize that you read the opening remarks. You can do that if 

you want to or not. These are two of the best opening comments 

that I think Joe and I both have seen in a long time that really 

outline this area. So I would just encourage all of our members to 

read those two opening remarks in their entirety. 

And, as I look at those, to both of you, we are oftentimes tasked 

with looking at charts of platforms. And so we can look at number 

of SSBNs we have, how many we need, we can look at the Virginia 

attack subs, how many we need, how we are going to compare, look 

at our surface ships. 

But, as I look at both of your written testimony as well as what 

you have verbally stated here today, it seems like what you are 

talking about in the future is we are going to have to, instead of 

just building more subs, which is important that we do, we are 

going to have to create these systems of systems that you talk 

about so that the subs that we have can be multiplied, not by having more subs only but by having systems that expand their both 

capacity and capability, I guess, in doing that. 

And two of the problems that we have—Mr. Connor, you specifically outlined these in your written testimony. But we are going to 

have to be on the innovative edge if we do that. And innovation 

sometimes means coming up with the ideas but also being able to 

get to those ideas. 

And the two concepts that I thought were pretty intriguing that 

you put out was, first of all, just with our normal budget process, 

it takes a year for one of our services to come up with their budget, 

and then it takes a year, on a good year, for us to be able to match 
9 

that budget and get it to the President. And by that time, oftentimes the shelf life of the innovation has run out. 

So I think both of you are concurring that we have to find, as 

to the innovation piece, how we do that faster. And so we would 

look, one, for your ideas on that, maybe an elaboration on that. 

But the second thing—and I thought this is something we need 

to really look at too—is the concept of failure. We have developed 

a culture now where, if we fail, any platform, it is like the most 

horrendous thing that has ever taken place. And I think, Admiral, 

your thoughts on that would be, if we are not failing, we are not 

innovating. And you point out in your testimony that in Silicon 

Valley they are going to have a 90 percent failure rate. So even if 

we had a 50 percent failure rate, that is not a bad thing. 

So I was wondering if the two of you could just kind of give us 

your thoughts on those concepts. 

Admiral CONNOR. I would be happy to, Chairman. 

And you described the limitations of the budget process very 

well. Even some of the tools that we have used to overcome the 

process, so to speak—we have a program we call Speed to Fleet, 

which behind closed doors we call the NBA [National Basketball 

Association] playoffs because what happens is that, over the course 

of a year, we compete various technologies within the Navy to decide which ones will get funded in the next budget. And the problem with even that is that is a year-long process, to do your fast 

project. It just doesn’t make sense. 

So, to a certain degree, I think the Congress and then whoever 

they select within the Department of Defense [DOD] to administer 

the program would have to create and oversee very much a venture-capital-like approach to innovation. The money has to be set 

aside. The money should be invested in projects that have credibility, that people can demonstrate why they have credibility. 

There ought to be milestones involved in that process, where people 

come back and show that they are on track and harvesting the results or making the progress that they intended to make—or not. 

And the ‘‘or not’’ piece comes into your failure rate you talked 

about. And if something seemed like a good idea but the physics 

don’t work out or the concept of operations is untenable, then there 

may come a point in some of the applications when we just say 

that this isn’t working, we are going to stop, we are going to file 

the lessons away, and we are going to learn from it, but we are 

going to stop here and put that money where it can move us forward faster. 

That may seem like a start-and-go-type process, but, at the end 

of the day, if you look at the way that works in other arenas, you 

make more forward progress by being bolder and making more bold 

attempts, even when you have occasional or even frequent failure 

in the process. 

Mr. CLARK. So I would have two things that the Congress could 

do, potentially. 

So one would be related to how do you incentivize the research 

organizations with regard to the things they pursue? 

Today, research organizations in the Department are incentivized to transition things into the warfighters’ hands. So they are 

graded on how well the projects they pursue end up turning into 
10 

an acquisition program, or at least part of an acquisition program. 

Even an organization like DARPA [Defense Advanced Research 

Projects Agency] feels pressure to transition more capabilities into 

the warfighters’ hands. 

What that does, though, is it makes them, over time, shift from 

a focus on bold, innovative, game-changing ideas to things that are 

more evolutionary and less disruptive and more likely to turn into 

an operational capability that will turn into an acquisition program. 

So one thing the Congress could do would be to incentivize a 

focus within these organizations, particularly the DARPAs and the 

S&T [science and technology] organizations, on more disruptive 

ideas that are more revolutionary. And so this comes to, how do we 

report this? 

So the reporting requirements for technology programs are generally: How well did they transition? What is the percentage of 

transition? And then how fast did they transition? Things that take 

too long or things that don’t transition are not rewarded, and 

things that do are rewarded. 

If instead we ask and there are reporting requirements to say, 

characterize how your technology programs were in terms of how 

disruptive they were to the status quo in terms of technologies and 

how revolutionary were their operating concepts, that would be a 

way to incentivize organizations to move in the direction that they 

should be, which is bolder ideas that are going to be able to change 

the way we operate more dramatically than potentially just coming 

up with evolutionary changes that simply move the ball a little bit 

further down the field. 

And I am thinking mostly of a DARPA-type model here. DARPA 

should be incentivized to pursue those game-changing technologies, 

but today they feel like they need to transition things to the 

warfighter, and, as a result, you are seeing a dulling of that focus 

on game-changing technologies. 

So that is one thing, in terms of how do we—you know, we can 

incentivize them through reporting requirements and through driving them to take more risk and accept more failure in terms of how 

the Congress deals with these organizations. 

I would say that the second thing is, in terms of getting the new 

capabilities more quickly into the warfighters’ hands, because of 

the budget process and this 2-year delay that you discussed, maybe 

we should formalize an opportunity during the development of the 

appropriations and authorizations bills for the Department to come 

back and make changes, in consultation and coordination with Congress, to accommodate the fact that certain programs in those 2 

years may have shown a lot of promise and should get more money, 

but, you know, our budget has been in stasis for the last 2 years. 

So we don’t have that opportunity until the budget has been issued 

and a reprogramming is conducted. 

So, instead of waiting for that reprogramming, change that appropriation while the appropriations bill is being developed over 

here on the Hill. It gives the Department a second opportunity to 

make changes to those small technology programs, some of which 

may have failed in the ensuing year and a half or some of which 

have shown great promise and need to be fostered further. 
11 

Mr. FORBES. Well, thank you both. And our subcommittee is 

going be looking to both of you two as we go down the road, perhaps, to laser in on some of these changes that we can do. We 

heard in the full committee just earlier today that one of the difficulties we have is a lack of competition now. So they said, before, 

a lot of our innovation came from the fact that the loser would create the innovation for the next time, and today we don’t have that 

situation. So this is something I think is very, very important as 

we move forward. 

Mr. Courtney is recognized for any questions he may have. 

Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And, again, I just want to reiterate your comments about the testimony. Again, I just think it is—I would really encourage all the 

members and, frankly, the whole committee to take a look at it. Because, you know, clearly, the sort of post-Cold War holiday in the 

undersea realm is over, and, you know, the world is changing. And 

you guys really focused on it, you know, just in a really important 

way. So thank you, to both of you. 

Mr. Clark, you talked a little bit about the Virginia Payload 

Module program, which, again, is right before us—actually, it is in 

the budget—in the authorization this year. At this point, again, it 

doesn’t look like it is going to commence until 2019—— 

Mr. CLARK. Right. 

Mr. COURTNEY [continuing]. With Block V. Again, the Navy shipbuilding plan, though, as you noted, is for only one out of the two 

a year Virginia classes, to incorporate that. 

I mean, given the fact that—I mean, it is clear we are not only 

just talking about strike capability but also, you know, the family 

of systems, as you said. I mean, should we be looking at maybe trying to modify that proposal to, again, maximize the benefit of that 

modification? 

Mr. CLARK. Definitely. 

If you look at the cost of the Block V Virginia-class submarine 

with the VPM, it is going to cost less, in constant-year dollars, than 

the original Block III cost because of the cost savings that have 

been incorporated into the program through the design-for-affordability efforts and by the other efforts that EB [Electric Boat] and 

HII [Huntington Ingalls Industries] have taken to reduce the cost 

of building the ship. And you can see that in how fast they build 

them and how early they are completed. That translates into lower 

costs. 

So the submarines are going to cost less money than their predecessors while offering more capability. So we should take advantage of that opportunity and expand the number that we are purchasing, because we need this capacity not just to replace the 

SSGNs, as you noted, for their strike capacity but also to enable 

these submarines to be the host and coordination platforms going 

into the future. 

Because the model we have to start thinking of for the submarine is less of the tactical aircraft that goes into harm’s way 

alone and unafraid and more like the aircraft carrier model, where 

it is the centerpiece of a family of systems that are operating in 

conjunction with it, some of which would come from the platform 

itself, and some may come from somewhere else. But that payload 
12 

capacity is essential to afford it the ability to be that aircraft carrier of the undersea. 

Mr. COURTNEY. And, Admiral Connor, again, you devised this undersea dominance campaign. If we have non-VPM Virginia-class 

subs versus those with the module, I mean, can you just talk a little bit about, you know, what the difference would be in terms of 

trying to implement that plan? 

Admiral CONNOR. Congressman, I would be happy to do that. 

The first point I would like to make is that it is a lot easier to 

be building subs in parallel that are exactly the same than to be 

having two variants coming off the line depending on what time of 

year it is because there are nuances there. So there are efficiencies 

that I believe would show up in production that probably aren’t reflected in the way we calculate costs ahead of time. 

The other issue, though, is, as we look to a world where we will 

intentionally pursue a path with a wide range of technologies—numerous less expensive technologies that we solve hard problems 

with numbers of small things—having the capacity built in place 

to deploy and retrieve things, even things that we haven’t invented 

yet, would be a very important part of our strategic planning. 

While we work in a timeframe probably with payloads and vehicles that become obsolete in 3 to 5 years, we have to plan on ships 

that are around for 30 to 40 years. And to make decisions today 

that would discount their ability to handle a wider range of payloads, I think, is worth reconsidering. 

Mr. COURTNEY. And your comments about anti-ship missiles, I 

mean, again, that also sort of fits into the Virginia payload, you 

know, capacity, just to have more—— 

Admiral CONNOR. Very much so. If you just would take, you 

know, the typical range of a Tomahawk missile today, which I 

think you all know, and say that were an anti-ship missile, and you 

would draw a radius around a submarine operating undetected in 

some part of the world, and the fact that that ship could impose 

a mission kill on pretty much anyone they chose, using technology 

that exists in other missile areas today and applying it to a missile 

that we know we can fly off a submarine, that is a pretty huge 

quandary, as I said, for the adversary. 

