War Toys- Navy Christens autonomous Sub Hunting Robot Ship.....

www.yahoo.com...

PORTLAND, Oregon (Reuters) - The U.S. military on Thursday christened an experimental self-driving warship designed to hunt for enemy submarines, a major advance in robotic warfare at the core of America's strategy to counter Chinese and Russian naval investments.

The 132-foot-long (40-metre-long) unarmed prototype, dubbed Sea Hunter, is the naval equivalent of Google's self-driving car, designed to cruise on the ocean’s surface for two or three months at a time - without a crew or anyone controlling it remotely.

That kind of endurance and autonomy could make it a highly efficient submarine stalker at a fraction of the cost of the Navy's manned vessels



The drive to robot warfare is in full swing now.....
Look for fully independent killing machines to take a very large portion of the defence budget in future....
Aircraft, Ships, street fighting robots like mini tanks, and more to come...(programmable ammunition etc)
The war of the robots is just around the corner now.....
Perhaps Humans are destined to be superceeded by their own creations in the near future.....
The ironic part of robot warfare is that once the robot army is victorious, the losers will still be left with humans to continue the fighting....
And the war will still boil down to people in the front ranks killing and being killed anyways....
It just adds another layer of destruction, another drag in the worlds resouces, and another reason we cant afford to make things better for the common people.....theyre apparently not that important compared to warfighting....

"This is an inflection point," Deputy U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Work said in an interview, 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."

For Pentagon planners such as Work, the Sea Hunter fits into a strategy to incorporate unmanned drones - with increasing autonomy - into the conventional military in the air, on land and at sea.

edit on 9-4-2016 by bandersnatch because: (no reason given)

a reply to: bandersnatch

Are there no other pictures of the vessel in question other than this one?



Edit: Think i found a couple.

Thank you for the additions to the thread, Andy,....But whats your opinion on the deeper issue?
The drive to robotize warfare in the near future?
Do you think this idea is a good way to go?

if its autonomous, why the pilot house? I suppose they want to give the impression somebody is home. Like googles self driving cars, with passenger compartments. Don't want to disturb the natives.

Pilotless drones, ocean going drones… next up, cop car drones, helicopters, and droid police…

a reply to: bandersnatch

Depends on how we fare in the creation of artificial intelligence. Should we actually manage to accomplish such a feat the idea of "robotize warfare" somewhat provokes all sorts of dangerous "Terminator" scenarios.

As to whether or not "robotize warfare" will become a reality in the near future i would have to say in all lightly hood its a distinct possibility.

Just look at how our drone warfare programs are progressing as to the evidence of such.

I think the pilot house holds a lot of the sensor equipment....and the ship must occaisionally have a human pilot for in harbour manouver when being maintained etc... don't you think?

Ships have to have a local Captain to take them into port. That's all ships Navy might be excluded but I don't think so unless it's their home port. A captains boat takes the guy outside the mouth of the river to board the ship to guide it in and the same on the way out.

On that 130 feet isn't very big out in the big ocean so I bet it's real water tight

a reply to: andy06shake
Somehow robots killing robots doesn't get to the heart of the reasons for warfare in the first place ......seems to me, its people you want to conquer not their robots...as when you've finished off a drone army, you still have to deal with the people who will also be as hostile as the drones you just defeated.....
It just adds another layer of destruction on top of the original brand of warfighting....

a reply to: mikell
I believe its submersible ...so yeah water tight....(oops its a surface vessel....) it just looks submersible....
Would the pilot have to actually board the vessel as in the old way|?
Couldn't he simply con the thing into harbour from a computer screen on land?

a reply to: bandersnatch

War has various different reasons through. My point is once we create something faster, smarter and more agile than our self's, both mentally and physically do we really wish to have an army of robotic warfare devices doing the rounds that can in all lightly hood be turned around and pointed at there creators?

a reply to: bandersnatch
I would imagine they would want to take out the items that could do the most harm, first. Then take the enemy when they are weakest. If there is a wheelhouse, it's probably used so humans can be in control until all the kinks are worked out. JMO....

a reply to: donktheclown
Good guess.....its early days for this thing yet.....so human oversight is likely nessessary...

a reply to: bandersnatch

Plus they still need humans to fix the thing so its got to be able to be repaired by us humans.