XPost: sci.military.naval, soc.history.war.misc, alt.war.world-war-three
XPost: ca.politics, alt.economics

(Ahhhh ---- few things truly last long without maintenance ??)

from https://breakingdefense.com/2025/03/no-sailors-in-sight-darpa-launches-warship-designed-from-the-ground-up-to-be-truly-unmanned/

No sailors in sight: DARPA launches warship designed ‘from the ground
up’ to be truly unmanned
Produced by SERCO through the research agency's NOMARS program, the ship
has been named Defiant (USX-1).
By Justin Katz
on March 05, 2025 at 8:10 AM
DARPAs NOMARS ship
DARPA’s NOMARS is a 180-footlong warship designed from the ground up to
not have humans aboard. (Photo courtesy of DARPA)

WASHINGTON — A key Pentagon research and development agency said it has successfully launched and will soon begin sea trials for its new warship
built from the ground up to sail without any humans aboard.

“The No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) program has built a ship designed
to operate autonomously for long durations at sea,” according to a
statement from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on Tuesday. “Construction of the prototype, unmanned surface vessel (USV) was
completed in February 2025.”

Sea trials for the ship, dubbed Defiant (USX-1) and which does not have
any mission or combat systems installed onboard, are scheduled for
spring 2025, the statement added.

Your Weekly Video News Show - The Break Out. Tune in here.
DARPA in August 2022 selected tech and engineering firm SERCO to design
and build NOMARS, a USV measuring 180 feet long and weighing 240 metric
tons. While the Pentagon’s interest in unmanned surface vessels is well documented — and industry’s supply of options is vast — NOMARS aims to fulfill a somewhat surprising gap given the technology’s name: An
operational ship with no people aboard.

The majority of USVs the Pentagon uses are either small drones that
could not physically carry a human (i.e. Saildrone) or they have been
modified to operate autonomously but still have all the relevant spaces
to sustain life (i.e. Mariner). The US Navy has taken to calling the
ladder “optionally manned ships.”

Proponents of the technology argue that allowing for “optional manning” defeats the purpose of unmanned ships from the start. The spaces
required for human life — bunks, food storage, bathrooms, life
preservation equipment — are costly. Cue the NOMARS program.

“The NOMARS program aims to challenge the traditional naval architecture model, designing a seaframe (the ship without mission systems) from the
ground up with no provision, allowance, or expectation for humans on
board,” according to DARPA. “By removing the human element from all ship design considerations, the program intends to demonstrate significant advantages, to include: size, cost, at-sea reliability, greater
hydrodynamic efficiency, survivability to sea-state, and survivability
to adversary actions through stealth considerations and tampering resistance.”

Cigent 600x300 header image
Networks & Digital Warfare, Sponsored
Securing data at rest on Edge devices with layered protection
Achieve regulatory compliance and mission success with advanced security measures.

From Tom Ricoy, Chief Revenue Officer at Cigent Technology
Doing as much presents its own sets of challenges, but also a new world
of potential solutions. For example, what happens if a fire breaks out
aboard Defiant? The answer, Navy officials and others have previously
told Breaking Defense, is that the ship can be equipped with a special
gas that floods its internal spaces. That gas, which would have health repercussions if humans inhaled it, can deprive the compartment of
oxygen, snuffing out a fire.

AUSTRALIA-US-DEFENCE
Recommended
New Australian submarine industrial base strategy calls for $30 billion
AUD investment
The Australian government will aim to create 20,000 jobs over 30 years
through what the document characterizes as a “whole-of-nation undertaking.”

By Justin Katz

Topics: cyber security, darpa, Defiant, Drones, Navy, networks, NOMARS,
SERCO, technology, Unmanned, USX-1

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)