So the more capacity you have to employ those types of things, 

at the same time that you have these other payload options for 

sensing and so forth, would be critical. 

Mr. COURTNEY. Great. 

Thank you to both of you. 

I yield back. 

Mr. FORBES. Mr. Clark, did you have a—— 

Mr. CLARK. One thing I would add to that, too, on the payload 

capacity, what is really important is some people might argue that, 

well, if I try to use an anti-ship missile like the Tomahawk to attack a high-end destroyer of the Chinese, they will probably shoot 

it down. And I would argue that, well, if I shoot 10 or 12 Tomahawks at them, they may not shoot all of them down; all it takes 

is one to get through. 

That would be a very good cost tradeoff. If I am paying for 10 

or 12 Tomahawks at about a million dollars apiece to destroy a 
13 

$1.5 billion or $2 billion Chinese destroyer, that would be a good 

tradeoff to accept. 

Mr. FORBES. Okay. 

Mr. Wittman is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Vice Admiral Connor and Mr. Clark, thanks so much for joining 

us today. Some interesting points about what we need to do to 

dominate in the undersea realm. 

I want to expand from your concepts about using the submarine 

as kind of the centerpiece and having a number of systems that 

work in a dependence or in relation to the submarine itself, whether it is UUVs [unmanned underwater vehicles] or UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles]. Great concept. I think the carrier strike 

group concept with the submarine is a great way to go about that. 

It lets us leverage an awful lot of different systems on different 

platforms and creates lots of uncertainty for our adversaries. 

One thing, too, in a resource-restricted environment, which is 

where we are going to find ourselves, I think, at least now and into 

the foreseeable future, is we see our adversaries not only use nuclear-powered submarines, but we also see them use diesel-powered 

submarines. 

Give us your perspective about us having a fleet with some of 

those other platforms, a diesel-powered submarine. I think the 

technology is there, and we can build those for half the price of nuclear submarines. Nuclear submarines certainly have a place, but 

the question is, our adversaries have significant numerical advantage, and, as the saying goes, quantity has a quality all its own. 

What do we do, in looking at the ever-expanding numbers of our 

adversaries? And is there a place for diesel submarines as a platform, to look at something that is in addition to UUVs and UAVs, 

as we create these undersea systems? 

Admiral CONNOR. Congressman, I have studied this issue a fair 

amount. I have been both the submarine commander and the antisubmarine commander in the Western Pacific, Arabian Gulf, and 

the Atlantic, and these are the types of things that I thought about 

every day. 

What I found is the argument that suggested that the quantity 

of diesel submarines is a quality all its own is true if and only if 

the theater of operations is very constrained. And what you can do 

if you are the anti-submarine commander and the adversary is a 

diesel or even a diesel with air-independent propulsion capability, 

the energy density they have just isn’t there. They can’t move, on 

average, more than about 100 miles a day without resorting to 

coming shallow and operating their engines and therefore exposing 

themselves. 

So I would contend that while a diesel submarine does not replace a nuclear submarine, because we can go much further, much 

faster at quiet speeds, a capable unmanned vehicle, I think, does 

fulfill that role of getting numbers in a relatively constrained area. 

So we should be looking at sort of a high-low mix of capable submarines that can project a threat anywhere we want in a short period of time with the ability to deploy from submarines or other 

platforms—airplanes and surface ships—vehicles that can fulfill 

that mission that others use their diesel submarines for. 
14 

Mr. WITTMAN. As we look at the innovation and creation that 

takes place—and I agree with both of all of you, it takes place at 

a breakneck pace, and the current system of acquisition—and we 

talked about this earlier today—isn’t well-suited to get technology 

to the warfighter quickly. 

Give us some of your perspectives—and you shed a little bit of 

light on that in your testimony, but give us your perspectives on 

what we could do to really enhance that. You know, it is great to 

have a fund, but there is always this accountability side about 

what are you doing, who is going to oversee that, and those sorts 

of things. 

But give us your thoughts about, first of all, how would you do 

that internally? How would you encourage the private sector to 

take that innovation, to develop it, to make it available to DOD? 

And if it is applicable, we can put it to use. If not, then there 

should be some ownership, I am sure, by the private sector. 

But, anyway, give us your perspective on how we can make that 

happen. 

Admiral CONNOR. The ability of the private sector to invest and 

to retain their intellectual property and profit from it when they 

succeed would be a huge incentive to bringing many companies 

that are not traditionally pursuing defense work into that arena. 

And there are some very innovative people who would be happy to 

spend their own money for a chance to compete. So that is one 

point. 

The other area is probably more on the side of the Department 

than the Congress, but that is, when programs are defined, I think 

we have had a tendency to define them too narrowly. And sometimes that works in the favor of preservation of the program in the 

form it was conceived. But to the extent to which we could expand 

the definition of a program such that when good ideas happen that 

meet the intent of the program they can be incorporated. 

If you want to see a good example of that, you could look at the 

Advanced Processor Build/Technological Insertion program we use 

on submarines, which—basically, we assume that the hardware becomes obsolete every 5 to 6 years and the software becomes out of 

date every 2 [years], so we plan for those changes. We could do 

similar things with hardware. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. FORBES. And, Admiral, just to clarify your response to Mr. 

Wittman, as I understand, you are saying if you had to spend defense dollars, you would rather have a limited number of very highend platforms supplemented by a large number of more inexpensive, perhaps unmanned platforms, rather than putting it all in 

multiple midrange submarines. Is that a fair representation? 

Admiral CONNOR. That is very accurate. I might say massive 

numbers of small platform. 

Mr. FORBES. Right. That is great. 

The gentlelady from Florida, Ms. Graham, is recognized for 5 

minutes. 

Ms. GRAHAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, Admiral, Mr. Clark. Appreciate you all being here. 

I represent north Florida, where the Naval Support Activity Center in Panama City is located. Much of what we are discussing here 
15 

today is being developed and tested there. As a matter of fact, 

there are commercial entities that are on the cutting edge of innovation. 

I am curious about what you all are seeing in terms of our adversaries across the world and where they are in terms of developing 

unmanned undersea technology. Because, often, the challenges that 

we face are what drive development and drive the desire to be competitive in this area. 

So, if you could speak to that, I would appreciate it. 

Admiral CONNOR. The cutting edge of unmanned undersea today 

exists probably in the academic world and in the oil and gas exploration world. And they are developing a lot of technology very rapidly. 

From what I have seen—and I am now out of the Navy and no 

longer have a clearance, but it hasn’t been that long—our adversaries are not ahead of us in unmanned vehicles, particularly in 

the autonomy area. I think we have—the robotics center of excellence is in this country, and the marine robotics center of excellence is in this country. And the folks in your district, in Panama 

City, have leveraged this very highly. 

The MK 18 Mod 1 unmanned vehicle, which is based on a 

REMUS [Remote Environmental Monitoring Units] vehicle which 

was invented for academic research at Woods Hole by some people 

from MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology], is a classic example of how smart people inside the military leverage commercial 

technology for a very good purpose. In that case, it was mine hunting. 

Mr. CLARK. I think I agree with Admiral Connor on that, that 

the most capable systems are being developed by American academia, often in consortiums with the U.S. Government. 

You see a lot of efforts going on, though, in other countries just 

to put more and more stuff out there. So the Chinese have a large 

number of UUVs that they have been developing. The Russians 

have had a longstanding program that uses unmanned vehicles, 

and mostly remotely operated vehicles, to go do undersea surveillance or to do work on cables, et cetera. So those programs have 

been, you know, longstanding efforts by those countries. But they 

aren’t as advanced as the U.S. technologically, but they may try to 

make up for that in terms of just mass, by putting more effort into 

it. 

The other area where I see, when you look at the technical journals, foreign countries, you know, potentially gaining a level playing field is when it comes to the physics and some of the computer 

processing power that is available. So how you improve your antisubmarine warfare capabilities involves how do you use the physics 

of the undersea. Well, that technology is obviously well understood 

to a lot of people. And so it could be something that academically 

other countries will leverage and take advantage of the fact that 

computer processing power has now grown to the point where you 

can do things today in other countries using their technology that 

you would only be able to do in the United States in the past. 

Ms. GRAHAM. Thank you for that. 

As I have spent quite a bit of time at the Naval Support Activity 

Center in Panama City and I have seen all the incredible things 
16 

that they are doing—and the private sector. It is not just by coincidence that there is a large growth of companies that are developing 

undersea technology there, so that they can work together with the 

Navy. And I think that is an indication of the cooperation between 

the private and public that we should be encouraging. I am very 

proud to represent both. 

So thank you for that, and I appreciate your answers to the questions. 

Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Mr. FORBES. Mr. Conaway is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. CONAWAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Gentlemen, thanks for being here. 

As the Navy considers or looks to the next generation of attack 

submarines and the capabilities or attributes that will be the key 

to that, can you talk to me about, is that all manned, or is there 

a blend between the manned and unmanned platforms that would 

be appropriate? And what other key attributes should the Navy 

look at? 

Admiral CONNOR. And so, as we look forward, we are looking at 

manned and unmanned vehicles that go undersea. We tend to call 

the ones with the people in them ‘‘submarines,’’ and we tend to call 

the unmanned things something else. But, clearly—I think Mr. 

Clark articulated it very well—there is going to be a synergy in the 

future between things that are manned and are unmanned. 

He referenced the ability of the submarine to be the node for a 

number of other vehicles undersea. I would add that, in many 

cases, the submarine might simply be the customer for a number 

of unmanned devices that are informing them about the environment, whether they are controlled from a submarine or not. They 

may very well be controlled from shore or from a carrier strike 

group or an aircraft. 

We should get to the point where it doesn’t matter because we 

have been able to network them, and whoever has the best vantage 

point—— 

Mr. CONAWAY. Yeah, I have got that part, but what about using 

them as attack vehicles, armed and dangerous? 

Admiral CONNOR. Ah, I see your question. I think the submarine 

will be the centerpiece of the things that apply lethal force in the 

undersea. I think we have some not just conceptual work but policy 

work to do before we have unmanned vehicles that are delivering. 

Mr. CONAWAY. The Air Force had that same struggle between 

air-breathers and others, and today we wouldn’t think about not 

having armed, unmanned—or remotely piloted, excuse me. They 

are all piloted. 

But is there a lesson for the Navy there? Would they get to an 

answer quicker? 

