BRIEFING NOTE

by Kate Todd

Summary

• The Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) needs to procure maritime autonomous systems (MAS), including uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) and uncrewed undersea vehicles (UUVs) to enhance interoperability with allies and maintain operational effectiveness in the face of current and emerging threats, such as the proliferation of advanced weaponry and state competition.
• USVs and UUVs utilize AI to operate without crews or physical human intervention, earning them the moniker “Ghost Fleets.”  USVs and UUVs also vary in their level of autonomy and ability to carry a crew. The employment of USVs and UUVs offers navies many benefits but comes with significant, yet surmountable vulnerabilities and challenges.
• When deciding which USV and UUV models to procure, Canada should opt for Optionally Crewed Surface Vessels and Vehicles (OSVs) that can operate with or without a crew. The procurement of OSVs would allow the RCN to fulfil its mandate with reduced costs and risk to life while retaining crews as a valuable redundancy that can override and repair vessel and vehicle components if necessary.

Background

• Canada’s naval fleet is ageing and in need of replacement and expansion to meet the country’s domestic and international commitments and carry out its mandate.
• The RCN’s planners are completing a fleet mix study to determine what types of MAS need to be procured to best equip the RCN for future success. USVs, including large OSVs (LOSVs), are being considered. If built with similar dimensions to large USVs, LOSVs would be the size of a corvette, measuring 200 to 300 feet long with a 1000 to 2000 tonne displacement.
• MAS have revolutionized naval warfare. Canada’s allies and adversaries are adopting USVs and UUVs in response to developments in technology and great power competition. To maintain interoperability with allies and the ability to respond to threats in the new maritime security environment, the RCN must be able to operate with or on MAS. For a comparison of the adoption of USVs and UUVs across the Five Eyes, see this article.

Context

• USVs and UUVs are beneficial for navies, in that they:
  • Increase decision-making speeds, allowing navies to respond to faster-moving and more complex threats like hypersonic weapons and drone swarms;
  • Enable Distributed Maritime Operations, where capabilities are spread across a higher number of assets to avoid concentrating into a small number of high-value platforms by diversifying traditional fleet’s composition and increasing the complexity, capacity and size of the fleet’s force at reduced costs and risks to sailors;
  • Carry out essential missions and operate for extended periods in contested and dangerous environments, lessening the need for sailors and risks to their lives;
  • Reduce the number of sailors required to operate naval platforms, alleviating personnel shortages, improving the work-life balance of sea-going sailors, and cutting operating costs.
• Despite these advantages, USVs and UUVs:
  • Are in their nascency, are not yet fully reliable, and could malfunction;
  • Require crews to be on board to perform damage control when the vessel or vehicle experiences flooding, fires, or engine or computer system breakdowns;
  • Experience communication errors in adverse weather, heavy seas, and underwater;
  • May be more vulnerable to cyber-attacks, electronic warfare, and being boarded or captured than traditional platforms; and,
  • Pose legal and ethical challenges for navies:
    • Naval USVs and UUVs must comply with international and maritime law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea. However, these laws are designed to hold humans operating vessels accountable for the vessels’ actions, not autonomous systems. To abide by international and maritime law, navies will have to establish who will be accountable for USV and UUV’s actions;
    • When employing lethal force, naval USVs or UUVs are legally required to be capable of discriminating between potential targets and providing navies with proportionate responses to hostilities. Lethal autonomous systems in USVs or UUVs must prove to be sufficiently reliable before being employed without human supervision; and,
    • Ethically, states will have to decide whether it is morally acceptable to remove humans from naval vessels and vehicles’ kill chains.

Implications for Canada

• Developments in technology and great power competition have made Canada’s naval capabilities more necessary and increasingly obsolete, as both allies and adversaries adopt maritime autonomous systems.
• The RCN must procure USVs and UUVs to maintain interoperability with allies and the ability to meet its mandate in the new maritime security environment.
• When procuring future platforms, including vessels to replace Canada’s 30-year-old Maritime Coastal Defence Vessels, the RCN should procure OSVs. OSVs accommodate crews as a valuable redundancy, mitigating the shortcomings of USVs and UUVs. In OSVs, crews can be used to:
  • Assess and repair damage to the vessel or vehicle;
  • Operate USVs and UUVs in conditions when communications are restricted or its systems have been targeted by cyber-attacks or electronic warfare; and,
  • Be accountable for the ethical use of the platform by supervising the system’s use of weaponry and making complex decisions.
• Canada’s defence policy Our North: Strong and Free, released in June 2024, highlights how autonomous systems are changing the character of conflict but offers no indication of how the Canadian Armed Forces or RCN will adapt to this new reality. The RCN needs to begin rapidly adopting policies, concepts, and organizational structures to facilitate the employment of MAS, including OSVs, USVs, and UUVs. The Canadian Armed Forces and Department of National Defence should formally study how the United States Navy, Royal Navy, and Royal Australian Navy are integrating MAS into their fleets to ascertain and apply allies’ best practices to streamline Canada’s efforts. The study should focus on:
  • what models of MAS allies are procuring and for what mission sets;
  • the role MAS plays in their naval and national security strategies;
  • how allies are conceptualizing the operation of MAS; and,
  • the internal organizations and naval occupations allies are creating to monitor and manage these new platforms.