Fresh from a second autonomous unmanned surface vessel successfully transiting more than 4,000 miles, officials from the Navy and the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office say their teams will stay joined at the hip for further fleet demonstrations and operational assessments as they prove out new technologies vital to the Navy’s envisioned distributed fleet.

“The intent is to utilize this time period to do fleet demonstration exercises and operational vignettes to continue to demonstrate in an operational context the utility of these vessels to augment manned combatant capabilities,” Luis Molina, SCO’s deputy director told reporters during a telephone roundtable on Tuesday, referring to his agency’s Ghost Fleet Overlord program.

Overlord is the Pentagon’s premiere — and somewhat secretive — USV development program that the Office of the Secretary of Defense has been using for several years now to inform the technology and capabilities that will one day be onboard most unmanned maritime vessels populating the Navy fleet.
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