An Unlikely Marriage ?

Extracted from interview with Capt. Matt Lewis, a submariner and program manager for the Navy’s Unmanned Maritime Systems office. 

The U.S. Navy’s Orca drone, also known as the Extra-Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (XLUUV), has been in development for years, but will soon be in the hands of sailors as the sea service works to figure out how they will use the capability going forward. The Navy first ordered five of the semi-tractor trailer-sized submersible drones from Boeing Defense in 2019. But like other Navy acquisition programs, the Orca has been hit by cost increases and delivery delays.

Initially, as designed, the system is to deliver CDMs, clandestine-delivered mines. So that’s the initial purpose, in response to a fleet need that came out several years ago. And so that’s the initial concept for Orca.

Orca is 84-feet-long. It’s actually a little longer than a standard semi 18-wheel tractor-trailer. Operational requirements are 30 days missions and roughly 6,000 nautical miles. One of the unique characteristics with Orca is that it’s a diesel electric vehicle so the design of the vehicle brings it up to the surface with an induction mast that brings air in for the diesel to operate and recharge the batteries. This also provides Orca opportunities to communicate and receive different tasking, should a commander want to do that.

Initially, as designed, the system is to deliver CDMs, clandestine-delivered mines. As with SSBNs for example, part of the payload system ingests water to manage the offset of the weight from the CDM for the buoyancy.

The order from Being amounts to about $ 450 million order of $450 million and the Navy has interested in the five vehicles under contract.