Leidos Ranger

DESCRIPTION

Ranger is a medium unmanned surface vessel operated by the US Navy and delivered by Leidos - the first of the Ghost Fleet Overlord vessels, designated OUSV 1. It is not a clean-sheet design. Ranger started as a commercial fast supply vessel of the kind built to run crew and cargo out to offshore oil and gas platforms, with the hull built by Gulf Craft of Franklin, Louisiana. Gibbs & Cox, a Leidos subsidiary, converted it to operate autonomously under the Strategic Capabilities Office's Ghost Fleet Overlord programme. Using a proven commercial hull was the point: it made a large, high-endurance autonomous ship cheap enough to experiment with. The vessel is 193 feet (59 m) long with a 32 foot (10 m) beam, carries up to six containers on deck as modular payload, and is driven by waterjets on five 2,000 hp (1,491 kW) diesel main engines with three generators. It runs LAVA, the Leidos Autonomous Vessel Architecture, and is semi-autonomous rather than fully independent - operators stay in the loop or on the loop. In 2021 Ranger test-fired an SM-6 Standard Missile from a modular launch system on its deck, demonstrating that an uncrewed hull could carry and employ a strike payload. It transferred to the Navy in early 2022, and in 2023 it crossed the Pacific with Seahawk, Sea Hunter and Mariner for Integrated Battle Problem 23.2, calling at western Pacific ports and reaching Sydney Harbour. Before that deployment Ranger and Mariner had logged nearly 100,000 miles in supervised autonomy. Leidos holds a Naval Sea Systems Command task order to manage, operate and maintain the Navy's Overlord and medium USVs, worth up to approximately 95 million US dollars with all options.

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