Admiral CONNOR. There are some parallels in that area. The 

area that is not a parallel is that, when you have an unmanned 

air vehicle, you have constant communications. You usually have 

a video feed. There is a person actually in the loop all the time. 

That degree of precision control is often not available for something 

operating undersea, and you have to rely on the inherent autonomy 

of a computer. And the policy issue is, at what point will we let 

that autonomous computer make a decision to apply lethal force? 
17 

Mr. CLARK. Sir, I would say that the major limitation we are 

going to find pretty soon in autonomy is not so much how smart 

the computer is on the vehicle but its limited ability to get situational awareness of what is going on around it. So its sensors are 

going to be imperfect, and so what will happen is—— 

Mr. CONAWAY. But wouldn’t they have the same kind of ability 

to figure on what is going on around them that the submarine 

does? 

Mr. CLARK. Exactly. 

Mr. CONAWAY. Nobody looks outside the portholes in the sub. 

Mr. CLARK. Right. No, but what happens is, on the submarine, 

you have a human who can be accountable for making a decision 

with uncertain data. So the submarine commander every day 

makes decisions with a lack of certainty with regard to what is 

going on around him, and he is accountable for the results of that 

action. The autonomous vehicle can’t be accountable for the actions 

that it takes in the face of uncertain data. 

But what we could see is a situation where unmanned vehicles—— 

Mr. CONAWAY. But we don’t lose unmanned aerial vehicles that 

don’t have a human trigger-puller. 

Mr. CLARK. Right. And you could do the same thing undersea. 

Mr. CONAWAY [continuing]. Have a trigger-puller either, would 

you? 

Mr. CLARK. Yes, sir. So you could have an undersea system 

where the unmanned system is in relatively close contact with a 

submarine, not necessarily continuous coms [communications] but 

would, you know, be able to relay back to the submarine a situation that it sees, and then the submarine commander or the person 

on board would make a decision on whether to apply lethal force 

and be accountable for that decision. But it would require some degree of coordination between the unmanned system and the submarine. 

Mr. CONAWAY. Yeah. 

And, again, the unmanned systems can be deployed off a submarine or a carrier. How does the Navy not silo up this decision 

process and take full advantage of these systems—you know, the 

surface guys between carriers and LCSs [Littoral Combat Ships] 

and subsurface and all those silo things? How does it avoid not 

using something to the fullest extent because it was somebody 

else’s idea and we don’t like submariners, we like surface guys better? 

Admiral CONNOR. Congressman, I think we are past that in 

many areas. Having managed the ASW fight, which is a team effort between aircraft, surface ships from carrier strike groups, and 

submarines and fixed systems, we have some fairly highly evolved 

ways that we can work closely together without fratricide. And 

there is a fair amount of humility in who does the final act, so to 

speak. 

In fact, this world that we are talking about in undersea that is 

heavily based on netted systems, in the vast majority of cases, the 

preferred community to conduct the final attack would probably be 

the aviators. Because, as we have a wide range of sensors, when 

we get a contact and we want to quickly turn that contact into dis-
18 

abling the enemy, the platform of choice would probably be a P– 

8 aircraft. 

Mr. CONAWAY. Thank you. 

I yield back. 

Mr. FORBES. Mr. Johnson is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Gentlemen, thank you for your testimony today. And thank you 

for your service to the Nation, as well. 

Admiral Connor, how does the Navy intend to incorporate the 

proliferation of underwater vehicles into existing submarine platforms? And what modifications should the Navy incorporate into 

future requirements to ensure that they are able to accept a wider 

range of emerging technologies? 

Admiral CONNOR. Congressman, that gets fairly close to the discussion we had with Congressman Courtney in that we have to 

have the payload capacity and the versatile payload capacity to 

handle these vehicles. 

This year, for the first time in an operational setting, we deployed and retrieved a series of unmanned vehicles doing missions 

in a place and in a manner that we could not have done with a 

submarine. However, we did that with a submarine that was 

equipped with a device we call a dry-deck shelter, which is designed for the deployment and retrieval of Navy SEALs [Sea, Air, 

Land forces]. And that is a large ocean interface that we carry on 

the back of the submarines. 

As we look to the future, we need to design our submarines such 

that the vast majority, if not all of them, will have that same ability to deploy and retrieve, and, preferably, we don’t have to add 

some special component that impacts the performance of the submarine in other ways. 

So we are learning lessons as we go along. We have made some 

steps, but those steps are telling us the types of things we need to 

have so that we can deploy and retrieve in the future. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Mr. Clark, do you have anything you would like to add? 

Mr. CLARK. Yes, sir. 

So the system Admiral Connor is talking about is the Universal 

Launch and Recovery Module, ULRM. And that system would be 

really important to be able to launch and recover unmanned vehicles from a submarine more easily without having to have divers 

and everybody involved. 

The other thing we need to do with our submarines, though, is 

look at how they communicate with the outside world and with the 

unmanned vehicles they are going to be interfacing with. 

Today, you can generally use three ways to communicate from a 

submarine. One would be the radio frequency spectrum, so that 

kind of requires that you be above the water in order to use the 

radio. 

The second way is light, so you can use lasers to communicate 

at relatively short distances. So we would need to equip submarines with ways of using lasers or LEDs [light-emitting diodes] 

to communicate with unmanned vehicles that are relatively close 

to them. And that is a pretty high bandwidth communication link, 

but it is very short-range. 
19 

And then acoustic communications, which can actually travel for 

a very long distance, so hundreds of kilometers, potentially, if you 

go to low frequencies. Those communications can travel over a very 

long distance. So we would need to equip submarines with the ability to do those kinds of long-range acoustic communications so that 

they can form the centerpiece of this battle network in the future. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

What barriers to innovation must the Navy address to more rapidly field emerging technologies? For the both of you. 

Admiral CONNOR. Congressman, I think the two barriers are: 

funding; and the other one is the willingness to experiment and tolerate failure in addition to success, with the goal of moving forward 

faster overall. 

Mr. CLARK. I think we need to look at how we establish requirements for new programs. 

Today, if you are going to start a new acquisition program, you 

go and develop through a series of years of analysis a set of requirements for that program. That might be acceptable when you 

are talking about a manned platform that is going to have people 

on it and is going to be in the force for decades after its introduction. 

But for a payload like an unmanned vehicle or a weapon, that 

may not be the case. There may be a very quick technology refresh 

cycle on that. So we may be able to have requirements that are less 

stringent or less comprehensively developed and could be developed 

in a shorter time. And that would increase the speed with which 

we could bring these new systems on board. 

The other thing I would note is the testing process that we have 

today can be very cumbersome. A great example of that is the mine 

warfare mission package for the LCS, which uses a lot of unmanned systems to go look for mines and blow them up. The one 

problem they are having today is they are finding that some of 

these unmanned vehicles are not as good as other unmanned vehicles they would prefer to have in the package, but because the test 

plan doesn’t address the fact that you can switch out these unmanned vehicles as you find some that work better than others, 

they are forced to stick with their original plan and their original, 

you know, poor-performing vehicle because the test plan doesn’t accommodate any changes. 

So having more flexibility with regard to testing might be a very 

important way to encourage, you know, the introduction of new 

systems that have shown themselves to be more capable than the 

ones we are currently pursuing. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

And, with that, I will yield back. 

Mr. FORBES. The gentlelady from Missouri, Mrs. Hartzler, is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, gentlemen. This is very interesting. And I had to 

miss the opening statements, so I apologize if I ask a question you 

have already covered here. 

But, just to be clear, are there any of these, as you call them, 

unmanned underwater vehicles in operation now, or is this just totally conceptual at this point? 
20 

Admiral CONNOR. There are absolutely vehicles operational now. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. So how many do we have in our fleet now? 

Admiral CONNOR. I don’t know the exact number. I would estimate that it is on the order of a couple of hundred if you include 

in that definition these series of Wave Gliders that we use around 

the world for oceanographic measurements which we incorporate 

into how we operate our sonar systems. That is one category. 

There are probably upwards of 50 vehicles in use in the minecountermeasures mission. And that is a mission that has probably 

been the most proactive in experimenting, and that was because of 

the urgent need that was developed by the threat of mines in the 

Strait of Hormuz, which led to an intense program with funding 

and led to some pretty remarkable results. 

Oh, by the way, that program leveraged vehicles that had been 

put in service by the oceanographic community for some of their 

needs. So you can see how, when you set the right environment, 

one organization can quickly build on another organization’s success. It is a very collaborative effort. 

And then I did mention earlier that we did our first operational 

deployment and retrieval on a submarine-like mission this year. So 

it is expanding pretty rapidly. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. So there is only one that is actually being 

launched from the submarine at this point, and that is the one that 

was used by the Navy SEALs? 

Admiral CONNOR. No. There is one variant that is currently deployed by submarines. It is deployed and retrieved by the submarine development squadron that embarks on the submarine. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Okay. Very good. 

And I just want to know a little bit more how it works. I want 

to build on Representative Conaway’s point. I have the Predator 

drone unit in my district, and they do not like to be referred to as 

unmanned aerial vehicles, which I certainly understand. They are 

remotely piloted. 

So, in this case, are they all remotely controlled? Or you indicated, Mr. Clark, that there may be some option for just a software 

package where they operate free of human direction. Is that correct? 

Mr. CLARK. That is correct. Yes, ma’am. So, today, most of our 

undersea, underwater, or other unmanned underwater vehicles are 

automated—— 

Mrs. HARTZLER. They really are. 

Mr. CLARK [continuing]. Or autonomous. Right. They do not have 

a remote pilot. So a remote pilot diversion would be a remotely operated vehicle [ROV], which is what you might use in the oil and 

gas industry to go down and do operations at a wellhead. So, for 

example, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that we had in the Gulf, 

we were using ROVs to do a lot of the repair work there to try to 

close off the spill. 

But in the Navy, we use a lot of unmanned undersea vehicles 

that are truly unmanned, and they use onboard automation in 

order to go out and conduct their mission. We use them for survey 

work. For example, the MK 18 Mod 2 was used to look for the Malaysian airliner that went down in the southern Indian Ocean last 

year. 
21 

So they go off, and they can do these survey missions on their 

own and come back, and the data can be retrieved from them. 

What we are talking about is expanding the use of those systems 

now to do other missions than simply surveying, you know, to look 

at them for weapons, for example, because they can go out and actually attack something if it has been defined, especially like a 

fixed target that you could define well in advance. 

You could also use them to go do ASW operations by dragging 

a rig behind them and then being able to search for a contact, that 

kind of stuff. 

