Research Summaries

Back Unmanned Surface Logistics Concept of Support

Fiscal Year 2018
Division Research & Sponsored Programs
Department Naval Research Program
Investigator(s) Sanchez, Paul J.
MacKinnon, Douglas J.
Sponsor NPS Naval Research Program (Navy)
Summary Distributed Maritime Operations and the future use of unmanned systems require agile and dynamic concepts of support. Exploring those concepts requires detailed understanding of the operating environment and capabilities. We seek to learn the specifications and details of those systems requirements to enable us to model them in an event based simulation that will enable novel approaches to mission tasking and success. Today, when we think of logistics, we think of web of well-established logistics bases, leveraging a robust and synchronized transportation/distribution system combined with a last tactical mile Combat Logistics Force (CLF) that shuttles supplies to our ships.
Future combat operations at sea can however become vulnerable to our enemy’s ability to cut our supply lines, disrupt our movement of logistics, and interrupt our logistics communication. Each of these may cause significant shortfalls, warfighting challenges, and readiness degradations unless these systems become fully integrated.
Our Navy must reinvent the traditional chain of logistics with an adaptive and agile global logistics capability as the future fleet architecture is designed. Our aim in this research is to allow the realignment of our thinking away from fixed structures toward improving our sustainment at sea as we transform logistics from an enabling function to a warfighting tool that can deliver capability in an unpredictable and agile fashion.
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Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal