GAO: U.S. Navy's Unmanned Systems Programs Needed Restructuring

GAO cited the XLUUV sub as a program that has been delayed due to management challenges (USN)

In a new unclassified version of a study on the U.S. Navy's unmanned systems efforts, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says that the service needed to reorganize its acquisitions programs in order to give robotic autonomous systems the resources and leadership focus that they deserve, instead of letting them fall through the cracks when manned weapons platforms take priority. The USN has already taken actions in response, and has concurred with the findings.

The classified version of the GAO's audit report was completed in March 2025, and it focused on organizational issues that have slowed down the service's adoption of unmanned vessels, subs and aircraft. After interviewing 200 defense officials and visiting the Navy's development and testing centers, the GAO made three main findings.

First, leadership turnover and changing priorities made it hard to focus on specific goals, even on modifying the service's organizational structure for autonomous systems acquisition - a task the Navy had itself identified more than a decade prior.

Second, autonomous systems programs were all housed within the organizational structures for different domains - surface vessels with surface vessels, aircraft with aircraft, subs with subs. This put them in competition with manned platforms for dollars. Meanwhile, enabling technologies that are required for all kinds of unmanned systems (in all domains) had no specific home and were not adequately resourced.

Third, the Navy was setting requirements for its unmanned programs early on, locking in the specifics before developing the technology. While normal for big-ship acquisition programs, a rigid approach to requirements created challenges for the Large Unmanned Surface Vessel (LUSV) and Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (XLUUV) programs, GAO found, causing delays and blocking the evolution of the systems' capabilities.

To get at these issues, GAO recommended putting robotic autonomous systems of all kinds - subs, boats, ships, and aircraft - into one portfolio and managing it as a whole, with a focus on developing capabilities rather than specific devices. A "capability-centric" and iterative approach would align better with commercial best practice, GAO concluded.

The Navy agreed with GAO's conclusions, and in late 2025 it rolled out the new "Portfolio Acquisition Executive Robotic Autonomous System (PAE RAS)," adopting GAO's phrasing and conceptual structure. PAE RAS absorbed about 200 projects from 25 program offices, all under Rebecca Gassler, former chief engineer of the secretive Project Overmatch effort. The Navy's new "marketplace" framework for the Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel (MUSV) is the most visible early result of PAE RAS's new approach: it brings a distinctly commercial feel, putting the onus on the developer to deliver a functioning product without committing Navy R&D dollars up front.

GAO also advised Congress to sunset a 2021 clause in the defense authorization bill that required the Navy to put an existing program executive office (PEO) from elsewhere in the NAVSEA organizational structure in charge of buying autonomous systems - meaning that one PEO was dual-hatted with the extra job of "acquisition executive agent for autonomy." This person was initially the PEO Unmanned and Small Combatants (PEO USC), the rear admiral responsible for the Constellation-class frigate and the Littoral Combat Ship. In its classified report in March 2025, GAO asked Congress to help the Navy "take actions related to a key stakeholder for acquiring autonomy"; Congress subsequently allowed the Navy to appoint someone of its choice, not an existing PEO, and the position is now held by a longtime autonomous systems engineer, Ryan Fitzgerald.

The unified organizational approach echoes the brief period in 2015-18 when the Navy had two offices with a comprehensive unmanned-systems function: the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Unmanned Systems and the Director of Unmanned Systems, with purview over programs in all domains. Both were disestablished within a few years of launch, but some of the same leaders from that time period are now in charge again at PAE RAS.