The Pentagon’s ongoing exploration of unmanned warfare has taken shape in a 240-ton, 180-foot, autonomous ship designed to roam the open seas for extended amounts of time, with nary a complaint about mess hall food.
The USX-1 Defiant, a sleek, unmanned ship with a knife-like shape, was completed in February 2025, and will undergo vigorous testing, through the U.S Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA), No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) program. The ship represents the first of its kind, needing no crew, and no human intervention to carry out fully autonomous naval missions.
DARPA, the Department of Defense’s (DOD) research and development wing that was created in 1958 to push the technological envelope, has been engaged on many fronts in developing autonomous vessels, land vehicles, drones and robots of various forms to compliment, and even replace in some scenarios, flesh-and-bone infantry, fighter pilots, and now the Navy’s Surface Warfare Officer.
Technological advancements, particularly in AI, have given DARPA the keys to a whole new trove of high-tech possibilities, and the agency has taken to it with gusto, with their team of scientists, engineers and tech wizards.
Their latest major creation, at least the latest one to be disclosed, is a high tech marvel that doesn’t include any amenities for humans.
“The NOMARS program aims to challenge the traditional naval architecture model, designing a seaframe (the ship without mission systems) from the ground up with no provision, allowance or expectation for humans on board. By removing the human element from all ship design considerations, the program intends to demonstrate significant advantages, to include: Size, cost at-sea reliability, greater hydrodynamic efficiency, survivability to sea-state, and survivability to adversary actions through stealth considerations and tampering resistance.”
“With scaled production, NOMARS has the potential to efficiently and cost-effectively deliver a distributed USV fleet.”
For now, much of the ship remains cloaked (a huge tarp covers the entire deck and console), but according to DARPA, the USX-1 Defiant currently does not have a specific mission and isn’t equipped with weaponry, but combat systems will be installed this spring.
The DOD’s commitment to building next-generation weaponry will take a hefty investment. In the DOD’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget proposal, there was $1.9 billion dollars allotted to building autonomous “Weapons Systems,” from the Triton and Stingray Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, to Uncrewed Surface Vehicles (USV), and $1.8 billion to continue to integrate AI.
“The Naval Warfare Technology project develops advanced technologies for application to a broad range of naval requirements. Enabling and novel technologies include concepts for expanding the envelope of operational naval capabilities to include the entire sea column such as improved situational awareness over large maritime environments, ship self-defense techniques, novel underwater propulsion modalities, high speed underwater vessels, improved techniques for underwater object detection and discrimination, long endurance unmanned surface vehicles, methods and techniques for servicing assets through the sea column, and high bandwidth communications. This project will also examine methods and architectures for distributing maritime operations to enable a more agile, survivable, and cost effective fleet.”
The USX-1 Defiant was built by Serco Inc., a tech and engineering firm that has a long history with the U.S. military. The company states that it has played a role in every major U.S. Navy ship program in the past 40 years. “We are a leader in applying AI and advanced analytics to design unmanned, autonomous vessels and improve naval platforms sustainability and combat effectiveness.”
Serco says the USX-1 Defiant is a radical departure from traditional designs, and represents a major step forward for the U.S. Navy in putting together a fleet of USVs.
“The platform was designed from the keel up as a truly autonomous vessel with no provisions for onboard manning and stringent requirements for year-long, high reliability operations at sea without human intervention. Serco’s design includes a reimagined maintenance philosophy that reduces time in port and keeps the vessel underway and operational for unprecedented periods of time. This highly reliable vessel serves to demonstrate the art of the possible for cost-effective, long endurance naval drone ships.”
