Image source: topwar.ru
Two senior U.S. Navy officials have announced that they will expand the Marine Service's experiments with drones and unmanned ships in South America in the coming months. It is claimed that the primary goal is to help sailors in the fight against drug trafficking
The Navy's top officer, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mike Gilday, said that the service is "ready to scale these operations at the level of naval forces," relying on the work of an unmanned task force established in the Middle East in 2021.
Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro, added during a joint presentation at the annual Sea Air Space Conference in Washington, DC:
Del Toro said, adding that China is the main culprit of illegal fishing.
And again, China is guilty. In fact, Del Toro revealed the real, not declarative goal of increasing the number of drones in the part of the World Ocean that adjoins South America.
The Navy stepped up its work with unmanned technologies, such as marine drones, when it created Task Force 59, a group dedicated to exploring the capabilities of this technology and how to make it work with more traditional platforms, such as ships.
Since then, the service has largely called the efforts successful, and the head of the task force said that he aims to get 100 unmanned platforms in the waters of the Middle East by July this year.
Mike Gilday said this expansion of Navy drone operations will coincide with the start of the UNITAS military exercises, which are held annually in South America, in July this year.
Del Toro suggested that the Navy's initial efforts could focus first on the Caribbean and then go beyond it.
None of the executives went into details about how many drones they planned to launch into the sea at the initial stage or how many they plan to use in the long term.
Admiral Mike Gilday said when asked about specific figures.
However, the four-star admiral said they plan to start with aerial and surface drones and that the Navy will also experiment with base ships.
