The Department of the Navy's fiscal year 2026 budget request, released in June 2025, asked Congress to fund large unmanned surface vessels alongside a seventeen-ship battle force procurement, within a shipbuilding account of roughly 27.2 billion dollars, per the department's budget highlights published in June 2025. The request placed the Large Unmanned Surface Vessel, or LUSV, among the program's principal new-construction lines and set up a funding debate in Congress that ran through the second half of 2025.
What did the FY2026 request contain for unmanned ships?
The June 2025 budget materials described a shipbuilding request of about 27.2 billion dollars covering seventeen battle force ships, with unmanned surface vessels included in that count, per the Department of the Navy's published budget highlights. The LUSV program, a new start in fiscal year 2020, seeks large autonomous hulls of roughly one hundred meters for missile payloads and long-endurance operations, according to the Congressional Research Service's continuing report on the program. Prototype work has been carried by the Ghost Fleet Overlord vessels, which completed long autonomous transits and missile-launch demonstrations in prior years, per Navy program statements.
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How did Congress respond?
Congressional oversight of the unmanned-ship portfolio was active in 2025: the Congressional Research Service kept the LUSV program under standing review in report R45757, and Senate oversight correspondence in 2025 questioned whether the Navy was investing enough in smaller unmanned surface vessels relative to large hulls, per reporting on Senate correspondence. The Navy's prototype force, including vessels operated with Unmanned Surface Vessel Squadron One in San Diego, continued fleet experimentation while the procurement debate proceeded. As of late 2025, the funded size of the future unmanned surface fleet remained subject to the annual appropriations process, and no LUSV construction contract had been announced by the end of the calendar year.
What work have the prototype vessels done?
The hardware case for the program rests on the Ghost Fleet Overlord prototypes, vessels including Ranger, Nomad, Mariner, and Vanguard converted from commercial fast-support designs, per Navy program statements. These hulls completed long autonomous transits, including voyages to the Western Pacific with only periodic human contact, and demonstrated over-the-horizon missile launches from their payload decks in tests documented by the Navy. The prototypes are operated in part with Unmanned Surface Vessel Squadron One, established in San Diego in 2022 to introduce medium and large unmanned surface craft into fleet experimentation. That squadron, and the crews and tactics it developed, supplied the operational evidence the Navy cited in budget materials for expanding the unmanned surface fleet, per the department's June 2025 submissions.