The U.S. Department of War wants firms to come forward with uncrewed surface vessels to resupply its forces in littoral environments in the Indo-Pacific theatre.
The Small Autonomous Resupply Vessel (ARV-S) is a new solicitation issued by the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), a U.S. DoW organisation founded in 2015 to accelerate the military’s adoption of commercial technology.
As per the DIU statement: “Army Watercraft Systems (AWS) are critical to distributing supplies across dispersed littoral formations in the Indo-Pacific theatre, but the current fleet is aging and reliant upon a limited cadre of Army senior enlisted mariners.
“It also lacks the overall supply payload capacity to move supplies at the demands needed by operational forces. This risk is compounded in contested environments where adversaries can target the high value and personnel-intensive targets in the supply chain.”
It added: “The Indo-Pacific theater requires additional logistics capacity capable of sustaining long-distance maritime distribution while operating with minimal personnel.This capability must reduce reliance on vulnerable airfields and large crewed vessels, scale rapidly in crisis or conflict, and remain affordable for production at scale.”
The DIU is looking for solutions either in the form of new USVs designed as uncrewed from first principles, or converted crewed platforms.
The vessel’s draft should be minimized allowing navigation in shallow waters and unloading and delivering cargo to “austere” beaches, but it needs to be capable of 1,600-nautical-mile round trips in sea state 4 conditions, able to carry out routine operations in sea state 5, and survive up to sea state 6.
It should be capable of carrying at least two cargo containers in the form of Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs); each of these TEUs could weigh up to 26.5 tonnes.
The DIU statement also noted: “The proposed platform should have a means of unloading and delivering cargo to austere beaches via innovative means, to include various ship-to-shore connectors, and be compatible with helicopter and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) for unloading.”
Successful companies will be in line for funding via an Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) award process; prototypes should be demonstrable on water within 12 months.
The deadline for submissions is just before midnight U.S. Eastern time at the start of June 13.
- You can read more details on the DIU website