> The U.S. has for years been trying to build a fleet of autonomous uncrewed surface and underwater vessels, as a cheaper and faster alternative to manned ships and submarines, particularly to counter China’s growing naval power in the Pacific. The effort, however, has fallen behind schedule and been dogged by technical problems, cost concerns and a series of testing setbacks.

That could be a good sign that they are conducting legitimate testing. Brand new technology is hard to design and build anyway; it takes a lot of trial and error and starting over again. The US Navy is a massive, complex system of systems; they need to figure out how these uncrewed boats fit into very many of these systems - training, personnel allocation, fuel, maintenance, intelligence, tactical operations, force tracking (i.e., try not to shoot them), ... on what ships are they stored and how much space is there; how are they moved to and from the sea; how are they deployed and retrieved; how is all this done simultaneously with all the ship's other operations ...

There are so many details that if there weren't a lot of setbacks, I'd think they were being deployed long before they were actually ready.