Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

4. Department of Defense · Minor

Develop and field unmanned systems to augment manned naval forces

Partially done

111 4. Department of Defense

“Develop and field unmanned systems to augment the manned forces.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao established a Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Robotic and Autonomous Systems (DRPM RAS), reporting directly to the official performing the duties of the Under Secretary of the Navy and dual-hatted as Portfolio Acquisition Executive RAS. The release describes it as correcting 'years of fragmented requirements, resourcing, and acquisition practices'. It follows the Department's first Portfolio Acquisition Executive, RAS, stood up in December 2025 (recorded in the FY2027 Shipbuilding Plan). Machinery for developing and fielding the systems, not systems fielded; the rung is unchanged.

  2. Partially done

    Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao announced Milestone C approval for the MQ-25A Stingray, moving 'the world's first fully integrated, carrier-based unmanned aerial vehicle' into Low-Rate Initial Production, with an LRIP Lot 1 contract for three aircraft expected that summer. It follows the type's first flight on 2026-04-25 at Boeing's MidAmerica Airport facility, a two-hour sortie flown from the Unmanned Carrier Aviation Mission Control System MD-5 ground station. A production decision for a system whose stated job is to free F/A-18E/Fs from tanking is the *develop* limb reaching its furthest point in the window; it is not yet a squadron alongside the manned air wing, so the rung does not move.

  3. Partially done

    The Navy's own FY2027 Shipbuilding Plan is the first Primary on this ask from the Department rather than from Congress. Appendix 6 states the Unmanned Surface Vessel Family of Systems strategy in the Quote's own words — its first listed objective is to 'Augment the Main Battle Force … a direct, dual-use supplement to existing ready forces' — and funds 47 MUSVs across the FYDP ($3.1 billion) under the Other Transaction authority of 10 U.S.C. 4022, plus 63 unmanned platforms in total. For the first time the plan reports unmanned vessels in a 'Total Naval Vessel Force' count (39 in FY2027 rising to 83 in FY2031) and the Navy updated its battle force counting instruction to allow counting robotic and autonomous systems. Still `partial`, and the plan is why: it says MUSV is not in the battle force, and that 'as MUSV capability approaches delivery, the CNO will assess recommending inclusion'. The Navy's own document holds the *field* limb open.

  4. Partially done

    The FY2026 NDAA legislates for the same force: sec. 1020 exempts unmanned vessels from certain requirements, sec. 7336 requires a medium unmanned aircraft systems capabilities study, sec. 7337 a National Academy of Sciences report on uncrewed systems, and secs. 831–838 and 914 build the small-UAS supplier base. EO 14307 (Unleashing American Drone Dominance, 2025-06-06) sits behind the aerial half.

  5. Partially done

    Public Law 119-21 funds unmanned naval forces directly: sec. 20002 appropriates $1,534,000,000 for the expansion of small unmanned surface vessel production and further money for purpose-built medium unmanned surface vessels, and sec. 20004 adds $200 million for mass-producible autonomous underwater munitions, $500 million to prevent delays in delivery of attritable autonomous capabilities, $61 million to accelerate Navy expeditionary loitering munitions and $1 billion to expand the one-way attack unmanned aerial systems industrial base. Development and production funded; no allowlisted source shows systems fielded alongside the manned fleet.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Unmanned naval systems are the one Navy ask on this page with enacted money behind it, and there is a lot of it.

Why the same appropriation carries this item to partial and leaves #197 at attempted (reviewed alongside the asks on the neighboring pages, 2026-09-01): the two Quotes admit different amounts of partial delivery. #197 asks for a fleet of more than 355 ships, a count that money alone cannot move — appropriating for ships is not ships, and the fleet stood at 291. This Quote has two limbs, develop and field, and the enacted money is spent on the first: sec. 20002 funds the expansion of small unmanned surface vessel production, which is development and production of the named systems rather than a promise to buy them later. The unfielded limb is what holds this at partial rather than done.

This item sits in the page 111 Navy cluster (#197, #198, #199, #200, #201), whose trail starts at #197 (build a fleet of more than 355 ships, attempted).

Correction, 2026-09-06. This log used to say that “every navy.mil and donrco.navy.mil page we tried refuses to open”, so the Navy’s own announcements were leads. That was false: the bare hostname navy.mil does not resolve, and the failed address was read as a refusal. https://www.navy.mil/ and https://www.secnav.navy.mil/ both open. The whole Navy press output for the window was enumerated through the Navy’s news feeds, and the whole NAVADMIN/ALNAV message traffic through MyNavy HR, in one search of 2026-09-06; the four events above are what it found for this ask. www.donrco.navy.mil/s/ really is unreadable, but because it is a JavaScript shell with 52 characters of prose, not because it refuses us.

Searches for this item inside that enumeration: “unmanned”, “uncrewed”, “autonomous”, “USV” or “UUV” over the 2,099 news items (47 hits, of which the four cited here are the dated Departmental acts and the rest are exercise and port-visit stories); “robotic”, “autonomous” or “unmanned” over the 630 NAVADMIN and ALNAV subject lines (no message sets policy for fielding unmanned systems); “unmanned”, “autonomous”, “MUSV” and “RAS” over the 60-page FY2027 Shipbuilding Plan.

Action
create
Object
U.S. Navy unmanned systems
ID
198