DARPA Is About To Start Testing an Autonomous, Submarine-Hunting Drone (vice.com)

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday November 10, 2015 @05:11PM from the time-for-a-red-october-remake dept.

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."

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Re:Why so big? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-10 18:37 · Score: 2, Informative

Hull speed, for one thing. The speed in knots of a displacement hull is roughly 1.3 * sqrt(length at waterline in feet). So ~4 knots for a 10 ft hull. A modern sub can do 30 knots.
Never mind the sea-keeping problems of a 10 ft boat in open ocean swells.