House lawmakers want the Navy to deploy drone boats faster

The Navy would have to detail its plans to buy and use seagoing drones under a suite of provisions in the House Armed Services Committee’s draft 2027 defense policy bill. 

The bill, which passed out of committee late Thursday, would require service leaders to devise a plan to buy, sustain, and operate small unmanned surface vessels—ones weighing less than 50 metric tons and no more than 50 feet long. 

The plan would have to include a detailed inventory of each acquired USV, the types of missions the Navy would use USVs for, how they would work with crewed vessels, and how they would be integrated with current command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and logistics infrastructure.

The bill would also require the Navy to develop plan to “accelerate procurement and integration of commercially available sUSVs.”

The committee wrote in direct reporting language that buying more commercially available “technologies and platforms could enhance fleet readiness, reduce developmental timelines, and lower overall costs compared to government designs” especially amid “the increased demand from multiple geographic Combatant Commands for additional sUSVs to meet a variety of urgent mission needs.” 

The provisions would also require the Navy to submit a report to identify obstacles to buying commercially available small USVs . 

The proposals come just weeks after the Navy released its latest 30-year shipbuilding plan, which outlined its intentions to include hundreds of unmanned surface vessels in its hull count. They also come as the Pentagon prepares to spend more on unmanned vessels. 

A separate requirement targets operational autonomy, tasking the Navy with certifying that procured drone boats can function “during periods in which communications capabilities are denied, degraded, intermittent, or limited; and (2) during periods in which positioning, navigation, and timing capabilities are degraded or unavailable,” according to the bill. 

“The Secretary of the Navy would also be required to develop and implement a strategy for the integration of unmanned surface vessels naval force design and joint maritime operations. The Secretary of the Navy would be required to submit a report to the congressional defense committees not later than 210 days after the date of the enactment of this Act on the strategy for unmanned surface vessel integration and provide an annual brief on integration efforts thereafter.”

Like the Navy’s shipbuilding plan, the HASC’s draft of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act notes undersea drones’ usefulness in maritime operations and pushes the Navy to adopt and integrate the extra-large unmanned underwater drones that have already been tested. 

“The Committee further encourages the Secretary of the Navy to accelerate adoption of the XLUUV platforms selected through the Combat Autonomous Maritime Platform program’s 2025 competitive process to transition these systems from experimentation to operational deployment and to equip priority commands with the capabilities required to meet Fleet demands,” lawmakers wrote. “Therefore, the committee directs the Secretary of the Navy to provide a briefing to the House Committee on Armed Services not later than March 1, 2027, outlining plans to accelerate the adoption and fielding of XLUUVs and associated payloads utilizing existing production contracts,” including fielding timelines. 

The bill also includes a requirement for the head of Special Operations Command to brief Congress by Dec. 1 on the need for a “hybrid-electric amphibious seaplane” which could “provide a viable solution by enabling fixed-wing aircraft to operate from waterways, runways, and unimproved surfaces with increased combat radius, reduced fuel consumption, and lower acoustic and thermal signatures.”