Page 19: of Marine Technology Magazine (July 2023)

cial intelligence and machine tions for conducting Maritime Domain systems, as concerns about adversar- learning technologies from in- Awareness (MDA) missions. ies stealing and exploiting data can be dustry partners. One of the features of Digital Hori- completely eliminated.

zon, and in line with the ? rst word of While the focus of this article is on the

Digital Horizon 2022 will fea- the exercise, “Digital,” was the abil- totality of Digital Horizon, I am using ture a formidable ? eet of cut- ity to command and control ? ve unique the T-38 Devil Ray as an example of ting-edge platforms and tech- drones from a single point of contact, how many similar-sized USVs can be nologies. The USVs taking part a capability long sought by U.S. Navy equipped with multiple state-of-the-art include Elbit Systems’ Seagull, of? cials. The Navy is acutely aware of COTS sensors to provide persistent sur- iXBlue DriX, L3Harris Arabian the increasing cost of manpower and is veillance.

Fox, Marine Advanced Robotics dedicated to moving beyond the current For example, the T-38 provided AIS,

WAM-V, MARTAC’s Devil Ray “one UXS, multiple joysticks, multiple full motion video from SeaFLIR-280HD

T-38, Ocean Aero TRITON, Open operators,” paradigm that has plagued and FLIR-M364C cameras, as well as

Ocean Robotics Data Xplorer, UXS development for decades. the display of radar contacts on a chart

Saildrone Explorer, Seasats X3 While it was not called out as an ex- via the onboard Furuno DRS4D-NXT and SeaTrac SP48. plicit goal of Digital Horizon, the sheer doppler radar. These were all streamed volume of data vacuumed in by the myr- back to Task Force 59’s Robotics Opera-

Digital Horizon was a three-week iad of unmanned platforms participating tions Center via high bandwidth radios event in the Middle East focused on em- in the exercise advanced the use of big and SATCOM.

ploying arti? cial intelligence and 15 dif- data, arti? cial intelligence and machine Most military mariners who have had ferent unmanned systems (12 USVs and learning as assets that could take this the experience of one organization or 3 UAVs), many of which operated in the vast amount of data—far too much for another installing new technology on region for the ? rst time. The exercise, even a large number of humans to make their ships are well (often painfully) meant to be a continuation of IMX22 sense of—and turn it into meaningful aware of the plethora of rules and regu- but at a signi? cantly larger scale, was and actionable information of immedi- lations that must be followed before hosted by Task Force 59, and builds on ate use to operators. any new systems can be bolted onto a the work done during IMX22. Another bene? t of leveraging these ship—let alone the dif? culties of inte-

Digital Horizon brought together new, cutting-edge technologies—especially grating that technology into the ship’s emerging unmanned technologies and in light of recent actions such as Iran’s other systems and sensors. The value combined them with data analytics and seizure of two U.S. Saildrone USVs of using a COTS USV such as Devil arti? cial intelligence in order to enhance in the Red Sea in September 2022—is Ray for a surveillance mission is that regional maritime security and strength- that no valuable data is retained on the new technology can be inserted without en deterrence by applying leading-edge USV. Rather, that data is pushed to the these restrictions, thus achieving the technology and experimentation in un- cloud (for Digital Horizon, via a Silvus U.S. Navy’s goal of accelerating tech- manned and arti? cial intelligence ap- mesh network) where it is protected nology insertion into the ? eet. World plications for the Navy. A key goal of and can be downloaded by friendly navies will be well-served to leverage

Digital Horizon was to speed new tech- forces. This presages a concept-of- the lessons of Digital Horizon to accel- nology integration across the 5th Fleet, operations (CONOPS) that will likely erate the use of unmanned surface sys- and seek alternative, cost-effective solu- advance the use of unmanned surface tems in their ? eets.

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MTR #5 (18-33).indd 19 7/20/2023 9:32:47 AM