So we are looking to expand their use into a lot more areas. But 

they aren’t remotely operated; they are truly unmanned. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Now, last question, you talked about the three 

ways it could be run—through radar, laser, acoustic. I was just 

wondering, if they are acoustic, does that make them vulnerable to 

intentional detection? 

Mr. CLARK. Right. It does. It depends on how you do it. So there 

are ways, just like radio communications, to encrypt those communications underwater. There are also ways to make them less detectable by making the beam very focused so it is hard to intercept 

it from outside a very narrow beam width. And you can also make 

it so that the sound is not too far above the noise level of the overall ocean, so you would have a difficult time finding it. You know, 

if you were trying to listen for the communication, it would just 

barely rise above the background noise. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Very interesting. Thank you. 

I yield back. 

Mr. FORBES. If the gentlelady would yield, one of the things that 

might be interesting for any of our members to do is get a classified 

briefing on some of the unmanned operations that are going out 

there. I think that would be insightful too. 

With that, the gentlelady from Hawaii, Ms. Gabbard, is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Ms. GABBARD. Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, gentlemen, for being here. 

And, on that note, I would like to encourage my colleagues to 

come out and visit the Barking Sands facility in my district, where 

a lot of this innovative training is taking place in 900 square nautical miles, water depths ranging from 6,000 to 15,000 feet, with 

a full spectrum of range support and data display, target weapon 

launching, recovery, et cetera, et cetera. It is something that we 

are proud of, and it is a one-of-a-kind asset that we have here for 

our Navy to use. 

Mr. Clark, I wonder if you could speak a little bit more to something that you mentioned earlier with regards to transitioning 

R&D [research and development] technologies from DARPA into 

acquisition programs. And you mentioned about the need to move 

away from transitioning directly to warfighters to focusing more for 

DARPA on kind of these bigger, longer-term innovative ideas. 

If you could talk a little bit about the balance of that, given some 

of the present-day challenges we are facing as well as the projected 

challenges and increased capabilities we are seeing in other parts 

of the world. 
22 

Mr. CLARK. Yes, ma’am. So our service organizations that do research and development—for example, the Office of Naval Research—are designed to be pursuing near-term advancements to 

current capabilities. So they would be the organizations that are 

looking to take existing systems that we have today and adding 

new capabilities to them through their research projects or introducing some new systems that sort of build upon what the current 

system of systems that we may have in the DOD does. 

So that is more of the evolutionary change. It is going to come 

from those organizations. What we need DARPA and organizations 

like that—and this is also where the, you know, kind of, outsideDOD innovation industry could be looking, as well—is, how are we 

getting ahead to deal with the next set of challenges? 

So the near-term challenges are: We have new competitors that 

are fielding submarines. We have to be able to, you know, detect 

and potentially engage them. And we have to maintain our ability 

to gain access undersea in places where people don’t want us to go. 

I mean, those are things we have talked about with unmanned vehicles, et cetera. 

But we need to start looking down the road at, what is the next 

generation of anti-submarine warfare detection technologies? If it 

is not going to be passive acoustic sonar, is it going to be something 

else? DARPA should be looking at what is that next game-changing 

technology. 

If we are going to go to vehicles that can do on their own everything that a base submarine would do, then how do we build that 

autonomy and build that sensor capability—because they go together—into the next generation of vehicles to enable these totally 

different operating concepts that we might use, where an unmanned vehicle goes and does an operation in place of a submarine? 

Those are the things that a DARPA-type organization should be 

looking at. So they are fairly disruptive. They are pretty revolutionary. They are going to involve some risk. But if nobody is looking at that, then we won’t be able to gain that next advantage. 

So a good example would be things like stealth. You know, we 

wouldn’t have had stealth if DARPA hadn’t started pursuing it 20 

years before we ever fielded the first stealth airplane. 

Ms. GABBARD. And, on that note, Admiral, at the end of your 

written testimony, you talked about innovation and incentivizing 

that innovation, which goes directly along with what you are talking about. 

Can you give some examples of how we can best incentivize private investment towards this development and open up the doors 

more for those who are doing the research and finding solutions for 

this in the private sector and eliminating some of those obstacles 

to the DOD being able to take action? 

Admiral CONNOR. Yes, ma’am. I would be happy to do that. 

I will give you an example. In the field of autonomy, for example, 

you know, autonomy engines, which are really software algorithms 

that help machines make decisions independent of operator, it is a 

very quickly moving field. Most of the development that is taking 

place there is taking place in the private sector. Much of what they 
23 

are developing is directly applicable to the type of work that we do 

in national defense. 

If we want to be able to leverage the best types of algorithms 

that come into our programs, we will need to provide a way, for example, that the rights to that intellectual property when we incorporate it still provide a reward to the person who designed it in a 

way that makes them want to keep working with us and that 

makes their competitors want to design something better that we 

want to buy. 

And it is an incredibly fast-moving field. And that is just one example. There are other parallels in propulsion, that the battery industry is moving forward at a very rapid pace, and whoever has 

the best battery, which has a big impact on the system, should be 

rewarded for that. 

Ms. GABBARD. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. FORBES. Mr. Larsen is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. LARSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

So, a little over a year ago, I was out fishing about 20 miles off 

the coast of Neah Bay with former Congressman Norm Dicks, and 

there were two things I discovered that weekend: One, I am a better fisherman than Norm Dicks. And that is for the record. That 

is for the record. It is a pretty high bar. Second, there is a lot of 

water out there, a lot of water out there. And so that physical limit, 

if you will, applies to us as much as it applies to peer competitors 

and near-peer competitors, to cover that water. 

So, Admiral Connor or Mr. Clark, can you talk a little bit more 

about the sheer numbers? If you went to ROVs or autonomous, to 

cover the kind of water that we would need to cover, you would 

need a lot, unless you made a conscious decision to, you know, limit 

the space that you are going to cover at any one time. And so how 

do you address it? It is sort of the—it is not the tyranny of distance; it is the tyranny of volume. 

Admiral CONNOR. Congressman, I would be happy to answer 

that. 

This is a case where you don’t have to know everything everywhere, but there are some places where you would like to have 

very good knowledge. So if you take some of the more strategic 

chokepoints in the world, the approaches to them, you would want 

to gain near-perfect knowledge in those areas. 

When we have critical things we want to protect, like some of the 

undersea infrastructure that we mentioned earlier that is so critical to our economy, there may be places where you decide you 

want to have a volume of system in that relatively small area 

around that infrastructure where you would have sufficient vehicles for perfect knowledge. And then you would need, obviously, a 

different approach to, you know, open ocean. 

The other area where we want to have fairly perfect knowledge 

is the area around things like our carrier strike groups. And all of 

the examples that I mentioned are doable if we take that systemof-systems approach, recognizing that some systems are suited to, 

say, a deepwater environment and others are more suitable for a 

chokepoint environment. 
24 

And the task that the Navy has to come up with is how to combine varying systems in a way that they present an output that is 

easy to understand by the operators so that they don’t have to 

worry so much about the physics of shallow versus deep water; 

they just have to know where the contact is. And that is doable if 

we just apply some operational planning and decide what areas are 

important. 

Mr. LARSEN. Uh-huh. 

Mr. CLARK. So one thing I would add to that—I think that is exactly right when it comes to areas that we are trying to defend. I 

think, then, looking for the adversary’s problem, we want to force 

the same problem onto him. So we don’t need to have a large number of underseas systems in his near-abroad to force him now into 

a situation where he is expending a lot of effort to go find where 

we are. So the combination of submarines with unmanned systems 

would enable us to be able to distribute our force over enough area 

that it creates fits for him in terms of his anti-submarine warfare 

efforts. 

The other thing it points out is the urgent need for the DOD to 

develop counter-UUV technologies. Because finding an unmanned 

underwater vehicle is very hard because they are small, they are 

usually made of plastic, they don’t have a great sonar return. So 

developing ways to counter the efforts of others to bring UUVs 

against us is very important, because that could be one of the 

asymmetric capabilities of the future, like we saw with the IEDs 

[improvised explosive devices] and now we are seeing UAVs. UUVs 

may be another capability somebody could use against us asymmetrically. 

Mr. LARSEN. Yeah. 

I want to follow up on something Mr. Wittman and Ms. Gabbard 

discussed, but I am still not hearing the specifics, and this is how 

to get private sector to participate more in this particular area, especially as it relates to IP [intellectual property]. 

I forget which one of you mentioned it in your testimony more 

specifically, but there is a problem with who gets to keep that intellectual property and who has to sign it over. It is usually the Navy 

gets to keep it, and the private sector has to sign it over. That is 

not going to work long term if we want the private sector to participate. 

Can you talk a little bit more about how you could make that 

work? 

Admiral CONNOR. One way to make that work is to start buying 

stuff. I know it sounds pretty simple, but when defense contractors 

would come to me, they would look at our budget and they would 

look at the size of the budget and they would look at the probability that they could gain that business, and then they would 

make a decision as to how to invest their own money. 

And so, if we recognize that this is a growing field and we make 

a conscious attempt to lead-turn this dynamic field by investing in 

the technology that is coming to bear in a short period of time, that 

will snowball and others will join the business, and our capacity 

will get greater, but also the quality of the systems will get greater 

because American entrepreneurs will make an attempt to gain our 

business. 
25 

Mr. CLARK. The other thing I would say is we could look at leasing more systems. As unmanned underwater vehicles become more 

common, both commercially and in the military, we could lease 

more of these systems. 

And that is a similar model to what we have used the UAVs, so 

the ScanEagle and some of the other UAVs that we have used off 

Navy ships. In many cases, most of them we have today have been 

leased, and it is contractor-owned/contractor-operated, and we just 

rent the thing. 

So those are options that are going to present themselves to us 

as unmanned underwater vehicles become more common. 

Mr. LARSEN. Thank you. 

Mr. FORBES. Gentlemen, thank you very much. 

As we mentioned at the outset, we always like to give our witnesses a few moments. If there is anything that you didn’t get a 

chance to elaborate on as much as you thought you should have or 

if there were any questions that you would like to clarify an answer on, this would be the time to do that. 

And, Admiral, why don’t we once again start with you, and we 

will let Mr. Clark have the final word. 

Admiral CONNOR. Chairman Forbes, thank you again for letting 

us talk to you today. 

The points that I would like to just add that I didn’t mention earlier is that one of the areas we didn’t talk about very much was 

the risk that adversary systems might present to our infrastructure 

and the urgency with which we should seek to come up with efficient ways to defend our infrastructure—oil and gas, coms, power, 

et cetera. And that should be a consideration. And that mission will 

probably fall to the Navy if it is greater than 12 miles from land. 

