The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) reports its "Sea Hunter" unmanned surface vehicle (USV) submarine killer has successfully hurdled initial performance trials off the coast of California.
The trials verified Sea Hunter's propulsion and steering system and gave DARPA useful data on system reliability while its operators and test personnel gained more experience working with the drone. DARPA is testing the drone off the San Diego coast to record how it interacts with other vessels and how it avoids collisions using its sensors and advanced optical systems.
Sea Hunter will enter fleet service with the U.S. Navy in 2018 after two years of exhaustive tests that will validate the faith the US Navy has placed in this DARPA undersea robot, whose job will be to detect, track (over long distances, if need be) and destroy Chinese and Russian attack and ballistic nuclear missile submarines.
Sea Hunter was launched as part of the DARPA Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) program. Built at a cost of $20 million, the prototype is a trimaran featuring a streamlined central hull flanked by two outriggers containing submarine hunting equipment and torpedoes. Its top speed is 27 knots or 50 km/h.
Sea Hunter, the world's first robot warship, is capable of patrolling 10,000 nautical miles of ocean without a human crew. It will, however, be unable to launch its submarine killing torpedoes without human command. It will enter service with the U.S. Navy Third Fleet defending the West Coast of the USA.
Once operational, the Sea Hunter fleet will allow the Navy to relentlessly detect and track the very quiet diesel electric submarines that are the most potent subs in the navies of China and Russia. The Sea Hunter fleet will also make up for the decline in the number of Navy attack submarines by 2029. In contrast, China's attack submarines are expected to outnumber the Navy by that same year.
"You can imagine anti-submarine warfare pickets. You can imagine anti-submarine warfare wolf packs. You can imagine mine warfare flotillas. You can imagine distributed anti-surface warfare action groups ... and you might be able to put a six-pack or a four-pack of missiles on it," said Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work.
"Now imagine 50 of these warships ... operating together under the hands of a flotilla commander. This is really something," he added.
Work believes that when the US Navy begins using the Sea Hunter-class drones, it will "be a Navy unlike any Navy in history, (with) a human-machine collaborative battle fleet that will confound our enemies."