Pentagon launches crewless ship to hunt enemy submarines

Leave it to the Pentagon’s secretive Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to roll out a major technological innovation just when the world’s attention is riveted elsewhere. With the high-tech spotlight focused on self-driving cars being developed by Google, Tesla, and other manufacturers, DARPA has just launched what many are calling the naval equivalent: the world’s largest, un-crewed, autonomous surface vessel.

Christened in April in Portland, Ore., where it was built and then towed by barge to San Diego, the 132-foot autonomous ship Sea Hunter is embarking on a two-year test voyage primarily focused on verifying the vessel can safely follow international norms for maritime operation.

“It’s not just a remote-controlled boat,” DARPA program manager Scott Littlefield told reporters prior to Sea Hunter’s christening. “The human being is in control, but not joy-sticking the vessel around.”

Developed to search large areas of the ocean for potential undersea threats, such as stealthy diesel-electric submarines or mines, Sea Hunter is designed to receive only mission-type commands and then operate on its own using sensors and artificial intelligence. The vessel has a 10,000-mile cruising range, allowing it to operate far away from any naval fleets for months at a time.

“This is an inflection point,” Deputy U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Work told Reuters, adding he hoped such ships might find a place in the western Pacific in as few as five years. “This is the first time we’ve ever had a totally robotic, trans-oceanic-capable ship.”

The Sea Hunter program is part of a broader Pentagon strategy to use next-generation technology to offset a shrinking U.S. military force structure and the rise of technologically competitive militaries such as China and Russia. And with a projected $20 million price tag and daily operating costs of less than $20,000, Sea Hunter is far less expensive than conventional manned vessels.

“You now have an asset at a fraction of the cost of a manned platform,” Rear Admiral Robert Girrier, the Navy’s director of unmanned warfare systems told Reuters. The Arleigh Burke class destroyer at more than $1 billion, costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per day to operate, according to a recent Forbes report.

Sea Hunter’s launch comes as China’s expansion of its submarine fleet and its heightened level of activity in the western Pacific raise Pentagon concerns about the vulnerability of U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups and submarines.

“We’re not working on anti-submarine (technology) just because we think it’s cool,” Peter Singer, an expert on robotic warfare at the New America Foundation think tank, told Reuters. “We’re working on it because we’re deeply concerned about the advancements that China and Russia are making in this space.”

Although Sea Hunter was developed for the U.S. Navy, DARPA program managers have discussed the possibility that the prototype might pave the way for the development of crewless cargo vessels for the commercial shipping industry, according to a report in the Daily Mail. Such speculation concerns groups like the International Transport Workers’ Federation, a union representing more than 500,000 sailors worldwide. The group argues the technology will never be able to replace a human crew, according to the Daily Mail.

But the Pentagon believes human-machine teaming—one of the tenets of its new offset strategy—is the way forward.

“For our military operations, we want to make sure we have unmanned vessels like this to supplement the human mission so that we’re not putting people unduly in harm’s way,” DARPA spokesman Jared Adams told Stars and Stripes.