![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP17243610177358.jpg.jpg\")
Technological advancements in autonomy, endurance, command and control and other areas are needed before the Navy could assign anything more complex, like surveillance, she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Navy could potentially get by with fewer ships if some of the larger, more capable unmanned vehicles could someday reliably do some of the easier missions ships do, but it\u2019s not a one-for-one replacement, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An unmanned vehicle could lay mines and conduct surveillance but it couldn\u2019t board a pirate ship or help train a foreign Navy, added Clark, the lead author on a paper about the Navy\u2019s future force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean you buy an extra-large unmanned undersea vehicle and buy one less submarine,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have to figure out to what degree it replaces a submarine and do the math.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Small unmanned undersea vehicles are 3 inches to 10 inches in diameter and cost less than $1 million, and medium ones are 10 inches to 21 inches and cost up to about $3 million, Roberts said. Large unmanned undersea vehicles are 21 inches to 84 inches and cost tens of millions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Extra-large vehicles are greater than 84 inches in diameter. The Navy doesn\u2019t currently have any of that size, Roberts said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the cost of building and operating 355 ships would average $102 billion annually through 2047, which is more than one-third higher than the amount appropriated for fiscal year 2016 for today\u2019s fleet. Richardson has said that he thinks it\u2019ll cost far less than that prediction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
President Donald Trump and Navy leaders say the nation needs about 350 ships, roughly 75 more ships than the fleet has today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":41092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":65,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"2":{"categories":["your-military","news"],"primary_category":"your-military"},"9":{"categories":["robotics","unmanned","daily-brief","newsletters"],"primary_category":"robotics"},"10":{"categories":["naval","daily-news-roundup","newsletters"],"primary_category":"naval"}}},"categories":[101,12,26,65],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2983],"class_list":["post-18992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-news","category-newsletters","category-your-navy"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"ZPIBO2WPXNCXXPUOKKZ3EW4DME","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-navy\/2017\/08\/31\/us-navy-leader-considers-unmanned-vehicles-to-increase-power\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n