And then, lastly, we talked about developments in laser coms 

and autonomy and so forth, and I just want to thank you all, because we had made some great strides in very recent time simply 

with the funding that was allocated to those efforts via the omnibus reprogramming earlier this year. And all the committees that 

made that happen had a direct impact in pushing forward a dynamic field in a very big way. I was at Woods Hole yesterday, and 

they were showing me all the great work that they did with the 

money you provided only a few months ago. 

Thank you. 

Mr. FORBES. Good. Thank you. 

Mr. Clark. 

Mr. CLARK. Thank you, sir. Thank you again for having us here 

today. It has been a terrific experience and honor. 

I would have two things that I wanted to add. We talked a little 

bit earlier about diesel submarines. Congressman Wittman brought 

them up. One thing I would say with regard to diesel submarines, 

our experience with World War II diesel submarine warfare, which 

is the largest scale of anti-submarine warfare competition that we 

have had, was that diesel submarines could be rendered ineffective 

by mounting a pretty aggressive anti-submarine warfare campaign 

even if you didn’t sink any submarines. 

The Germans, the Italians, even the Americans, when faced with 

somebody that was aggressively going after them with active sonar 

and even ineffective attacks, were successful at keeping the diesel 
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submarines from being able to operate and do counter-shipping attacks. 

So diesel submarines, while they are cheaper, probably, and 

maybe could be bought in larger numbers, also suffer from some 

disadvantages that would make them easier to prevent from being 

effective because they are slow and they lack the ability to endure 

underwater for a very long time. 

The second point I would bring up is on this point of innovation 

and organization, is that the Navy’s recent effort to align all of its 

unmanned systems under a single directorate I think offers some 

opportunities to improve the speed with which and the effectiveness with which it can transition new capabilities. So I would applaud that. 

I think we have to take a similar approach in the acquisition 

world, to look for ways to align under one organization these smaller programs that lead to technological advancements. Because 

today they are often under a larger organization that has much 

bigger responsibilities for large acquisition programs that are going 

to consume all of their time and consume most of their money. 

So they don’t have the brainpower and the bandwidth to be able 

to look closely at the technology efforts and see which ones are offering the most promise and foster those and then, you know, take 

the other ones and take them off the plate and cancel them. And 

so one of the reasons we see today that we have a lot of programs 

bubbling up but very few get turned off is because the people that 

manage those programs don’t have the time to devote to be able to 

determine which ones to keep and which ones to get rid of. 

So I think that is a good effort on the requirements side that the 

OPNAV [Office of the Chief of Naval Operations] staff is taking. 

We need to follow suit within our acquisition organizations in the 

Navy to be able to carry that through so that unmanned systems 

and the innovative technologies they incorporate can be, you know, 

taken forward in a strategic way as opposed to simply in a bottoms-up, water-all-the-flowers approach like we have now. 

Mr. FORBES. Could you just take a couple seconds and clarify on 

the diesel subs, since it has been raised? The admiral mentioned 

they could go about 100 miles and then they had to come up to the 

surface. Can you explain why, so we have that on the record? 

Mr. CLARK. Right. So a diesel sub is going to be able to operate 

on its battery and use battery to drive an electric motor to go 

around underwater, but that battery will eventually need to be recharged. And so the diesel engine is then operated to recharge the 

battery, which means you have to come up and put the snorkel up 

in order to get air to run the diesel. 

Even air-independent propulsion submarines, which use an engine that uses a chemical oxidant instead of air to be able to run 

a diesel engine and recharge the battery, have a limited amount of 

that chemical oxidant on board. So, after a couple of weeks, they 

have to go and replace their chemical oxidant, so they are pretty 

limited in their endurance, as well. 

So non-nuclear submarines offer some opportunities, but they 

have significant limitations when it comes to how long they can 

stay underwater. 

Mr. FORBES. Admiral. 
27 

Admiral CONNOR. If I could just clarify, if I implied that a diesel 

submarine could only go 100 miles without a recharge, that is not 

what I meant to convey. What I meant is—— 

Mr. FORBES. Maybe I misunderstood. You said about 100 miles 

in a day, I think. 

Admiral CONNOR. Right. And then they have to recharge, depending on how their technology is, every 2 to 5 days. But when 

you work against them, on average, you know they are not going 

to make much more than that, or if they are, they are going to 

make noise. 

Mr. FORBES. Okay. 

Well, thank you both for being with us. 

And if there are no other questions, then we are adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:03 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

A P P E N D I X 

OCTOBER 27, 2015 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

OCTOBER 27, 2015 

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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING 

OCTOBER 27, 2015 

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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. LANGEVIN 

Mr. LANGEVIN. I noted with interest the testimony regarding the need to develop 

a common battlespace picture of the undersea, regardless of the platforms and individual sensor inputs. What would this look like in your mind, what are the linchpin 

technologies and concepts that would need to be developed in order to enable this 

system of systems, and are we currently designing sensors and systems with the 

ability to communicate in such a way? 

Admiral CONNOR. In my mind, the solution would have a background that looked 

like ‘‘Google Earth’’ and then have multiple layers of data that could be layered on 

top of that background. Each layer would represent a different source of data and 

each layer could be at a different classification level, with the classification varying 

as a function of the sensitivity of the data source. Users would be authorized to see 

all of the data that they are cleared for, subject also to the classification level of 

the room in which is was displayed. 

The technologies exist today and consist of tagging information from various 

sources with a geographic position, a time stamp, a source identifier, and other 

metadata as needed. There is no particular sensor technology required here. A good 

battle space picture will be able to accept data from a variety of sources. 

It should be noted that systems with the proper characteristics are being introduced at some of the intelligence agencies. My point for DOD is that these technologies need to be standardized across the Department of Defense and used in the 

operations centers where tactical and operational level decisions are made. Unfortunately, the command centers on our ships and in our fleet headquarters do not effectively leverage this technology today. As a result, the speed and quality of operational decisions will continue to suffer until this is overcome. 

To get a sense of how the technology exists in the private sector today, just look 

at a Google map and select the layers of information that you wish to display such 

as weather, traffic, restaurant locations etc. We should have the ability to do something like this with a chart of the ocean, then layer AIS traffic, weather, satellite 

derived intelligence, reports from our ships, reports from fixed sensors, and so forth. 

That does not exist today in a simple, standard format that could be shared across 

the Joint Force. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. I appreciated your testimony about the need for nonspecific innovation funding and broadly defined programs. While I agree about the need for increased agility and freedom to fail on innovative ideas, this concept always comes 

into significant tension with the need for Congressional oversight and accountability. Can you provide examples of programs besides APB/TI that have been defined properly, in your view, and ones that have not? Are there innovation funds 

elsewhere in the budget that you would use as a model? 

Admiral CONNOR. There are specific innovation funds that are controlled by the 

Department of Defense Strategic Capabilities Office. This represents a good start. 

As we also discussed in testimony, there are Speed to Fleet funds controlled by the 

Office of Naval Research. However, as I noted in testimony, the time frame for deciding how to allocate Speed to Fleet funds takes about a year, defeating the intent 

of the program. 

In addition to the APB/TI process used in the submarine combat system, there 

is more a more recent program in the Aegis combat system called the Advanced Capabilities Build (ACB) program that has migrated that system much closer to an 

easy to modernize, Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) strategy that should be able 

to handle change more easily in the future than in the past. 

An example of a program that has struggled to incorporate technology is the LCS 

mine countermeasures mission package. This package is derived from a program 

that was originally conceived to deploy from an aircraft carrier. Is is based on a diesel powered Remote Minehunting System (RMS) that tows an acoustic sensor (AQS– 

20) I don’t have access to the entire history of the program, but believe it to be 

about of 20 years old. It has yet to deliver a meaningful capability. In the interim, 

the field of autonomous undersea vehicles (AUV) has emerged and offered solutions 

that have been deployed as prototypes in the Arabian Gulf. The AUV-based programs will likely overtake the LCS mine countermeasures program of record. The 
60 

Navy struggles as an institution to make a decision such as abandoning a non-performing program with significant sunk costs in favor of a more elegant solution that 

uses more modern technology. Part of that difficulty involves the need to go to Congress and report ‘‘failure.’’ My point here is that recognizing that a solution is obsolete and cutting (or restructuring) the underlying program in favor of better technology should not be considered failure. It should be considered an appropriate business decision. 

I would like address your accountability concerns. I agree that there is a tension 

between freedom to innovate and proper stewardship of taxpayer dollars. However, 

our current system focuses the accountability at the level of the program manager 

and below. Program managers are incentivized by initiatives such as Nunn-McCurdy to set modest goals and then meet those goals as inexpensively as possible. As 

a result, a program with a long lead time will often reject technology that becomes 

available after those goals were set due to either the administrative obstacles or financial hurdles, even if that technology could make that system much more effective. This can result in programs that meet program goals, but do not deliver capability that is still relevant at the time of delivery. 

While program managers are accountable to meet the goals of their program, 

there is no senior officer or senior civilian accountability for ensuring that the program goals actually provide the capabilities we will need to prevail in time of war. 

For example, there is no bureaucratic tension or accountability over the fact that 

potential adversaries have as anti-ship missiles with engagement ranges greater 

than our own. This is a significant problem that will limit the manner in which we 

will be able to deploy our surface ships in time of war. 

Congressional oversight and accountability of senior leaders to ensure that they 

have a viable overall strategy and an agile means of delivering the capabilities that 

enable strategy is an important counterweight to oversight at the program level. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. In your opinion, are we investing enough in the enabling technologies for next-generations sensors—communications, advanced processing, and 

other sensor-independent areas—as well as the potential sensors themselves to position ourselves well on the sensing and communications side for the battle network 

competitions of the future? What would your ‘‘next dollar’’ go to? And are there investments that we are making now that risk being stranded? 

Admiral CONNOR. In the area of enabling technologies, I think there are opportunities to do better. In the near term, I would focus on the underlying technologies 

that would help us get more out of the sensors that we have. 

I would focus first on machine learning. We need this technology to do more 

acoustic analysis onboard unmanned systems and even in the headquarters where 

a large number of systems will feed the overall picture. Historically, each acoustic 

sensor system required a person to review the live information stream produced by 

that sensor and make an assessment regarding the information presented. This 

method of analysis will not be tenable if we succeed in placing larger numbers of 

inexpensive sensors in the field. There have been previous attempts at ‘‘automatic 

target classification’’ that have failed in the past. However, we now have more elegant methods available in which the machine actually learns its environment and 

recognizes changes with little human interaction. Success in this area will make us 

more effective and much more efficient. 

