Leidos Mariner

DESCRIPTION

Mariner is the fourth and newest of the US Navy's Ghost Fleet Overlord vessels (OUSV 4), delivered by Leidos and christened in August 2022. Like its sister Ranger it began as a commercial fast supply vessel — the type built to run crew and cargo to offshore oil and gas platforms — with the hull built by Gulf Craft of Franklin, Louisiana and the autonomous conversion carried out by Gibbs & Cox, a Leidos subsidiary. Mariner folds the lessons of Ranger back into its mechanical and electrical design, which Leidos describes as making those systems more reliable and more conducive to autonomy. Two things set it apart from Ranger. It is fitted as a mothership for other uncrewed vessels, and it carries a lower-capability version of the Lockheed Martin Aegis combat system, which lets it take on command-and-control work rather than only sensing. The hull is 193 feet (59 m) long with a 32 foot (10 m) beam, carries up to six containers of modular payload on deck, and is driven by waterjets on five 2,000 hp (1,491 kW) diesel main engines with three generators. Its IMO number is 9916068. It runs LAVA, the Leidos Autonomous Vessel Architecture, and is semi-autonomous — operators stay in the loop or on the loop. Before deploying, Mariner and Ranger had logged nearly 100,000 miles in supervised autonomy. In 2023 it crossed the Pacific with Seahawk, Sea Hunter and Ranger for Integrated Battle Problem 23.2, calling at western Pacific ports and reaching Sydney Harbour. Leidos holds a Naval Sea Systems Command task order to manage, operate and maintain the Navy's Overlord and medium unmanned surface vessels, worth up to approximately 95 million US dollars with all options, and states it has delivered four operational medium USVs to the fleet: Ranger, Mariner, Sea Hunter and Seahawk.

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