The US Navy chain-of-command puts ships, submarines, and aircraft into type commands for operational purposes. Aircraft squadrons and air stations are under the administrative control of the appropriate Commander Naval Air Force. Submarines come under the Commander Submarine Force. All other ships fall under Commander Naval Surface Force.

It has been that way for a long time, a neat arrangement of platforms and the people who populate them. But a Navy exercise in Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay in August may have upended the traditional chain-of-command.

The focus of the Annual Navy Technology Exercise (ANTX) was Lockheed Martin’s Vector Hawk UAV, a versatile, four-pound autonomous drone designed for short-range reconnaissance, early-warning, and intelligence-gathering missions. Vector Hawk looks like a pair of chevrons (wings) joined by a small fuselage, tipped with a propeller. It can be configured in the field as a conventional fixed-wing aircraft, a VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) craft, or as a tilt-rotor, enabling VTOL with transition to fixed-wing flight.