Just when you thought autonomous vehicles couldn’t get any bigger, there’s this--a 132-foot warship that can operate for months on end without a crew. Moreover, it doesn’t even require a remote operator hunkered down over a joystick and control panel.
The ship uses advanced radars and automated systems that enable it to navigate the high seas completely on its own, using the international ship-tracking Automatic Identification System (AIS) that it uses to weave into shipping lanes while smartly avoiding other maritime traffic.
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Even though it is christened with the mighty sounding ‘Sea Hunter’, the ship is not weaponized. Developed by the US research agency DARPA as part of its awkwardly monikered Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) program, this ship was originally conceptualized as a submarine hunter, but this has changed.
"What we’ve kind of realized over the course of the program is that it’s a truck," ACTUV manager Scott Littlefield revealed to IEEE Spectrum. "It’s got lots of payload capacity for a variety of different missions.”
The autonomous ship is slated to be in testing for another two years, after which it may be absorbed into the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet in Japan for trials.
"I would like to see unmanned flotillas operating in the western Pacific and the Persian Gulf within five years," revealed Deputy US defense secretary Robert Work to Reuters. Even though such vessels may some day carry armament, the decision to use lethal force has always been left in the hands of humans. Let’s only hope the drones don’t figure out a way to wrench it from our kind.
