How does a 1980s Video Game inform Uncrewed Surface Warfare Systems?
The MOC
December 12, 2023
Dr. Steven Wills
Figure 1. 1980s “Missile Command” game. Graphic from Polygon.
While there has been a clarion call to integrate uncrewed systems into the U.S. Navy surface fleet, there is the inevitable fact that even in 2045, 60% or more of the current, crewed surface warship fleet will still be in service. How can uncrewed systems augment those conventional warships? There is also the problem of reloading vertical launch missile (“VLS”) tubes at sea to keep those ships more engaged in combat for longer periods. Finally, there are industrial base challenges. The current number of shipyards capable of producing surface warships is small and likely cannot be ramped up fast enough to produce a meaningful number of new warships in sufficient time to meet current and near-term geopolitical challenges.
A 1980s-era video game may, however, offer the Navy a solution in terms of how to improve the size of crewed warship missile magazines without modifying existing ships or building more conventional combatants. In the game “Missile Command,” the player has three, networked missile bases from which to engage opponent missiles and aircraft. If any one of the bases ran out of ammunition or was destroyed, the other bases could carry on the fight. Ammunition in “Missile Command” is limited and players still have to be judicious with their firepower use if they want to survive to higher levels of the game with faster and more numerous opponents.
Today’s conventional destroyers and frigates should equally sail with separate, uncrewed VLS magazines that can augment their firepower in combat, making them more lethal and survivable, and return to base once empty. Such small, uncrewed ships, simple enough to support a VLS battery and networked with crewed units, could be constructed in many smaller shipyards. In this way the lethality of an individual or group of ships could be increased using the existing industrial base. Every conventional U.S. warship should in the future sail with its own flotilla of magazine ships. As in Missile Command, these uncrewed ships can be lost of run out of weapons but they preserve the crewed ships and augment their fighting potential.
Today, however, that confidence has faded, given the range and numbers of potential missile attacks to include now ballistic and hypersonic weapons. Multiple tactical wargames suggest that U.S. warship groups cannot shoot enough missiles or fast enough to down all incoming targets. Recent events in the Red Sea, where U.S. destroyers have downed multiple drones and missiles, suggest how rapidly a ship’s missile magazines can be depleted. Just like in the “Missile Command” game, missile expenditures will be much more rapid in response to major ballistic or cruise missile attacks and unlike the fixed bases in the game, warships will have to leave the fight in order to reload.
Reloading will be a challenge. There are also few places in deployed regions where U.S. VLS combatants can reload pier side or in a calm anchorage. In either location, the immobile surface combatant would be vulnerable. Suggestions that a complicated rig could allow for a VLS warship to reload at sea while underway, much the same as warships do that to take on fuel and provisions also leave the ship vulnerable to attack. Directed energy weapons on ships offer hope of a more combat and cost-effective method of downing missiles, but such systems are still few in number, with perhaps only one available per destroyer. This lack of defensive firepower keeps U.S. ships outside the range of opponent weapons and gravely weakens the strike capability of naval systems.
It has too frequently been lamented that the U.S. industrial base is now too small to rapidly build up and maintain a larger fleet. Despite a Congressional requirement from 2017 for a 355-ship formation, the Navy has struggled to keep more than 300 ships active since the last decade. The U.S. has 22 private shipyards, but only seven have the current capacity to produce larger warships. Experts have suggested at best that the U.S. can produce between seven and nine warships of all types in any given year. Given the aging surface fleet where the CG-47 Ticonderoga-class cruisers will age out by 2029, and where the first flight of DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class ships will soon follow, it makes a difficult challenge in replacing these ships, let alone growing the fleet.
