Sensing and Automation in the Future Maritime Environment

In this emerging era of great power competition, the goal of outpacing potential adversaries in the development of military technology takes on a new urgency. Evolving capabilities in sensing and automation are driven by a trade space that includes range and lethality versus close engagement and survivability; finders versus hiders; centralized command/control versus asset independence/dispersion; and planning and judgement versus reaction and autonomy. This paper explores this trade space first by describing sensing and automation innovations demonstrated during the 1990/1991 Gulf War and shortly thereafter, followed by discussion on current and emerging game-changing technologies. Capabilities projected for near and far term advantage include: weapons systems ensuring long-range lethality; unmanned cooperative networks of offboard systems; artificial intelligence and machine learning; and exploitation of advanced materials and quantum technologies. These will play a vital role in realizing a networked force of manned and unmanned systems with the ability to sense, comprehend, communicate, predict, plan, and take appropriate action in the future maritime environment.