US Navy Irregular Warfare

I find the information coming out of Defense Tech regarding "Imminent Fury", which appears to be a SEAL naval air support lease program (see here, here, and here) to be pretty fascinating. What really caught my attention though is the unclassified brief (PDF) from the Navy Irregular Warfare Office highlighting some of the efforts underway to support IW from the sea.

If I was being snarky, I would suggest the Navy put IW under N3/N5 to insure IW went underfunded and basically to die as a priority, but after looking around there are several places in the FY2010 budget line item where this stuff does appear funded, so maybe IW is starting to get some traction inside the Navy.

For example, this recent article in Special Operations Technology is excellent, and covers some of the developments with programs like Sea Stalker. For those who don't know, Sea Stalker is a large-diameter Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (38 inch instead of 21 inch) that can be launched from either a DDG or a SSGN via a drydeck shelter designed to lurk off a coast and collect intelligence and/or conduct surveillance.

I was pretty surprised reading that Special Operations Technology article, because this is not the kind of information we usually see discussed, much less printed.

He noted that this summer’s exercise Talisman Saber will include participation by two ScanEagles, providing alternating full motion video (day) and infrared (night) “eyes on” capabilities with the second vehicle shifting to the data relay mission.

In terms of smaller UAV activities, Kenny also pointed to recent Navy efforts involving the BUSTER small unmanned aerial system from prime contractor Mission Technologies Inc.

“We’ve deployed it on a number of naval vessels,” he said. “We’ve also done some very successful operations with allies, doing foreign internal defense, training them to operate this vehicle...

“We currently have got the system deployed on USS Florida and we’re looking at larger and more capable versions of that vehicle,” he said.

And people think blogs are a security problem? I am pretty sure there has never been a blog discuss what kinds of payloads SSGNs are loaded out with.

Very interesting though, because Buster only has about a 6nm radius. As a super cheap UAV, I doubt it is recovered once launched, rather just allowed to sink into the sea or crash out of the sky once out of fuel.

In reading through the slides of the IW brief I note plenty of efforts over the sea and under the sea, but nothing on the sea. I just wonder how long before we hear about the "DDG-51 for IW". Only a matter of time I'd guess. Oh wait, I guess that would be USS Bainbridge (DDG 96), where the destoyer acts as a SEAL sniper platform at sea.