The Defense Innovation Unit has released a solicitation for the Combat Autonomous Maritime Platform, a large unmanned underwater vessel capable of supporting large payloads at range in contested environments.
“Current UUV capabilities present limitations in range and payload capacity, hindering the effective deployment of critical resources in certain operational scenarios,” stated the Defense Innovation Unit solicitation.
Named after Richard Camp, former Director of Warfare Systems, U.S. Pacific Fleet and and advocate for large unmanned underwater vessels, the CAMP is expected to perform a variety of missions in support of maximizing “operational effectiveness in contested environments.”
The Pentagon is looking to receive a commercially available system with “exceptional range” that can operate at distances greater than 1000 nautical miles and at depths of up to 200 meters. According to the solicitation, these mission sets include underwater surveys, intelligence collection and the deployment of various modular payloads.
CAMP pitches should have the ability to “drop various payloads to the sea floor,” which were further specified to include sizes between five-feet long and 19 inches in diameter to 21-feet long and 21 inches in diameter. The large unmanned underwater vessel should also be capable of autonomous and remote operation in GPS-denied environments. Cost effectiveness and production scalability were also highlighted in the solicitation.
Last year, the Defense Innovation Unit put out a call for Production-Ready, Inexpensive, Maritime Expeditionary in support of a Navy operational need for autonomous attack drones capable of intercepting vessels at high speeds. These efforts were in-line with the Pentagon-wide Replicator Initiative and the Navy’s Hellscape, a plan that would see unmanned systems swarm Chinese forces attempting to invade Taiwan.
The Navy has been experimenting with several large unmanned underwater vessels in California. Based out of Naval Base Ventura County, Unmanned Undersea Vehicle Squadron 3 was established in 2023 to support the introduction of Boeing’s Orca Extra-Large Unmanned Underwater Vehicles into the fleet, which were originally procured to address a direct joint operational need for an undersea mining capability from 2015.