Other focus areas that would help us move forward more effectively include covert 

communications, undersea fiber optic networks, and charging stations for unmanned 

vehicles. These technologies will help us share the information that we gather more 

effectively and keep our autonomous sensors on the front line longer. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Mr. Clark testified to the need to organizationally realign the 

Navy to bring the undersea under a single roof. Do you agree with his suggestion? 

What in your view would be the optimal organizational structure for the undersea? 

Admiral CONNOR. I do not agree with his suggestion. The current system in which 

the service is organized around the major warfare communities serves a good purpose. It allows the community leaders to focus with an expert staff on acquisition 

issues, community management, and educational issues necessary to the healthy 

functioning of those communities. Also, each warfare community fights as part of 

a Joint Team in strike warfare, surface warfare, undersea warfare and special operations. Warriors from each community need to be broad enough to work across undersea/surface/strike warfare because all of the warfare communities support all of 

these missions in war time. 

To the extent that some organizational change may be necessary to adapt to future security requirements, the recent establishment of N99, an OPNAV division to 

support unmanned systems, is a good step. It recognizes that there is a growing unmanned element to each major warfare area. 
61 

The Navy needs a mind-set change more than it needs an organizational change. 

The change involves recognition that we are already in a world in which military 

superiority will be determined by the speed of innovation. Our military peer competitors are innovating at a faster pace than us. We struggle to move forward technologically because our budget cycle and acquisition cycles are longer than those of 

our rivals and are a root cause of the declining margin in our superiority—including 

undersea superiority. The navy (and the other services) are not pushing hard 

enough to create an environment in which pace of innovation is recognized as a strategic asset. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. I noted with interest the testimony regarding the need to develop 

a common battlespace picture of the undersea, regardless of the platforms and individual sensor inputs. What would this look like in your mind, what are the linchpin 

technologies and concepts that would need to be developed in order to enable this 

system of systems, and are we currently designing sensors and systems with the 

ability to communicate in such a way? 

Mr. CLARK. The undersea common operational picture (COP) will be different 

than the COP that can be created using sensors and networks above the water. 

Sonar and non-acoustic undersea sensors are less precise and accurate than radar 

or electro-optical systems. As a result, the undersea COP will often consist of approximate target positions and classifications along with an estimate of their accuracy, or an ‘‘area of uncertainty.’’ And because undersea communications have much 

lower bandwidth than radiofrequency (RF) systems above the water, the undersea 

COP will take longer to develop and update. 

The limitations inherent in establishing an undersea COP, however, may not significantly hinder undersea operations. Unmanned undersea vehicles (UUV) and submarines travel slower than about 35 knots in all conditions, and less than about 

15 knots to maintain their acoustic stealth. Their positions will not change quickly, 

and they are unlikely to inadvertently move into a higher threat area or risk a collision with another vehicle due to an imprecise operational picture. 

The key role of undersea networks 

The networks that create an undersea operational picture will be different than 

those above water and are largely limited by physics rather than technology. Because RF signals in the frequencies U.S. forces most often used for communication 

travel only a few feet in water, undersea communication networks will rely on a 

combination of acoustic, fiber optic, RF, and laser or LED-based communication systems to connect commanders ashore with undersea forces inside contested or denied 

areas. Fiber optic and RF communication systems will form the ‘‘long-haul’’ portion of 

the network between main operating bases in the United States or overseas and the 

edge of friendly waters. These systems will terminate at gateway buoys or underwater nodes that translate RF or fiber optic communications into acoustic or laser/ 

LED signals. Fiber optic cable networks on the ocean floor could be combined with 

undersea sonar arrays to enable a single system to act both as part of the sensor 

network and as the communication backbone. 

Physics and the operating environment will dictate whether acoustic or laser/LED 

communications are best used to connect operating undersea forces with fiber optic 

or RF networks that can only reach the edge of denied areas. Laser/LED or medium 

frequency (1,000–10,000 hertz) acoustic transmitters can communicate over a distance of a few hundred yards with the speed of a slow internet connection. Acoustic 

transducers at low frequencies (less than 1,000 hertz) can reach up to about 100 

miles away, but with transmission rates of less than 1000 bits per second, it will 

take minutes to send each message. As with RF communications, the bandwidth of 

acoustic and light-based undersea communications changes with their frequency, 

whereas the range of acoustic communications is changes inversely with their frequency. The farther communications need to go, the less data can be sent and a 

message will take longer to send. Long-range communications will be relatively 

slow, and short-range ones will be faster. 

Submarines and unmanned systems operating relatively close to RF or fiber gateways can use acoustic and laser/LED communications to connect to the network. For 

undersea forces that are far from fiber optic cables and unable to expose themselves 

to use RF communications, the bandwidth and range limitations associated with 

acoustic and laser/LED communications may make relays the most efficient way to 

connect with commanders and support organizations ashore. These relays, such as 

the Navy’s Forward Deployed Energy and Communication Outpost (FDECO) program, can be deployed on the sea floor, act as energy and communication stations 

that collect messages going to and from UUVs or submarines, and communicate 

with undersea gateways in friendly waters using long-range acoustic communica-
62 

tions or UUV ‘‘data mules’’ that physically carry information in onboard computer 

memory. These stations can also recharge UUVs and themselves be recharged by 

the data mules. 

The key technologies needed to put these undersea networks in place are longrange acoustic and short-range laser/LED communication systems, deployable and 

fixed fiber optic cable communication networks, processing capabilities, and 

deployable communication and energy station. The Navy is developing these technologies through numerous basic science and applied research programs, and most 

are mature. The most significant gap is in communication processing technology; 

undersea communications will operate at widely varying levels of bandwidth and latency, and synchronizing inputs and outputs will require new signal processing software and hardware. 

Despite its work in technology, the Navy is not aggressively pursuing programs 

that will demonstrate these technologies in operationally relevant situations such as 

the Undersea Constellation and FDECO. The Navy should put together a plan for 

the development of its future undersea battle networks and demonstration of these 

capabilities at sea through programs that can be transitioned into the DOD acquisition system. 

Importance of sensor technology 

Because of the bandwidth and range limitations associated with undersea communications, UUVs and unmanned systems will not be remotely operated like unmanned air vehicles such as the MQ–1 Predator and MQ–9 Reaper. They will need 

to be largely autonomous. Autonomy technology is improving quickly, and many new 

UUVs and other unmanned undersea systems are able to select missions from a 

prioritized list of tasks and re-task themselves in response to new information. 

The quality of sensor information and analysis, however, will be the most significant constraint on autonomy. The emerging generation of UUVs are able to travel 

safely to a prescribed location, avoid hazards such as ships and debris, follow applicable navigation rules and regulations, and execute simple tasks such as survey the 

bottom or deploy mines. For these operations UUVs and unmanned systems do not 

need a high level of certainty regarding the position of the UUV or system, as well 

as the location and classification of contacts around it. 

Unmanned undersea systems could also be used for responsive operations such as 

attacking enemy ships or submarines. These operations will require a high level of 

certainty regarding the position and classification of a contact the unmanned system 

will attack, because it will not be controlled by a human operator who can be accountable for taking the risk of attacking a contact based on uncertain sensor information. As a result, the unmanned system will often not engage, missing opportunities to achieve the undersea force’s military objectives. Without better sensors and 

target recognition capabilities, UUVs will remain constrained to missions where the 

target or location can be very precisely and accurately determined. 

The Navy is developing new undersea sensor technologies that will enable U.S. 

forces to detect enemy submarines at longer ranges and classify them more accurately. This work should continue and emphasize the ability of unmanned systems, 

including UUVs, to characterize the threat environment and act autonomously in 

response. Some programs, such as the Persistent Littoral Undersea Surveillance 

(PLUS) system, have been effective at enabling an unmanned system to detect and 

roughly classify undersea contacts. More demonstrations of this type should be conducted to refine this technology so future unmanned systems will be able to fully 

exploit ongoing advances in autonomy. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. In your opinion, are we investing enough in the enabling technologies for next-generations sensors—communications, advanced processing, and 

other sensor-independent areas—as well as the potential sensors themselves to position ourselves well on the sensing and communications side for the battle network 

competitions of the future? What would your ‘‘next dollar’’ go to? And are there investments that we are making now that risk being stranded? 

Mr. CLARK. The Navy is making appropriate investments in new sensor, communication, networking, and data processing technologies. They are not, however, devoting enough money or effort toward transitioning the most useful of these technologies into operationally useful systems by incorporating them into acquisition 

programs or demonstrating them with prototype projects in the fleet. The lack of 

priority and selectivity in undersea system development is largely due to the lack 

of operational concepts describing how the Navy will conduct future undersea operations. New or modified requirements are based on new operational concepts and, 

in turn, drive the development of new acquisition programs. 

There are several key new operational concepts the Navy should analyze to determine if they should drive new systems and systems of systems, such as: 
63 

• Low Frequency Active (LFA) Sonar Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW): The Navy’s 

current ASW concepts center on the use of passive sonar to detect and track 

the noise emanating from an enemy submarine. This technique depends on the 

adversary making noise, which became increasing difficult in the late Cold War 

as the Soviets incorporated sound-silencing technology into their submarines. 

This challenge will eventually return as Chinese, Russian, and other nation’s 

submarines improve. Further, passive sonar cannot generally detect enemy submarines outside the range of submarine-launched anti-ship missiles, leaving 

U.S. surface ships vulnerable to an unwarned attack. 

The Navy needs to consider approaches for surface and air ASW that use LFA 

sonar, such as in the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Variable Depth Sonar (VDS) 

and the Compact LFA array onboard the Navy’s civilian-crewed ocean surveillance (T–AGOS) ship. LFA sonar offers longer detection ranges than passive 

sonar that can exceed the range of submarine-launched missiles and can translate into greater search areas and faster searches. New concepts could also include the use of LFA sonars on unmanned systems or UUVs that detect submarines and communicate their location to other platforms, or simply drive 

them away from certain areas. Submarines detected with LFA sonar would then 

be prosecuted with more accurate passive sensors, or engaged with standoff 

weapons such as missiles equipped with small torpedoes or depth bombs. While 

the Navy has some of the technologies needed for these concepts in the fleet 

or in development, it lacks some pieces of the LFA ASW ‘‘kill chain,’’ specifically 

long-range standoff ASW weapons, unmanned LFA systems, and LFA sensors 

for combatant ships other than LCS. • Passive ASW by unmanned systems: Passive sonar detection ranges are less 

than those of submarine-launched weapons, and this situation will get worse as 

adversaries become quieter. Passive sonar should therefore move increasingly 

onto unmanned systems which are not as vulnerable to counterattack and 

which can use emerging undersea battle networks to pass contact information 

to manned or unmanned forces that can prosecute submarine contacts. Further, 

the capability of a passive sonar array varies with the size of the sonar array, 

with larger arrays providing greater range and sensitivity. Large arrays are difficult to place on a manned or unmanned platform, but could be incorporated 

into a deployable or fixed stationary unmanned sensor system such as the 

Navy’s Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) arrays positioned at key 

chokepoints overseas and around the U.S. coast. 

