Navy officials revealed earlier this year that the sea service would be expanding operational tests and other deployments of small unmanned vessels around Naval Base Ventura County and the Ventura and Channel Islands harbors between April and August.

“An incident occurred at approximately 3:28 p.m. [local time] on June 23 within the Channel Islands Harbor Marina involving the overturning of a support boat by an unmanned vehicle that was being towed out of the harbor,” a spokesperson from Naval Information Warfare Systems Command (NAVWAR) said. 

The area is considered somewhat of a hotspot for Navy-supporting autonomous technology development and demonstrations. It includes controlled and cornered off locations designed for the secure demonstration and refinement of uncrewed vessels of different types and sizes. 

Granted anonymity to speak freely, a source familiar with the June 23 incident raised concerns that the captain of the support boat appeared to be in danger after the towboat was overturned by the maritime drone.  

The NAVWAR spokesperson told DefenseScoop that the operator involved declined medical attention after they were recovered by the emergency responders.

“A preliminary investigation indicated that the unmanned vehicle received an inadvertent command that turned the engine on, causing the towed vehicle to accelerate past and capsize the support boat. As a result, the training activity immediately held a safety stand-down with all members of the activity and is implementing additional safety procedures,” the spokesperson said.

They did not respond to follow-up questions regarding whether the “inadvertent command” that resulted in the flip came from a human or technical malfunction.

NAVWAR spokespersons also declined to confirm if the drone involved was a Global Autonomous Reconnaissance Craft, or GARC, which sources initially suggested. The Navy recently unveiled plans to boost production of the 16-foot GARC — an unmanned surface vessel built by BlackSea Technologies, formerly known as Maritime Applied Physics Corp.

A spokesperson from BlackSea acknowledged DefenseScoop’s inquiry last week, but did not respond to questions regarding whether it was a GARC that flipped the tugboat.

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The initiative is the Navy’s contribution to the Pentagon’s Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) effort to better connect the U.S. military’s sensors, shooters, platforms and personnel across the services and with key allies. Service leaders have described it as the bedrock for the joint tactical network of the future.

“Through Project Overmatch, we’re building a software-defined network solution and modern software pipelines to provide as many pathways as is possible to connect and share information. This initiative is an effort to transmit any data over any network and is the connective tissue between today’s fleet and tomorrow’s emerging hybrid fleet” of manned and unmanned systems, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti said last month at the WEST conference.

The Navy spent $226 million on Overmatch in fiscal 2023 and it requested $192 million for it in 2024. At press time, Congress hasn’t passed a full-year defense appropriation for fiscal 2024 and the Pentagon has been operating under a continuing resolution since October.

The sea services aim to keep the money flowing to Overmatch in fiscal 2025 and beyond.

“I just had a great discussion with [Rear Adm.] Doug Small and his team … that run that,” Rear Adm. Ben Reynolds, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget, told DefenseScoop during a meeting with reporters to preview the 2025 budget request. “This [funding] is for software development for capabilities and some hardware that goes on our ships. It goes into our numbered fleets and then provides them the capability to operate distributed. Also ties in with our Marines in the littorals, and then … allows these fleets to tie into the joint force.”

Small, the commander of Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, noted at the WEST conference that the service has been making significant progress with Overmatch, including using it to deliver over-the-air software updates to ships.

“We did demos years ago where we were able to show them certainly it’s possible. But in terms of doing it as a matter of course, that’s come in the last probably a year-and-a-half or so,” he said. “We made tremendous headway. The ability to deliver updates, software over the air — you can imagine the amount of change that had to go on from the entire value chain and how you deliver capability. There’s been a lot of really good work on that. Still more to go.”

Carrier Strike Group 1 and its flagship, the USS Carl Vinson, were equipped with Overmatch capabilities last year in the Pacific to serve as a test bed. The tech is being rolled out to Carrier Strike Group 4 and Carrier Strike Group 15, and the aim is to continue scaling it across the Navy.

Mark Pomerleau contributed reporting from WEST.

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Described by officials as the glue holding all EW capabilities on the battlefield together, the Electronic Warfare Planning and Management Tool (EWPMT) is a command-and-control planning capability that allows forces to visualize the potential effects of electronic warfare on the battlefield and chart courses of action to prevent jamming.

The Army is delivering the first increment of the program, which included several incremental capability drops over the course of many years using software to build on previous versions.

Officials have said now is the time to inject competition into the program and the next phase will hone in on navigation warfare.

“The next phase will be focused mostly on NAVWAR, which is our resilience to GPS denied environments,” Mark Kitz, program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, told FedScoop in an interview at this week’s TechNet Augusta conference. “How will our systems and capabilities perform? Model out what capabilities have assured PNT on them that would be resilient —which do not — so I understand what operations I can perform in that denied environment and then understand yourself in that NAVWAR perspective.”

Kitz said an aspirational goal for the program will be to determine what the adversary is trying to do to affect positioning, navigation and timing (PNT).  

“Are they trying to spoof and steer us in a different direction, are they just broadband jamming and trying to deny us GPS? Give that situational understanding of what the NAVWAR” environment looks like, he said.

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