With its rich resources and huge economic and military values, the deep sea has become an important strategic direction for countries all over the world in the 21st century, and has shown an increasingly important strategic position in maintaining national security and development. Therefore, the unmanned submersible has become the focus of underwater combat equipment.

On December 1, 2022, the British Times reported that the Royal Navy and Plymouth Technologies (MSubs) had signed a contract worth 15.4 million pounds for the cutting-edge ultra large unmanned submersible "Whale" project. This unmanned submersible named after the sea monster "Setes" will be the largest and most complex unmanned submarine operated by the European Navy. Admiral Ben Kay, Britain's first sea minister, said the submersible would help Britain "dominate the underwater battle space". So what role does the unmanned submersible play in various countries? What are its advantages in underwater operations? What is the future development prospect?

Prepare for the best -- Unmanned submersible is the best weapon for all countries

The early unmanned submersible was mainly used in the civil field and could replace divers to carry out tasks such as salvage, underwater exploration and underwater cable laying. However, with the development of science and technology, the relevant technologies of the unmanned submersible have become increasingly mature. Since the unmanned submersible can not be affected by the hydrological environment of the seabed, and can scout and collect all kinds of information for a long time underwater, the navies of various countries have gradually noticed its potential value in the military field.

According to relevant statistics, in 1999, 15 countries, including the United States and Russia, took the lead in studying underwater unmanned submersible vehicles. Around 2019, Iran, Turkey and other countries also started to develop this technology.

The United States, as the first country to start research on underwater unmanned submersibles, has many asymmetric technological advantages, and its research and development work of unmanned submersibles has a certain degree of planning and gradualness: from single remote control to both remote control; From manual operation to autonomous operation; From carrying out research and development around the platform launch system to jumping out of the platform launch system restrictions for revision and upgrading. The United States continues to innovate technology to improve the performance of the unmanned submersible and test it in actual combat.

In recent years, in order to alleviate the pressure brought by asymmetric weapons and equipment, Russia has continuously increased its research and development efforts on unmanned systems. With relevant technical reserves, Russia has made certain achievements in the field of unmanned submersible vehicles. In addition, some European countries, including the UK, France and Germany, are also studying unmanned submersibles. Their lithium battery, navigation and other technologies have reached the world-class level. Good progress has also been made in the research and development of autonomous and super large unmanned submersibles.

Nowadays, modern warfare pays more and more attention to intelligent and unmanned operations. As a new concept of unmanned combat platform weapon, unmanned submersible vehicles can perform such operational tasks as intelligence collection, reconnaissance, anti submarine, anti mine and so on. Compared with traditional submarines, the unmanned submersible has many advantages: first, it has a higher income, its R&D and production investment is far lower than that of traditional submarines, and it does not need to be equipped with a life system, and its underwater reconnaissance time has also increased significantly; The second is the increase of the water area that can be monitored. By virtue of its small size, the unmanned submersible can reach the water area that many large ships cannot reach to perform tasks, making up for the shortcomings of large ships; The third is to reduce casualties. After the unmanned submersible is put into use, the number of deaths due to underwater missions has decreased.

Deep sea ghost - unmanned submersible assisted deep sea combat

According to foreign reports on deep-sea operations, deep-sea plays an important role in the future international economic and defense security strategic competition. As a new battle space, how to conduct "asymmetric" confrontation and seize the strategic commanding heights in the deep sea space is a problem that all countries in the world should think about. At the same time, the unmanned submersible is also listed as a key link in assisting the deep sea confrontation, The early unmanned submersible was mainly responsible for underwater salvage, exploration, laying submarine cables and other tasks. Today, the unmanned submersible is widely used in underwater battlefield.

As the main force of anti submarine warfare, the unmanned submersible can travel hundreds to thousands of kilometers continuously after supplementing the primary energy, and can be loaded and launched by a variety of platforms, making it extremely flexible to sail. Because of its small size, small target characteristics, lower noise and stronger anti reconnaissance ability compared with submarines, it is more suitable for in-depth battlefield detection. In addition, the unmanned submersible can also carry out underwater surveillance tasks by building an efficient early warning system, and cooperate with its own ships to form a warning line to respond to the surprise attack of enemy ships.

