Army wants up to 100 drone boats to fill watercraft gap in Pacific

As the Army contends with a shortage of ships to carry troops and supplies in the Pacific, it’s pressing contract vessels into service – and looking to a future in which dozens of heavy-duty autonomous watercraft take on a significant portion of the task.The Army’s little-known fleet of watercraft included about 70 Pacific-based vessels in 2024, down from 134 in 2018. According to a Government Accountability Office report published two years ago, the mission-capable rate of the remaining vessels has sharply declined, from more than 70% in 2020 to less than 40% in 2024.In a roundtable with reporters this month, Maj. Gen. Gavin Gardner, commander of the Hawaii-based 8th Theater Sustainment Command, said the command had requested that industry deliver an autonomous vessel for testing as early as next summer, in hopes of rapidly building a fleet of 30 to 100 drone boats.While the Army considered divesting its fleet around 2019, it has since reversed course, making key moves in recent years to build up both vessels and personnel to man them. In 2024, the service activated its first new composite watercraft company in years, the 5th Transportation Company out of Yokohama, Japan.And just this year, 8th TSC’s lone Maneuver Support Vessel (Light) – the first of a small fleet of landing craft intended to replace the Vietnam-era Landing Craft Mechanized-8 – executed a first with a littoral high mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS) launcher insertion on an austere beach.“We can always use more watercraft,” Gen. Ronald Clark, head of U.S. Army Pacific, said earlier this year at the Land Forces Pacific symposium, according to a Stars and Stripes report. “Any commander that tells you he doesn’t need more is probably shooting beneath the target.”Gardner and his senior enlisted adviser, Sgt. Maj. Montrell Kea, said they expected the future autonomous vessels to be heavy-duty, capable of carrying eight to 10 standard-size shipping containers.“I could see those operating in the U