US Navy Creates New Center for Unmanned Systems Warfighting

A New Home for Naval Autonomy

The U.S. Navy has established the Robotic and Autonomous Systems Warfighting Development Center (RASWDC) as a dedicated organization for operational integration of unmanned systems across air, surface and undersea domains. According to a report by Maritime Executive, the new center will be based at Base Little Creek-Fort Story near Norfolk, and represents the latest in a series of organizational moves aimed at bringing coherence to the Navy’s fragmented unmanned-systems efforts.

Consolidating a Fragmented Landscape

Before RASWDC, responsibility for unmanned systems was spread across a patchwork of bodies, including Third Fleet’s Surface Development Squadron One, NAVSEA’s Program Executive Office Unmanned and Small Combatants, and the short-lived Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Robotic and Autonomous Systems. Most recently, the Navy stood up the Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Robotic and Autonomous Systems (DRPM RAS), led by Christopher Miller, who also serves as Program Acquisition Executive Maritime overseeing surface combatants. DRPM RAS answers to the official performing the duties of Under Secretary of the Navy, William Toti, and is tasked with procurement, budgeting and setting technical standards for autonomous platforms.

RASWDC is designed to complement, not replace, that acquisition structure. While DRPM RAS handles buying and technical standards, RASWDC will report to Fleet Forces Command and take charge of what the Navy calls “operational employment” — testing equipment, and more importantly, developing the tactics, techniques and procedures needed to actually use unmanned platforms in combat conditions.

Educate, Equip, Dominate

Rear Adm. Melvin Smith, named as RASWDC’s first commander, described the center’s purpose as bringing the Navy’s scattered autonomous efforts under one roof at Little Creek. He framed the mandate in three parts: training sailors to operate the new equipment, ensuring the Fleet receives tools that can withstand real operating environments, and building combined tactics for effective use. Smith emphasized that the goal isn’t simply fielding unmanned systems but achieving genuine operational dominance with them.

Importantly, the source notes that RASWDC is not absorbing existing fleet unmanned-systems units or their day-to-day responsibilities. That means localized innovation programs, such as Fifth Fleet’s Task Force 59, will continue operating independently even as the new center works to standardize tactics and integration across the broader force.

What This Means for the Wider Maritime Sector

While RASWDC is a military organization, its creation reflects a broader trend that commercial ship owners, managers and surveyors should watch closely: navies and merchant fleets alike are grappling with how to operationally integrate unmanned and autonomous technology, not just acquire it. The Navy’s experience — cycling through multiple administrative homes before settling on a structure that separates acquisition from operational integration — underscores a lesson relevant to commercial autonomous shipping trials as well. Simply buying unmanned or remotely operated equipment is not the same as building the procedures, crew training, and inspection regimes needed to use it safely and reliably at sea.

For technical superintendents and surveyors, this distinction matters. As unmanned surface vessels, remote monitoring systems and autonomous inspection tools increasingly find their way into commercial fleets, the industry will need its own equivalent of “operational employment” thinking: standardized procedures for condition assessment, survey protocols adapted to remote or autonomous data collection, and clear lines of accountability between the parties that build or acquire the technology and those who must operate and maintain it under real sea conditions. The Navy’s decision to give unmanned systems a dedicated warfighting development center, separate from its acquisition arm, is a reminder that technology adoption and operational readiness are two distinct challenges — one the commercial maritime sector will increasingly have to solve for itself as autonomous and remote inspection technologies mature.

Looking Ahead

Whether this latest restructuring proves more durable than its predecessors remains to be seen, given the Navy’s track record of repeatedly reorganizing its unmanned-systems governance. For now, RASWDC signals a clear intent: unmanned systems are no longer a peripheral experiment but a core warfighting capability requiring dedicated institutional support, training pipelines and tactical development — a shift with implications well beyond the Navy’s own fleet.

Reviewed by Ibrahim Halil Ceylan, Marine Surveyor at Apeks Marine.