If you are a submariner, then chances are you would subscribe to the idea that there are two different kinds of ships: subs and targets. The forward thinking folks over at the Pentagon intend to work on a new kind of surface ship which is capable of transforming a sub into a target. Needless to say, the submarine hunter will not have a human controlling it from within, as you can see in the video above.
This particular maritime robot is known as the Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vehicle, or ACTUV for short, where its “radically different” design allows the ACTUV to keep surface ships from ending up as sitting ducks. The surface-gliding ACTUV will be designed to stay on course on a hunt for 60 to 90 days, and while it sounds scary, it has yet to be realized – making it stuck on the drawing board as at press time. Sonar pods located underneath the belly of the ACTUV will create an acoustic image of a submarine, where it will then pursue it at high speed. The moment the ACTUV figures out that it is locked on to a potential target, it will ping nearby Navy ships via through a satellite link.
Filed in . Read more about Darpa.