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DARPA Is About To Start Testing an Autonomous, Submarine-Hunting Drone (vice.com)
merbs writes: Early next year, DARPA will begin testing a 132-foot unmanned submarine-hunting ocean drone in San Diego. Slapped with the cumbersome title of Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV), it's designed to do exactly that: track stealth submarines from the surface, quietly and autonomously. "The 132-foot-long, 140-ton ACTUV is being built by Leidos at the Vigor Shipyard [formerly Oregon Iron Works] in Clackamas, Ore. The vessel is about 90 percent complete. The hardware of the systems is complete, with software being engineered presently." Using one of these drones would cost "about $15,000 to $20,000 per day, compared with a destroyer that costs about $700,000 per day to operate."
Why couldn't a submarine-hunting drone be a small craft, say, 10 feet long? Such a small craft would be an order of magnitude less expensive, and quicker to produce, than a 130-foot-long vessel.
The drones can only do better than current situation, where a french submarine was able to virtually sink a US carrier during an joint drill
Well, it shouldn't take long at all, then! It's just a small matter of programming.
Just wait until the software has a glitch and it zeroes in on a container carrier or a cruise ship and blows it out of the water.
But don't worry- I'm sure that'll be fixed in ver. 2.0, after it sinks half the ships in the Atlantic Ocean.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Why couldn't a submarine-hunting drone be a small craft, say, 10 feet long? Such a small craft would be an order of magnitude less expensive, and quicker to produce, than a 130-foot-long vessel.
Because of the equipment it needs to carry. A propulsion system with the speed and endurance to follow a submarine; now add the additional equipment and structure (vibration isolation, etc) to be silent. Acoustic and other sensor systems to detect a submarine at depth. Today's technology requires the preceding equipment to be a certain size.
"Nomad"
Table-ized A.I.
I don't get this. Can someone please provide a car analogy?
http://matrix.wikia.com/wiki/S...
I am delighted that my tax money is being put to good use!
So this hunter-killer warfare technology will be countered by anti-hunter-killer warfare technology. Such as similarly-sized decoys giving a full-size 'footprint'. Or, new submarines totally computerized and full of identical stealth technology. Or low-noise engines, a la 'Red October', making these robotic hunter-killers worthless.
I heard on the news that due to the actions of SMJWs[1] Sea World is dropping the orca displays. And they have a park where? San Diego.
Coincidence? I think not.
[1] Sea Mammal Justice Warriors
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The hardware of the systems is complete, with software being engineered presently
No need for the drug runners to worry for a while yet, then...ironing out the bugs will probably take a few years
Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV)
To all our American friends. I have always admired your ability to invent insanely complicated and nonsensical names for things in order to produce a nice ancronym but now I am quite frankly disappointed. This one compares badly to your usual work, it is mediocre at best. You guys really need to get your act together.
It's will much quieter then a manned destroyer. No plumbing, no laundry, no kitchen, no people talking and moving around. Therefore, it's intrinsically more stealthy and much harder for an enemy to detect. Since it generates less noise it will also be a much more sensitive listening post. That's why they can say it can track the newer generation of quiet non-nuclear powered submarines. The plumbing in a reactor is hard to mask acoustically, which is one reason the non-nuke boats have an advantage.
It changes the offensive/defensive cost equation. Non-nuke subs are much cheaper to develop and deploy, so you don't need the military budget of the US or Russia to have a sizable fleet. Size means that even if boats are lost in combat, there will still be enough remaining to accomplish the mission. A surface ship like this will be cheaper to make then a submarine, so the US can afford to build a big enough fleet to counter a force of non-nuke subs. Add in the lower operation cost, and it's a real headache for the opposition.
This thing is going to be really stealthy. If an enemy can hunt it down with ships or aircraft it looses it's effectiveness. It wouldn't be surprising if the published pictures are deliberately inaccurate. It might have a more radar reflecting shape like the Zumwalt
There might be a problem keeping it out of enemy hands. It would be awfully tempting for a naval power like Russia or China to try and nab one on the high seas to find out what makes it tick. Expect that it would self destruct if captured, and perhaps even be designed to take some other vessels down with it.
Why is Snark Required?
Whats next, an unmanned aircraft carrier for drones?
The USs tech advantage is most pronounced in combat aircraft and subs. Enabling a tech that cheaply hunts/kills subs substantially attacks that advantage.
Not that it would stop development if DARPA didn't do it, but this tech probably has the largest potential to harm the US of any country. Considering our sieve-like computer security and that apparently every advanced tech the US develops seems to be almost instantly aped by China and/or Russia, DARPA's essentially doing research for them.
-Styopa
You just know this thing is going to mistake large sea mammals for submarines and kill them.
How many blue whales, orcas, and other large sea mammals must die before we realize our warmongering is going to destroy our planet?
Interesting gadget.
I wonder what the rules are for an unmanned vessel on the high seas.
That is an international question, so one country can't just make up a new set of rules.
(This applies both to China building islands, and the US building these boats.)
If unmanned = abandoned, then it seems like the ship would be fair game.
If it is following your sub, then perhaps put a swimmer in the water and route the sub so the ship goes to the swimmer.
They may wish to have the option to have a few folks on board depending on operational concerns.
The ocean is a big place; you need lots of power and fuel to travel far.
The waves in the ocean frequently exceed 20 feet. Your 10 boat would have a very bad day. Ocean going vessels under 100 feet have lots of bad days.
We already have the capacity to "track" submarines with a very well placed set of stationary listening stations. This sonar net covers the Atlantic very well and is pretty good in the Pacific. We can routinely track submarines general locations now, and I'm fairly sure we do. So that begs the question, what is this sub-hunting drone thing really good for?
I don't think we need it to track submarines in the open ocean, but we need to more easily search for them in shallow congested waters. Right now the destroyer is the platform of choice to use on submarines. You send in the destroyers to deal with the submarine threat, but they are large, expensive and easily tracked so everybody knows what you are doing.
What these things will be for is to go into an area without being detected, sweep the area for submarines and even possibly deal with the threats they find if necessary. All this is to avoid tipping your hand too far in advance so your adversary can get ready, and for detecting what your adversary is doing with his fleet so you can avoid interacting with it until the terms of the engagement are most favorable.
So this is really an intelligence gathering device that can shoot at submarines if need be. It is just there to observe and report, It's not really an offensive weapon any more than a drone with a missile is one.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I don't know. Today's electronics are able to compensate for lack of stability.
Just to be clear. You're presenting your lack of knowledge as an argument? The fact that you don't know is supposed to invalidate someone else's - valid, by the way - assertion?
Sounds pretty inconspicuous to me...
Also sounds like the beginning of a Monty Python sketch... when the countermeasures are to build fake submarine drones for the other drones to follow, and by the end there are just a whole lot of drones following each other in an infinite loop around the oceans to the Benny Hill theme song...