The US military, like everyone else in the world, is testing unmanned aerial vehicles for a wide range of purposes, of different designs and for different areas – air, sea surface and underwater, land. But there is still no approved concept of a launch vehicle that could enter service and become a universal platform for launching, controlling and maintaining all types of drones. Perhaps the time has come for such a ship to appear.

Future projects of the US Navy ships from the 90s – the Coast Guard LCS and the stealth destroyer Zumwalt (DDG 1000) – turned out to be half-flop (or half-successful, depending on your point of view). Laser and energy weapons are still at the stage of laboratory projects, as a number of other innovations have not justified themselves. But over the past ten years, drones and systems for their control have evolved. All this prompts customers and specialists to think about the emergence of a new type of attack ships – mother ships with drones (with unmanned aerial vehicles).

At the moment, no mother ship concept has been implemented deeper than sketches and rough models. In the public space, two such projects are known – the UXV project of the British BAE Systems with a displacement of 8000 tons and the Ocean Avenger project of the French Naval Group with a displacement of 4000 tons. Both ships should use composite materials in their construction, and the control and communication centers will be multimedia and interactive. The drone carrier ships should be relatively inexpensive so that they can be quickly released and brought in the fleet to 20-40 units by 2045, if the concept is approved.

BAE UXV project. Image source: BAE

The BAE UXV project is a carrier with two V-shaped decks, so that drones can be launched and brought in for service at the same time. There are also aft and bow decks for unmanned vehicles with vertical entry and landing, and a flooded deck for launching surface and underwater unmanned vehicles. All this economy will be served by naval sailors, for whom all conditions must be created on the ship for comfortable service and long-term residence.

The Ocean Avenger project has half the displacement and is made in the form of a trimaran. At the same time, it retains two take-off decks, which are located parallel to the hull, but there is no flooded deck for launching marine drones. There is also a deck for unmanned aerial vehicles with vertical takeoff and landing.

Ocean Avenger project. Image source: Naval Group

According to the source, there is a debate at the top of the US Navy and in Congress about the size of the future mother ships. It is assumed that in order to reduce the cost of production, the dimensions of drone carriers will be almost half the size of modern airborne assault helicopter carriers, the length of which reaches 257 m.The length of the BAE UXV carrier ship, for example, is 152,4 m.But this issue will still be discussed … You can read more about the tactics of using ships of this type in the primary source. By the way, there will be no exotic weapons such as lasers and railguns. The experience with Zumwalt and LCS made me look at these things soberly.