The Marine Corps will soon deploy an unmanned, semisubmersible watercraft designed to move supplies and weapons across large ocean distances in waters surrounding Okinawa.
An Autonomous Low-Profile Vessel will arrive at Naha Port this month and operate “around the coastal waters of Okinawa” for about 11 months, Capt. Pawel Puczko, spokesman for the III Marine Expeditionary Force, wrote in an email Monday.
The vessel is part of “an ongoing modernization process,” he wrote.
Brig. Gen. Simon Doran, commander of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory in Quantico, Va., at a conference Sept. 4 described the vessel as “just a narco-boat,” similar to low-profile boats used by drug runners in Central and South America.
The vessel is designed to resupply troops on contested islands in the Indo-Pacific, as part of the island-fighting doctrine described in the Marines’ Force Design plan.
“The ALPV is an autonomous logistics delivery system that can lighten the Marines’ physical load, provide supplies at the critical point of need, and transfer of various classes of supplies across vast distances in the maritime environment,” Puczko wrote. “This is one potential technology the Marine Corps can use to provide sustainment to Stand-in Forces operating within contested areas.”
Source: III Marine Expeditionary Force
