Summary
We recently marked a historic milestone with the christening of the USX-1 Defiant in Everett, Wash. This moment represents the culmination of years of hard work by a dedicated team determined to push the boundaries of what’s possible at sea. Source: DARPA | Spencer Bruttig
The No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) program has built a demonstrator ship designed to operate autonomously for long durations at sea, the USX-1 Defiant. The 180', 240-metric-ton lightship is classified as a medium unmanned surface vessel (MUSV) and will undergo an extended at-sea demonstration of reliability and endurance.
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. 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.
With scaled production, NOMARS has the potential to efficiently and cost-effectively deliver a distributed USV fleet.
