Industry is showing a healthy interest in building and marketing unmanned surface vehicles and recent water-borne pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia and in Mumbai, India show that there's already a need for the persistent, stand-off capability they could provide.rnUSVs "will significantly reduce the risk to our manned forces, providing force multiplication to accomplish missions much more effectively, and perform tasks that manned vehicles cannot," says Capt. Paul Siegrist, program manager for Unmanned Maritime Vehicles (PM§ 403) in the Program Executive Office Littoral and Mine Warfare (PEO LMW).rnMaritime security is a mission that "clearly benefits from USV capability," he tells Unmanned Systems. That mission includes securing U.S. or allied ports and protecting ship and maritime equipment and infrastructure from terrorist or "conventional" attacks, according to the Navy's 2007 Unmanned Surface Vehicle Master Plan.
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