The Navy needs to expand on SOSUS and similar fixed systems by developing 

more deployable passive arrays that can be placed at chokepoints, around 

enemy ports, and adjacent to friendly bases. These systems, depending on their 

design, can also provide the fiber optic power and communication backbone to 

connect undersea forces with commanders and support organizations ashore 

using laser, LED, or acoustic communication gateways. Examples of these arrays include PLUS, the Reliable Acoustic Path (RAP) Vertical Line Array 

(VLA), and the Shallow Water Surveillance System (SWSS), all of which have 

been challenged with uncertain funding and support over the last decade. But, 

as with LFA sonar ASW techniques, the enabling technologies for these approaches are mature; they just have to make it across the technology ‘‘valley 

of death’’ into acquisition programs. 

• Counter-UUV technologies: Not much work has been done on how to prevent 

enemy UUVs from attacking U.S. infrastructure or ships. As UUV and undersea battle network technologies improve and become more widely available, the 

Navy will need to be able to protect high-value targets in the homeland and 

abroad. Traditional ASW approaches will likely not work well against militarized UUVs due to their small size and ability to have low radiated noise. New 

sensor technologies, such as high frequency sonar, and passive and active defensive systems will be needed to defeat them. 

• Power projection from undersea unmanned systems: The anti-access capabilities 

proliferating today above the surface will soon expand to include undersea surveillance and attack systems in areas adjacent to enemy coasts. The Navy will 

need to develop concepts for conducting surveillance, strike, anti-ship, or cyber/ 

electronic warfare operations from unmanned systems to avoid placing manned 

submarines in high-risk areas. 

The key enabling technologies for these concepts include undersea battle networks to support communications between manned submarines and unmanned 

systems, as well as between submarines and commanders or support organizations ashore (as described in Question 5 above); sensor and contact recognition 

technologies for unmanned systems; a family of UUVs for various roles; weapons and other payloads that can be deployed by unmanned systems; and power 
64 

technologies to enable extended unmanned system operations. There are improvements the Navy could make in each of these areas. The need for placing 

emphasis on battle network signal processing, demonstrations of signal processing technology, and better contact recognition for unmanned systems are described above. 

Regarding UUVs, the Navy as been favoring small ones, such as the approximately 12-inch diameter Mk-18 UUV that ordnance disposal and oceanographic 

researchers use, and the new Large Displacement UUV (LDUUV) that could be 

launched from the Virginia Payload Module (VPM) tube. The Navy needs to accelerate its efforts to deploy the 21-inch diameter Modular Heavyweight Underwater Vehicle (MHUV) that will be the size of its current Mk-48 torpedo and 

use many parts of that weapon. The MHUV will enable a variety of long-range 

surveillance, strike, and anti-ship operations from submarines that will give 

them greater standoff capability from threat areas and leverage existing systems and technology. The Navy also needs to increase its research into applications for micro UUVs that are less than six inches in diameter and three to four 

feet long. New power technologies are enabling these UUVs to achieve ranges 

and endurance that would make ‘‘swarm’’ operations possible in which large 

numbers of expendable and inexpensive micro UUVs conduct surveillance or attack missions that would otherwise require a much larger reusable vehicle or 

a submarine. 

Future power projection operations undersea will establish a need for undersea lift, similar to the lift used for amphibious forces above the surface. Payloads such as energy and communication relays, mines, sensor arrays, and other 

stationary unmanned systems will need to be placed in proximity to enemy 

coasts or at key chokepoints. For example, DARPA is developing the Upward 

Falling Payload and HYDRA programs, both of which provide ways of placing 

payloads on the sea floor. The Navy, however, may not have enough submarines 

to support future undersea lift operations, or they may not want to place 

manned submarines at risk to conduct them. The Navy should therefore explore 

the use of extra-large UUVs (XLUUV) for deploying larger payloads. These 

UUVs would be launched from shore or large vessels, such as amphibious ships, 

and have ranges of more than 1000 miles and endurance of six months or more. 

In addition to lift operations, XLUUVs could also conduct long-term surveillance 

missions that would otherwise require a submarine to be on station for months 

at a time. 

Conducting undersea lift operations will require that submarines and larger 

UUVs have systems such as the Universal Launch and Recovery Module 

(ULRM) that enable deployment and recovery (when needed) of payloads. This 

system is being developed today for the VPM tube, but variants of it could be 

used in the future on larger UUVs and by undersea payload modules that deploy smaller UUVs. 

The Navy is developing several weapons, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), 

and other payloads that could be deployed by unmanned systems. This effort 

needs to be more organized and guided by new operational concepts that describe how unmanned systems will contribute to undersea power projection operations and take advantage of new technologies for miniaturization of weapon 

guidance systems and warheads. For example, UUVs can themselves be mines 

or carry mines to a deployment area with today’s level of sensor capability and 

autonomy. The Navy, however, is not aggressively developing mine payloads for 

UUVs and is slowly advancing the MHUV (which could likewise be a mine or 

carry small mines). Similarly, the Navy has experimented with small UAVs 

being deployed from submarines, but has not yet devised a concept for deploying 

them from UUVs or for using undersea-launched UAVs in power projection or 

surveillance operations. 

These are the most significant operational concepts the Navy should be developing 

and analyzing as the basis behind new requirements for undersea systems. Operational concepts are essential for identifying the most important new technologies 

and systems to pursue, and to establish requirements for future acquisition programs. 

I would recommend the next dollar in undersea system development funding go 

to completing and demonstrating the undersea battle network. It is the fundamental 

capability that will enable UUVs, unmanned systems, and submarines to work together to sustain the ability of the Navy to project power from the undersea and 

deny enemies from doing the same. After that, funding is needed most urgently for 

counter-UUV technologies, XL and micro UUVs, the ULRM, and small UUVlaunched payloads. 
65 

Mr. LANGEVIN. In your testimony, you mention the concept that manned submarines could become conceptually closer to aircraft carriers through the employment of UUVs and coordination of families of systems. What, in your view, is holding us back from realizing this vision? Is it payload space, autonomy programming, 

policy limitations, communications, technology maturity, or something else? 

Mr. CLARK. There are four elements which need to be addressed in order for the 

Navy to shift manned submarines from being only front-line tactical platforms to 

being operational level platforms controlling a wider undersea force: 

• Payload volume: Submarines will be, for the foreseeable future, the most secure 

and accurate means of delivering unmanned systems and UUVs to their deployment areas. Although XLUUVs and LDUUVs will be able to take on some of 

this lift mission, they will not provide the level of adaptability to changing circumstances, certainty of deployment, and security against counter-detection as 

a submarine. This makes VPM tubes or something like them critical in future 

submarines. 

• Communication and command and control capabilities: As described in Questions 5 and 6, undersea battle networks using laser/LED and acoustic communications are essential to connect shore bases, submarines, and unmanned systems. Submarines, for their part, will need a greater number and variety of 

communication systems to interface with this network. In many situations, realtime communications with commanders ashore will not be possible due to the 

low bandwidth of long-range acoustic communications. Therefore, submarine 

commanders will be in charge of their local manned and unmanned undersea 

systems. This will require communication and planning capabilities similar to 

a large combatant such as an aircraft carrier or cruiser. 

• Submarine-compatible UUVs and UAVs: The Navy is developing the LDUUV, 

MHUV, and interfaces for the Mk-18 UUV to be launched from a submarine 

torpedo tube. The Navy should also be developing micro UUVs and interfaces 

so they can be deployed from the submarine three-inch launcher or in larger 

numbers from torpedo tubes, VPM tubes, or by MHUVs. To exploit the potential 

in small UAVs, the Navy should also develop small UAVs that can be carried 

and launched in large numbers from submarines or larger UUVs. 

• Launch and recovery systems: Submarines will need mechanisms such as the 

ULRM to deploy and recover unmanned systems and UUVs as well as the 

means to deploy UAVs. 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. COOK 

Mr. COOK. Is U.S. industry ready to deliver the systems and components needed 

in a competitive and robust way? Has the Navy insured that the industrial base, 

the talent pool, the pipeline of industry investment is in the condition needed to deliver? What can Congress do to ensure these components are in place? 

Admiral CONNOR. The Navy has done well to sustain the legacy industrial base 

in areas such as ship building and aircraft production. Although it is very expensive 

to so, it is necessary because the country has no viable large commercial ship building companies and only one viable large scale commercial aircraft manufacturer. 

The shipbuilding industry in particular is undergoing tremendous work force change 

as older employees approach retirement age. The Navy has supported efforts to 

train the next generation of workers in both public and private shipyards. 

Congress can help by supporting a steady production rate with long term contracts. These contracts allow prime contractors, subcontractors and suppliers to 

make long term decisions to build and retain a sustainable work force. 

The Navy and the DOD have not done very well in leveraging the talent that resides in the more dynamic areas of our economy. Most of the innovation that takes 

place in the United States is accomplished by small companies using private funds. 

These companies often avoid building products and services for purely governmental 

functions because they perceive that it is too hard to work with government as a 

customer. Therefore, we tend to give most of our business to a declining number of 

companies that know us well and with which we have a long history. That could 

be a handicap, however, when it comes to sustaining the ability to repeatedly generate game changing innovations. 

To leverage the most dynamic and innovative portion of our economy, the Department of Defense should move away from obtuse requirements of the Federal Acquisition Regulations and create a face for industry that looks and feels like any other 

commercial entity. 

Mr. COOK. Is the Navy ready to employ these new technologies when they are delivered? Have the warfighters developed the Command and Control processes and 
66 

procedures, the rules of use, the common operating pictures and methods needed to 

employ program of record delivered systems on the day they are delivered? 

Admiral CONNOR. Our sailors are very adaptable and will not be the limiting factor in how quickly we leverage unmanned systems and exploit a better common operating picture. The Maritime Operations Centers established nearly navy-wide over 

the last 5 years or so have significantly increased Navy command and control capacity. Providing a better common operating picture and delivering more information 

from remote systems will leverage those improvements. 

