Warfare Support System

The Expeditionary Loitering Munitions Portfolio consists of a family of Navy loitering munition programs (air and surface) designed to meet an urgent Geographic Combatant Command Requirement. Air and Surface Expeditionary Loitering Munitions will leverage and continue prior development efforts including an Office of Naval Research (ONR) Innovative Naval Prototype (INP). The Navy is pursuing commercial-off-the-shelf solutions with autonomous government-provided software and auxiliary systems. The systems will be expeditionary and deployable by small teams to support operations in various environments. The air system has transitioned from Low-Rate Initial Production to Full-Rate Production with the initial vendor solutions and is now expanding the industrial base for this capability by integrating government-owned technology with other vendor platform solutions. The surface system has transitioned from the ONR INP and is now in Low-Rate Initial Production. The FY 2026 budget for Expeditionary Loitering Munitions included $731,000 thousand of discretionary funding and $37,300,000 thousand of mandatory funding for a total of $38,031,000 thousand. The mandatory funds support program management and technical oversight for the air system, which included hardware and software qualification, Spiral 2 software test planning and execution, safety certification, and contract execution. This oversight will be extended to a maximum of four additional vendors to aid in the integration of Government-owned Technical Data Packages (TDPs) into their respective platforms.

The Rapid Capabilities Development (RCD) program supports the Naval Special Warfare (NSW) Branch by identifying and assessing available technologies that confront current and future irregular and expeditionary warfare challenges. Program development efforts focus on the enhancement/advancement of existing technologies to fill urgent and emergent capability gaps for NSW. Program funding provides for the development, integration, testing, validation, combat demonstration, and evaluation of identified technologies to meet operational requirements; service-common and NSW program technology challenges; and technology obsolescence issues of developed capabilities. The RCD program develops expeditionary/operational capabilities that enable NSW forces to conduct joint cross-domain special reconnaissance, counterterrorism, direct action, amphibious and irregular warfare, and fulfill urgent/emergent needs within a 9-36 month timeframe. The FY 2026 budget for the RCD program included $8,618,000 thousand of discretionary funding and $2,000,000 thousand of mandatory funding for a total of $10,618,000 thousand. The mandatory funds support Cognitive Router Future Naval Capability (FNC) designed to provide an artificial intelligence-enabled routing node comprised of acoustic and optical underwater modems, RF radios, and vehicle autonomy instantiated on unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV) to create a robust and clandestine low-latency cross-domain network.

Identity Dominance System (IDS) supports the Navy's Visit, Board, Search and Seizure (VBSS) teams conducting expanded Maritime Interception Operations (MIO) with a biometric capability. IDS provides the Navy with a means to collect and process identity information in the conduct of maritime and expeditionary operations. There are three key aspects of this capability: 1) Enable forces to rapidly identify unknown individuals encountered in the conduct of operations. 2) Verify an unknown individual's claimed identity. 3) Enable forces to update, manage, and share identity information on friendly, neutral, and enemy individuals in support of Identity Operations (IdOps). To support IdOps and achieve identity dominance for expeditionary and naval forces, the future biometrics collection and processing equipment needs to be smaller, lighter, and more efficient with respect to computing power and speed when compared against the current system. The equipment needs to take advantage of enhanced communications capabilities, be able to store the appropriate amount of data to collect biometric samples, match the samples against an internal database and reach near real time operations with connectivity to the DoW biometrics database. In addition to Navy VBSS MIO, IDS also supports the Expeditionary Exploitation Unit One (EXU-1) expeditionary missions. IDS must continue to mature and adapt to the changing threat environment and emerging requirements to support these missions. Biometrically Enabled Access Control - Husbanding (BEACH) is an authentication capability to improve identity and authentication assurance for entrance to OCONUS Navy-Controlled and non-Navy Controlled ports. BEACH will perform the following functions: 1) Collect, match, and share identity data from candidate husbanding personnel for vetting against U.S. Department of War (DoW) authoritative databases (biometric) and U.S. LE and intelligence data repositories (biographic). 2) Create and manage customized access control lists for any U.S. Naval ship, foreign port, or other location. 3) Conduct verification (access control) of individuals seeking access to U.S. Navy assets through multiple factor authentication, including biometric modalities.

New Start USV development: The Program funding for development of the Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) System Development, reflecting the Navy's vision of eventually fielding the USV across all unmanned surface platforms.

Navy Expeditionary Combat patrol boats, Fleet Expeditionary Security combatant craft, Underwater Construction Team (UCT) and Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) replacement will provide second generation Multi Mission Craft that will replace in-service Force Protection Large, Force Protection Small, Underwater Construction and EOD craft. Boat and craft replacements will: conduct Maritime Security Operations across the full spectrum of naval, joint, and combined operations enabling access and freedom of action throughout the sea-to-shore and inland operating environments as well as conduct maritime Mine Countermeasures (MCM), counter Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), and all other types of weaponry, for protection of naval and joint assets required for sea control and power projection. Specific mission and capabilities will be identified in an Initial Capabilities Document (ICD), Analysis of Alternatives (AoA), Capabilities Production Document (CPD) and required milestone documentation. RDT&E funding will fund procurement and material solution studies, advanced technology development and studies, design development and test and evaluation and transition Small Business Innovative Research Programs and other technology programs expeditionary science & technology objectives as follows: RDT&E funding will fund procurement and material solution studies, advanced technology development and studies, expeditionary science & technology objectives, design development and test and evaluation and transition Small Business Innovative Research Programs and other technology programs.