At present, the US military is developing an unmanned submersible that can be equipped with firepower. Underwater acoustic sensors are deployed to the highly dangerous shallow water zone, and the sensors are used to track the enemy submarines and attack them before they rush into their own battle groups. By putting unmanned submersibles in key sea areas and forming concealed raids in wartime, it can effectively disrupt the enemy's operational deployment and make the enemy lose its advantage and initiative.  

Looking Forward to the Future -- Analyzing the Development Direction of Unmanned Submarine Vehicles

With the increasingly tense world situation, countries are in urgent need of facilities that can carry out tasks in deeper, farther and more dangerous waters. Against this background, unmanned underwater vehicles have begun to develop rapidly. With the continuous improvement of science and technology, automation facilities, energy and power industry, sensors and other technologies have been developed to a certain extent, making the unmanned submersible have a stronger search and endurance capability, and also injected power into its development.

At present, the development of the unmanned submersible has shown a certain trend: First, with the continuous improvement of the new energy system, the energy supply of the unmanned submersible has gradually become diversified. Traditional unmanned submersibles generally use lead-acid batteries, silver zinc batteries and lithium ion batteries. However, the performance of traditional batteries is poor, which can not meet the requirements of unmanned submersibles to perform multiple tasks. At present, many submersibles begin to use lithium sulfur batteries or lithium air batteries. In addition, some countries have begun to research and develop nuclear power energy to support the operation of the unmanned submersible, for example, Russia's newly developed "Poseidon" unmanned submersible uses nuclear energy as the driving force.

The second is the transformation from auxiliary warfare to main warfare. Unmanned submersibles pay more attention to the development of cooperative warfare and small cluster warfare. At present, many large and super large unmanned submersibles are changing the previous forms of operations such as auxiliary reconnaissance, anti submarine and anti-ship, and offensive mine laying. They are choosing to improve their direct combat capability and carry out cooperative combat tasks, which has gradually become the mainstream of underwater battlefield. Today, the US "killer whale" unmanned submersible and the Russian "Poseidon" unmanned submersible have been able to attack targets independently and have great power. Among them, the "killer whale" unmanned submersible is still moving towards the field of electronic warfare. The trend of building an all-around unmanned combat system and an unmanned submersible cluster is becoming increasingly obvious.

Third, the limited autonomy has become the main obstacle restricting the development of the unmanned submersible. According to the article "Science and Technology Strategy for Intelligent Self service Systems" of the US Department of the Navy, artificial intelligence should be integrated with unmanned systems to improve the autonomy, accuracy and practicability of the system. In the face of the complicated and increasingly diverse underwater combat environment, how to ensure the authenticity and reliability of the information returned by the unmanned submersible and how to ensure that it can successfully perform complex tasks under unmanned operation have become increasingly prominent issues. Therefore, the main development direction in the future is to improve the ability of the unmanned submersible to accurately detect underwater targets and the ability of autonomous cooperative operations. For example, Japan is developing an unmanned submersible that can automatically track enemy ships with the aid of artificial intelligence.

At present, many countries are committed to the research and development of deep-sea military equipment. Whether it is infrastructure adapted to the deep-sea environment, weapons and equipment used for deep-sea operations, or even the formation of deep-sea forces, there has been some development. All countries have a relatively unified goal in terms of seizing the strategic space of the deep-sea. As one part of the deep-sea combat equipment, the unmanned submersible has great potential in accelerating the development of deep-sea technology and deepening the application in the military field. With the integration and development of artificial intelligence and the iterative innovation of new energy technologies, the unmanned submersible that can attack and defend, detect, act independently, and fight in formation will become a powerful force in the future maritime battlefield. (Liu Kaiyu, Jiang Xiao, Ding Ruihua, Li Guowen)

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