Posted on 02/19/2019 11:07:58 AM PST by blam
The Navy is bulking up its fleet of autonomous robot vessels with the purchase of a cadre of four of Boeing's extremely large and incredibly grandiose unmanned Orca submarines.
On Feb. 13, the Navy awarded Boeing a $43 million contract to produce four of the 51-foot Orca Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (XLUUVs) that are capable of traveling some 6,500 nautical miles unaided, the US Naval Institute reported.
According to USNI, the Navy could potentially deploy the Orcas from existing vessels to conduct "mine countermeasures, anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, electronic warfare and strike missions."
But as Popular Mechanics points out, the Orca's modular design and relatively inexpensive price tag make the robo-subs a potential game-changer for a Navy that's struggling to grow to 335 hulls:
Orca could even pack a Mk. 46 lightweight torpedo to take a shot at an enemy sub itself. It could also carry heavier Mk. 48 heavyweight torpedoes to attack surface ships, or even conceivably anti-ship missiles. Orca could drop off cargos on the seabed, detect, or even lay mines. The modular hardware payload system and open architecture software ensures Orca could be rapidly configured based on need.
This sort of versatility in a single, low-cost package is fairly unheard of in military spending. The nearest rough equivalent is the Navy's Littoral Combat Ship, which costs $584 million each and has a crew of 40. While LCS is faster, has the benefit of an onboard crew, and carries a larger payload, Orca is autonomous—and cheaper by orders of magnitude.
The purchase comes amid a push into autonomous vessels for the Navy, and not just because of President Donald Trump's newfound focus on artificial intelligence.
An Echo Voyager fully autonomous extra large unmanned undersea vehicle (XLUUV) class UUV. Boeing
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(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
ULF. Or simply stick an antenna up for instructions. Small subs like this would be very very hard to track.
My gut tells me there are other significant attributes these subs possess that are too secret to disclose.
Directed by Roger Corman.
I agree, but not under our current president. Of course Hillary and Obama could have had access to the plans while they were in office.
As far as I know, before launch operators have to set waypoints that the sub can travel to without communications. Then it can either surface to get more instructions or simply go ahead and execute some set of previously loaded instructions, whatever they may be.
I just want to say that I forecasted and posted of something like this several times over the past 4-5 years.
Eventually I foresee these growing to carry not just torps and missles, but additional aerial drones that can be launched and recovered from the platform.
The only real question I have had up to this point is how the comms will be handled for real-time remote operations and how deep they will be engineered to go.
Is this being publicized at this time designed to encourage Kim’s cooperation during upcoming negotiations with Trump?
Are they autonomous or remotely controlled?
Why am I envisioning Terminator: Rise of the Machines?
How would you wake it up?
why not just torpedo the darn thing?
I agree. Then the mullahs can claim it was lost at sea during sea trials..
Or a Chinese national working at Boeing will send them a copy of the plans to build one (or a hundred) of their own.
IF they live up to the claims...
Just because the marketers convinced the Pentagon for a contract, does not mean they will perform as advertised once deployed.
Hopefully they will, but if not, they certainly won’t be the first weapons system that didn’t live up to promises.
The sub itself doesn't need to surface. It just needs to deploy a float on a long wire to the surface, then reel it back in.
Das Bot
I hope GE continues to make turbines and mini’s.
If it runs on batteries I do believe it needs to surface every once in a while at least enough to stick up a snorkel I think. I doubt it has a diesel generator or a nuke reactor in it so batteries it must be. But maybe they solved that problem, I don’t really know. I’m a landlubber.
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