Operation Helios

This morning the ROD Navy kicked off Operation Helios in the waters surrounding the Home Island. The objective of this operation is to test and refine the use of unmanned systems and develop tools and techniques to manage them.

Several vessels and manned aircraft are taking part in the exercise, but the focus is on drones. Of particular interest is the fleet of Sea Hunter unmanned surface vessels that will be out and about. These platforms are capable of carrying weapons, but the focus of this exercise is on how to manage large numbers of autonomous vehicles and have them collaborate with each other. Each sea Hunter is laden with sensors that can detect air, surface, and submerged targets, so managing all of the incoming data and coalescing it into actionable real-time intelligence the goal.

The surface ships involved in Operation Helios are the aircraft carrier Tempest (CV-6), the destroyers Cutlass (DDG-124) and Claymore (DDG-13), and several submarines. A number of aircraft from the Navy and Air Force will also participate.

Navy personnel will collect and analyze data throughout the operation and make changes to doctrine and operational practices on the spot. New techniques will be tested and verified, and if the new techniques prove to be ineffective, they will be changed again. Experimentation is the name of the game here, and for that reason this operation is expected to take several weeks.

The Tempest serves as the flagship for this operation. As the ROD’s training carrier, she does not have an assigned airwing. The vast hangar and personnel spaces are used instead to store, launch, and recover aerial drones, and as work spaces for personnel to conduct hardware experiments and pore over exercise data.

Today the exercise begins with 4 Sea Hunters (USV-201, USV-202, USV-203, and USV-206). Pictured here are the USVs in formation with the destroyer Cutlass.