AIBRIEF
In August, an unmanned Navy boat took on 400 gallons from a towable robotic refueling system near Virginia. The fully autonomous end to end test is next.
Off Virginia in August, an unmanned Navy boat called the T38 pulled alongside a towable robotic refueling system and took on 400 gallons of fuel across dozens of capture, refuel, and release cycles near Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story.
The T38 is built by Maritime Tactical Systems. The capture-and-connection refueling system is built by Sealartec. The T38 has already held station at distance, completing a 192-hour autonomous mission 400 nautical miles offshore in May, per Naval News. What August added was the connector.
The Navy's stated problem is data collection for hypersonic and long-range weapons whose flight profiles "can extend thousands of miles beyond fixed-range boundaries," per the Navy release. Spencer Holloway, who directs the Blue Water Instrumentation Future Capabilities Office, named the trade-off: "every time an unmanned vessel must return to port for fuel, we lose persistence, reduce coverage and redundancy, and interrupt the mission."
Ronald Raymer at US Fleet Forces Command said robotic refueling lets the Navy "push the USV into higher threat areas without risking manned vessels and personnel" and "distribute greater capability into an area without having to invest in large expensive manned vessels."
The fully autonomous version has not happened yet. The August demo kept operators in the loop. The next milestone is an end-to-end test in which the T38 meets, approaches, connects, refuels, disconnects, and returns to its mission with no operator control at any step.