Last month we posted about the successful voyage of the Sea Hunter, a 132′ long autonomous drone trimaran from San Diego to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and back.  Now USNI News is reporting that the Navy is moving quickly to field an unmanned “Ghost Fleet” — a new breed of armed unmanned surface combatants which will add more sensors and weapons to the current fleet.

“These are 200- to 300-foot [vessels], 2,000 tons. I’m not sure what the final hull form will be, that’s what we are using today in terms of what the Ghost Fleet buy will be,” Rear Adm. Randy Crites, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget, said during a press budget briefing.

Unlike the small unmanned craft the Navy has experimented with in the past, the 10 large USVs the Navy wants to buy are the size of a small warship. The corvette-sized USVs are being developed to field different types of sensors and, eventually, vertical launch system (VLS) cells for a variety of guided missiles. However, it’s unclear how the unmanned systems will fit into the larger Navy force structure, how they will be measured as part of the battle force, how they would function with other platforms and what requirements for the Navy the systems would fulfill.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson told reporters the Navy decided to accelerate the large USV’s development and fielding to the operational fleet after experimentation with smaller unmanned surface ships like the DARPA-developed Sea Hunter.