⚓️🤖 @USNavy just revealed4⃣x very important nuggets about the unmanned fleet, captured by @USNINews BUT @samlagrone missed some of the most important context. Here's my summary of the new public info + analysis of what USNI missed: 1⃣ Navy shifting from optionally manned ships to fully unmanned. Optionally manned "creates a lot of other requirements and cost and complications." - CAPT Matt Lewis Matt is right, and this is huge. Six months ago, a senior admiral was on stage at Surface Navy Association saying effectively autonomous = unmanned = attritable = optionally manned. Now Navy is letting companies choose to build fully unmanned. 2⃣ Enlisted Training: The first cohort of Robotics Warfare Specialists completed A-School training at @CarnegieMellon The Navy is developing its own school house, but relying on robotics expertise at CMU, MIT, and other great American institutions for speed in the interim 3⃣ Officer Training: Navy is developing a "SWO-Unmanned" officer pipeline. RADM Trinque N96 compared it to the SWO-Nuke pipeline. "This has to be mainstream" 4⃣ Navy will deploy an unmanned ship next year as part of a carrier strike group. If this isn't proof that unmanned can become mainstream... I don't know what is? 🤔Austin's Analysis: This is a good piece by USNI capturing some recent developments in Navy SWO and Unmanned communities. But, it misses perhaps the lynchpin of the Navy's strategy: 💨⏩ Buy. These. Boats. Fast. If Navy was taking a traditional, slow, COST+ MDAP approach to procuring the unmanned fleet, it would take a decade or more for this fleet to arrive. In an era of tight budgets and urgent geopolitical threats, only the lean, fast, iterative acquisition approach that Navy seems to be taking can buy many unmanned vessels quickly and affordable. Reporters may not like covering acquisition reform because it's not sexy. But it must be said. This is how we fix shipbuilding.