A 1980s Video Game suggests An Answer
Like the Missile Command game, existing warships might employ a similar using uncrewed ships outfitted as simple mobile missile magazines with propulsion and electrical system enough to support the vertical launch missile cells aboard and communication with their mother ship: a crewed destroyer or frigate. Each conventional ship would go into battle with one or more of these uncrewed “missile bases” as additional magazines from which they can engage hostile aircraft, missiles, surface ships, and submarines, depending on the loadout of the uncrewed magazine ship. Once empty, these mobile magazines can be detached to return to an advance base for re-arming, thus allowing the parent, crewed ship to remain longer in the fight. Future versions of the uncrewed units might include an electronic warfare model to serve as a decoy and a small, uncrewed refueling ship where the crewed vessel could get a short boost of gas, if needed. These mobile missile magazines need not be limited to surface combatant pairing and could also be combined with more vulnerable vessels like large amphibious ships and tenders. Teaming multiple such magazines with an aircraft carrier could also substantially boost the flattop’s active defense capabilities. Finally, the direct paring and command of uncrewed assets by traditional warships should satisfy ethical critics of unmanned warfare as the uncrewed ships operate as human-controlled extensions of the crewed platforms and are not artificial intelligence-driven, independent hunter-killers. Ammunition must still be used sparingly, as in the 1980s video game, but a flotilla of uncrewed missile magazine ships could significantly improve conventional warship functionality inside the WEZ.
Helping the Industrial Base
Unlike larger, crewed destroyers and frigates, small drone missile magazine ships can be built in many more of the nation’s existing shipyards. Keeping these platforms simple and using existent technology, such as the VLS, will keep these units simple and less expensive. They should be viewed as attritable assets so the industrial base can build them in large numbers. Many smaller shipyards that build patrol craft, offshore resupply ships for the oil derrick industry, Mississippi river and Great Lakes shipbuilders should also be able to build these uncrewed magazine ships. These units need not all be deployed at once and can be stockpiled for rapid fielding when needed for combat action.
Figure 2. Uncrewed ship Ranger with MK 41 VLS in exercise earlier in 2023. Photo from the U.S. Department of Defense via Defense News.
Combining the existing, capable surface fleet with uncrewed mobile magazines in a “Missile Command” format is a win for both the Navy and for the wider industrial base. It makes the most of both crewed and uncrewed systems together for more lethality and defense with a product that can potentially be built by a much larger part of the existing industrial base. Attritable missile magazine ships as uncrewed “loyal wingmen” also solve the problem of reloading of the surface combatant fleet as a large mass of them forms the reload capability. Make it missile command for the tactical missile fight at sea.
Center for Maritime Strategy
Dr. Steven Wills
Figure 1. 1980s “Missile Command” game. Graphic from Polygon.
While there has been a clarion call to integrate uncrewed systems into the U.S. Navy surface fleet, there is the inevitable fact that even in 2045, 60% or more of the current, crewed surface warship fleet will still be in service. How can uncrewed systems augment those conventional warships? There is also the problem of reloading vertical launch missile (“VLS”) tubes at sea to keep those ships more engaged in combat for longer periods. Finally, there are industrial base challenges. The current number of shipyards capable of producing surface warships is small and likely cannot be ramped up fast enough to produce a meaningful number of new warships in sufficient time to meet current and near-term geopolitical challenges.
A 1980s-era video game may, however, offer the Navy a solution in terms of how to improve the size of crewed warship missile magazines without modifying existing ships or building more conventional combatants. In the game “Missile Command,” the player has three, networked missile bases from which to engage opponent missiles and aircraft. If any one of the bases ran out of ammunition or was destroyed, the other bases could carry on the fight. Ammunition in “Missile Command” is limited and players still have to be judicious with their firepower use if they want to survive to higher levels of the game with faster and more numerous opponents.
Today’s conventional destroyers and frigates should equally sail with separate, uncrewed VLS magazines that can augment their firepower in combat, making them more lethal and survivable, and return to base once empty. Such small, uncrewed ships, simple enough to support a VLS battery and networked with crewed units, could be constructed in many smaller shipyards. In this way the lethality of an individual or group of ships could be increased using the existing industrial base. Every conventional U.S. warship should in the future sail with its own flotilla of magazine ships. As in Missile Command, these uncrewed ships can be lost of run out of weapons but they preserve the crewed ships and augment their fighting potential.
The Missile Firepower Problem
The vertical launch missile system, first introduced in the U.S. Navy in 1986, has become the bedrock weapon system for almost all U.S. surface warships. It was developed in the late Cold War, along with the AEGIS combat system as a way of overcoming the power of an incoming Soviet cruise missile raid. VLS-launched missiles combined with AEGIS allowed for rapid missile engagement enough to give naval leaders confidence that their carrier battle groups, and other formations could effectively engage in combat in what is today called the weapon engagement zone (WEZ).