The Navy has processes such as table top exercises, fleet battle experiments, and 

large scale fleet exercises to gracefully integrate new capabilities as they become 

available. 

Mr. COOK. Is U.S. industry ready to deliver the systems and components needed 

in a competitive and robust way? Has the Navy insured that the industrial base, 

the talent pool, the pipeline of industry investment is in the condition needed to deliver? What can Congress do to ensure these components are in place? 

Mr. CLARK. The Navy has fostered a large and diverse base of small companies 

that develop unmanned systems, communication networks, and undersea payloads. 

These companies, however, will not be able to scale the production of these systems 

up to the level that will be needed to create future undersea battle networks and 

implement new concepts for ASW, surveillance, and power projection from undersea. 

For example, the Navy plans to restart the Mk-48 torpedo production line, which 

will likely be a key element in developing and producing the new MHUV UUV. The 

companies bidding on the torpedo restart, however, will likely be small companies 

that may not be able to support expanded production of Mk-48 components needed 

for the MHUV. Similarly, Navy’s deployable sensor arrays, small UUVs, and UUVdeployable payloads are being developed and built at prototype scale by university 

laboratories and small firms that will not able to build these systems in large numbers. 

Making large-scale production of new undersea systems feasible will require 

incentivizing larger industry partners to build them by establishing requirements 

and acquisition programs that focus investment on a smaller number of the most 

useful systems. The Navy is in a position to do this now, given its knowledge and 

experience with undersea systems and emerging operational concepts for future undersea operations. Congress can help by influencing the Navy to make these investment choices and by providing an opportunity to focus its investment by adjusting 

the proposed President’s budget during the appropriations process. This normally 

happens a year after the budget was developed within the Navy, and Navy officials 

and analysts likely have new insights to better guide spending decisions. 

A significant concern going forward is the nation’s talent pool in engineering and 

physics, which form the bulk of technical expertise needed for development of undersea systems. Graduate students should be incentivized to go into physics and ocean, 

mechanical, and electrical engineering through funding of graduate education and 

opportunities to work in government research organizations. 

Mr. COOK. Is the Navy ready to employ these new technologies when they are delivered? Have the warfighters developed the Command and Control processes and 

procedures, the rules of use, the common operating pictures and methods needed to 

employ program of record delivered systems on the day they are delivered? 

Mr. CLARK. The Navy is making appropriate investments in new sensor, communication, networking, and data processing technologies. They are not, however, devoting enough money or effort toward transitioning the most useful of these technologies into operationally useful systems by incorporating them into acquisition 

programs or demonstrating them with prototype projects in the fleet. The lack of 

priority and selectivity in undersea system development is largely due to the lack 

of operational concepts describing how the Navy will conduct future undersea operations. New or modified requirements are based on new operational concepts and, 

in turn, drive the development of new acquisition programs. 

There are several key new operational concepts the Navy should analyze to determine if they should drive new systems and systems of systems, such as: 

• Low Frequency Active (LFA) Sonar Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW): The Navy’s 

current ASW concepts center on the use of passive sonar to detect and track 

the noise emanating from an enemy submarine. This technique depends on the 

adversary making noise, which became increasing difficult in the late Cold War 

as the Soviets incorporated sound-silencing technology into their submarines. 

This challenge will eventually return as Chinese, Russian, and other nation’s 

submarines improve. Further, passive sonar cannot generally detect enemy submarines outside the range of submarine-launched anti-ship missiles, leaving 

U.S. surface ships vulnerable to an unwarned attack. 
67 

The Navy needs to consider approaches for surface and air ASW that use LFA 

sonar, such as in the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Variable Depth Sonar (VDS) 

and the Compact LFA array onboard the Navy’s civilian-crewed ocean surveillance (T–AGOS) ship. LFA sonar offers longer detection ranges than passive 

sonar that can exceed the range of submarine-launched missiles and can translate into greater search areas and faster searches. New concepts could also include the use of LFA sonars on unmanned systems or UUVs that detect submarines and communicate their location to other platforms, or simply drive 

them away from certain areas. Submarines detected with LFA sonar would then 

be prosecuted with more accurate passive sensors, or engaged with standoff 

weapons such as missiles equipped with small torpedoes or depth bombs. While 

the Navy has some of the technologies needed for these concepts in the fleet 

or in development, it lacks some pieces of the LFA ASW ‘‘kill chain,’’ specifically 

long-range standoff ASW weapons, unmanned LFA systems, and LFA sensors 

for combatant ships other than LCS. • Passive ASW by unmanned systems: Passive sonar detection ranges are less 

than those of submarine-launched weapons, and this situation will get worse as 

adversaries become quieter. Passive sonar should therefore move increasingly 

onto unmanned systems which are not as vulnerable to counterattack and 

which can use emerging undersea battle networks to pass contact information 

to manned or unmanned forces that can prosecute submarine contacts. Further, 

the capability of a passive sonar array varies with the size of the sonar array, 

with larger arrays providing greater range and sensitivity. Large arrays are difficult to place on a manned or unmanned platform, but could be incorporated 

into a deployable or fixed stationary unmanned sensor system such as the 

Navy’s Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) arrays positioned at key 

chokepoints overseas and around the U.S. coast. 

The Navy needs to expand on SOSUS and similar fixed systems by developing 

more deployable passive arrays that can be placed at chokepoints, around 

enemy ports, and adjacent to friendly bases. These systems, depending on their 

design, can also provide the fiber optic power and communication backbone to 

connect undersea forces with commanders and support organizations ashore 

using laser, LED, or acoustic communication gateways. Examples of these arrays include PLUS, the Reliable Acoustic Path (RAP) Vertical Line Array 

(VLA), and the Shallow Water Surveillance System (SWSS), all of which have 

been challenged with uncertain funding and support over the last decade. But, 

as with LFA sonar ASW techniques, the enabling technologies for these approaches are mature; they just have to make it across the technology ‘‘valley 

of death’’ into acquisition programs. • Counter-UUV technologies: Not much work has been done on how to prevent 

enemy UUVs from attacking U.S. infrastructure or ships. As UUV and undersea battle network technologies improve and become more widely available, the 

Navy will need to be able to protect high-value targets in the homeland and 

abroad. Traditional ASW approaches will likely not work well against militarized UUVs due to their small size and ability to have low radiated noise. New 

sensor technologies, such as high frequency sonar, and passive and active defensive systems will be needed to defeat them. 

• Power projection from undersea unmanned systems: The anti-access capabilities 

proliferating today above the surface will soon expand to include undersea surveillance and attack systems in areas adjacent to enemy coasts. The Navy will 

need to develop concepts for conducting surveillance, strike, anti-ship, or cyber/ 

electronic warfare operations from unmanned systems to avoid placing manned 

submarines in high-risk areas. 

The key enabling technologies for these concepts include undersea battle networks to support communications between manned submarines and unmanned 

systems, as well as between submarines and commanders or support organizations ashore (as described in Question 5 above); sensor and contact recognition 

technologies for unmanned systems; a family of UUVs for various roles; weapons and other payloads that can be deployed by unmanned systems; and power 

technologies to enable extended unmanned system operations. There are improvements the Navy could make in each of these areas. The need for placing 

emphasis on battle network signal processing, demonstrations of signal processing technology, and better contact recognition for unmanned systems are described above. 

Regarding UUVs, the Navy as been favoring small ones, such as the approximately 12-inch diameter Mk-18 UUV that ordnance disposal and oceanographic 

researchers use, and the new Large Displacement UUV (LDUUV) that could be 

launched from the Virginia Payload Module (VPM) tube. The Navy needs to ac-
68 

celerate its efforts to deploy the 21-inch diameter Modular Heavyweight Underwater Vehicle (MHUV) that will be the size of its current Mk-48 torpedo and 

use many parts of that weapon. The MHUV will enable a variety of long-range 

surveillance, strike, and anti-ship operations from submarines that will give 

them greater standoff capability from threat areas and leverage existing systems and technology. The Navy also needs to increase its research into applications for micro UUVs that are less than six inches in diameter and three to four 

feet long. New power technologies are enabling these UUVs to achieve ranges 

and endurance that would make ‘‘swarm’’ operations possible in which large 

numbers of expendable and inexpensive micro UUVs conduct surveillance or attack missions that would otherwise require a much larger reusable vehicle or 

a submarine. 

Future power projection operations undersea will establish a need for undersea lift, similar to the lift used for amphibious forces above the surface. Payloads such as energy and communication relays, mines, sensor arrays, and other 

stationary unmanned systems will need to be placed in proximity to enemy 

coasts or at key chokepoints. For example, DARPA is developing the Upward 

Falling Payload and HYDRA programs, both of which provide ways of placing 

payloads on the sea floor. The Navy, however, may not have enough submarines 

to support future undersea lift operations, or they may not want to place 

manned submarines at risk to conduct them. The Navy should therefore explore 

the use of extra-large UUVs (XLUUV) for deploying larger payloads. These 

UUVs would be launched from shore or large vessels, such as amphibious ships, 

and have ranges of more than 1000 miles and endurance of six months or more. 

In addition to lift operations, XLUUVs could also conduct long-term surveillance 

missions that would otherwise require a submarine to be on station for months 

at a time. 

Conducting undersea lift operations will require that submarines and larger 

UUVs have systems such as the Universal Launch and Recovery Module 

(ULRM) that enable deployment and recovery (when needed) of payloads. This 

system is being developed today for the VPM tube, but variants of it could be 

used in the future on larger UUVs and by undersea payload modules that deploy smaller UUVs. 

The Navy is developing several weapons, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), 

and other payloads that could be deployed by unmanned systems. This effort 

needs to be more organized and guided by new operational concepts that describe how unmanned systems will contribute to undersea power projection operations and take advantage of new technologies for miniaturization of weapon 

guidance systems and warheads. For example, UUVs can themselves be mines 

or carry mines to a deployment area with today’s level of sensor capability and 

autonomy. The Navy, however, is not aggressively developing mine payloads for 

UUVs and is slowly advancing the MHUV (which could likewise be a mine or 

carry small mines). Similarly, the Navy has experimented with small UAVs 

being deployed from submarines, but has not yet devised a concept for deploying 

them from UUVs or for using undersea-launched UAVs in power projection or 

surveillance operations. 

These are the most significant operational concepts the Navy should be developing 

and analyzing as the basis behind new requirements for undersea systems. Operational concepts are essential for identifying the most important new technologies 

and systems to pursue, and to establish requirements for future acquisition programs. 

Æ