The United States Navy Service Common Visual Augmentation Systems (VAS) Program of Record manages, procures, and maintains night vision devices, thermal detection devices, day/night weapons optics, and lasers in support of Navy combat capabilities with regard to the detection, recognition, classification, tracking, and destruction of hostile air and surface forces. The USN VAS Program also manages research into the future of visual augmentation systems and engages with Navy and DoW VAS stakeholders to ensure the Navy maintains competitive advantage over near-peer adversaries. Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Navy funding provides the United States Navy Service Common Visual Augmentation Systems (VAS) Program of Record with the ability to maintain competitive advantage over the nation's near peer adversaries by leveraging the military research community, other DoW VAS programs, academia and commercial industry in order to transition mature technologies (active, passive, multi-domain imaging sensors, laser systems, display systems, optics, image processing) that align with US Navy and DoW priorities.

The Navy is utilizing a Family of Systems (FoS) strategy to acquired Small Unmanned Aerial Systems, in alignment with other domain-centered unmanned FoS. The Navy Family of Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (FoSUAS) program supports Navy Expeditionary Combat Command (NECC), Expeditionary Exploitation Unit ONE (EXU-1), and Naval School Explosive Ordnance Disposal (NAVSCOLEOD). The program procures existing and emerging technologies (including enhancement kits/payloads) in Fixed Wing (FW) and Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) solution sets for core mission requirements and are critical in providing force protection, reconnaissance and surveillance, and repair of battle-damaged facilities and other infrastructure. FoSUAS includes Short Range/Short Endurance (SR/SE) and Medium Range/ Medium Endurance (MR/ME) categories of Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (SUAS) with each category tailored toward specific mission needs/profiles. As such, a mix of Type/Model/Series (T/M/S) SUAS makes up the FoSUAS Program of Record (POR) as addressed in the Navy's FoSUAS Top Level Requirement (TLR) document. In addition to supporting the requirements in the Navy FoSUAS TLR, RDTE funding for the FoSUAS program conducts activities including, but not be limited to, engineering analysis of commercial systems, operational assessments, Field User Evaluations (FUEs), support of Urgent Universal Needs Statements (UUNS), cyber/IA assessments, development of SUAS Reusable Architectures (SRA) and other efforts to inform future Navy systems procurements.

Funding realigned from Lightweight Reusable Underwater Recon Vehicle. Funding supports the development of unmanned systems for the Navy's expeditionary unmanned underwater Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) and Mine Countermeasures (MCM) capability. Specifically, it provides for development of affordable expeditionary remote stand-off underwater systems to support Navy Expeditionary forces including EOD, Mobile Diving and Salvage, Underwater Construction Teams (UCT), and Expeditionary Mine Countermeasures (ExMCM) mission operations. The equipment must be highly portable in order to support the Navy EOD technician to safely detect, approach, render safe, recover, exploit, and dispose of underwater explosive threats to include sea mines, limpet mines, maritime IEDs, and unexploded ordnance. Provides support for the Navy's high priority missions of Maritime Homeland Defense and MCM. This project directly supports Department of the Navy Strategic Roadmap for Unmanned Systems promulgated in March 2018 and addresses capability gaps defined by the Joint Service EOD (JSEOD) Initial Capabilities Document (ICD), Serial Number 671-75-05 of 3 June 2005, Joint Improvised Explosive Device (IED) Defeat Initial Capabilities Document (ICD) of 23 February 2006/JROCM 070-06, and the Expeditionary MCM ICD of June 2017. This project is being executed in accordance with approved CNO N9I Requirement #056-95-19, "Capability Development Document (CDD) for Maritime Expeditionary Standoff Response Family of Systems (MESR)," July 23, 2019. Additional efforts continue to execute the open competition process necessary to acquire and verify an EOD Response ROV capability focusing on user effectiveness and operational suitability to provide a ROV based target interdiction capability to address the capability gaps assessed in the previously conducted Expeditionary UUV Neutralization System (EUNS) AoA. This next generation capability is developed to decrease risk when reacquiring/investigating a potential threat (i.e. sea mine or maritime IED). In response to emergent maritime threat assessments ISO of INDOPAC Global Power Competition (GPC) scenarios, the MESR Program of Record (PoR) will initiate and conduct a Proof-of-Concept effort to demonstrate the potential ability to counter deep-water explosive threats as an ExMCM enabling capability ISO Joint Force Maneuver.