Today, however, that confidence has faded, given the range and numbers of potential missile attacks to include now ballistic and hypersonic weapons. Multiple tactical wargames suggest that U.S. warship groups cannot shoot enough missiles or fast enough to down all incoming targets. Recent events in the Red Sea, where U.S. destroyers have downed multiple drones and missiles, suggest how rapidly a ship’s missile magazines can be depleted. Just like in the “Missile Command” game, missile expenditures will be much more rapid in response to major ballistic or cruise missile attacks and unlike the fixed bases in the game, warships will have to leave the fight in order to reload.
Reloading will be a challenge. There are also few places in deployed regions where U.S. VLS combatants can reload pier side or in a calm anchorage. In either location, the immobile surface combatant would be vulnerable. Suggestions that a complicated rig could allow for a VLS warship to reload at sea while underway, much the same as warships do that to take on fuel and provisions also leave the ship vulnerable to attack. Directed energy weapons on ships offer hope of a more combat and cost-effective method of downing missiles, but such systems are still few in number, with perhaps only one available per destroyer. This lack of defensive firepower keeps U.S. ships outside the range of opponent weapons and gravely weakens the strike capability of naval systems.
It has too frequently been lamented that the U.S. industrial base is now too small to rapidly build up and maintain a larger fleet. Despite a Congressional requirement from 2017 for a 355-ship formation, the Navy has struggled to keep more than 300 ships active since the last decade. The U.S. has 22 private shipyards, but only seven have the current capacity to produce larger warships. Experts have suggested at best that the U.S. can produce between seven and nine warships of all types in any given year. Given the aging surface fleet where the CG-47 Ticonderoga-class cruisers will age out by 2029, and where the first flight of DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class ships will soon follow, it makes a difficult challenge in replacing these ships, let alone growing the fleet.
A 1980s Video Game suggests An Answer
Like the Missile Command game, existing warships might employ a similar using uncrewed ships outfitted as simple mobile missile magazines with propulsion and electrical system enough to support the vertical launch missile cells aboard and communication with their mother ship: a crewed destroyer or frigate. Each conventional ship would go into battle with one or more of these uncrewed “missile bases” as additional magazines from which they can engage hostile aircraft, missiles, surface ships, and submarines, depending on the loadout of the uncrewed magazine ship. Once empty, these mobile magazines can be detached to return to an advance base for re-arming, thus allowing the parent, crewed ship to remain longer in the fight. Future versions of the uncrewed units might include an electronic warfare model to serve as a decoy and a small, uncrewed refueling ship where the crewed vessel could get a short boost of gas, if needed. These mobile missile magazines need not be limited to surface combatant pairing and could also be combined with more vulnerable vessels like large amphibious ships and tenders. Teaming multiple such magazines with an aircraft carrier could also substantially boost the flattop’s active defense capabilities. Finally, the direct paring and command of uncrewed assets by traditional warships should satisfy ethical critics of unmanned warfare as the uncrewed ships operate as human-controlled extensions of the crewed platforms and are not artificial intelligence-driven, independent hunter-killers. Ammunition must still be used sparingly, as in the 1980s video game, but a flotilla of uncrewed missile magazine ships could significantly improve conventional warship functionality inside the WEZ.
Helping the Industrial Base
Unlike larger, crewed destroyers and frigates, small drone missile magazine ships can be built in many more of the nation’s existing shipyards. Keeping these platforms simple and using existent technology, such as the VLS, will keep these units simple and less expensive. They should be viewed as attritable assets so the industrial base can build them in large numbers. Many smaller shipyards that build patrol craft, offshore resupply ships for the oil derrick industry, Mississippi river and Great Lakes shipbuilders should also be able to build these uncrewed magazine ships. These units need not all be deployed at once and can be stockpiled for rapid fielding when needed for combat action.
Figure 2. Uncrewed ship Ranger with MK 41 VLS in exercise earlier in 2023. Photo from the U.S. Department of Defense via Defense News.
Combining the existing, capable surface fleet with uncrewed mobile magazines in a “Missile Command” format is a win for both the Navy and for the wider industrial base. It makes the most of both crewed and uncrewed systems together for more lethality and defense with a product that can potentially be built by a much larger part of the existing industrial base. Attritable missile magazine ships as uncrewed “loyal wingmen” also solve the problem of reloading of the surface combatant fleet as a large mass of them forms the reload capability. Make it missile command for the tactical missile fight at sea.
Dr. Steven Wills, Navalist