Quote of the Day
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has achieved a major milestone in maritime innovation by completing the development of a prototype unmanned surface vessel (USV) called the USX-1 Defiant.
This vessel, part of the No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) program, is designed to operate autonomously on extended sea missions without onboard human presence.
A DARPA official confirmed with IE on March 4 that the prototype vessel has been completed and launched and will undergo at-sea trials soon.
The construction of the Defiant, measuring 180 feet and weighing 240 metric tons, was finalized in February 2025, according to DARPA.
The vessel will now undergo rigorous testing in dockside environments and on the open ocean, with plans for a multi-month demonstration in the spring of 2025.
Kapil Kajal
March 4, 2025
US launches first-ever 240-ton ship that needs zero crew to operate
See also, Air Force announces new unmanned fighter jets will be ‘ready to fly this summer’.
Will it have a crew of robots to wire-brush off the rust and keep it painted?
That is, among the least, of my worries.
I’m thinking a crew of three robots: Huey, Dewey, and Louie.
😀 somehow I doubt even AI will repurpose this to forestry.
And does it have an independent targeting system? No humans necessary?
Just goes out looking for what it’s programmed to and kills it? Or dies trying?
Oh, and new jets! How wonderful!
Nothing to worry about there!
Now if we only knew the value of human life that was programmed into it. Or if it can be given the Bill and Melania Gate foundation mass-murder update at any time?
Or, be programmed to drop a Jdam on you for misgendering someone?
The real fun is knowing how long they have had it, since they’re just now getting around to telling us about it.
I’m thinking this is taking “Revenge of the Nerds”, just a bit too far.
Read the article on the jets. Their slogan is “Putting warheads on foreheads.”
Ya, something tells me this ain’t going to end well for humanity.
Let’s just hope they haven’t already built their fully autonomous central command center up in Greenland yet.
That would give us a few more years.
So, for now, it takes human “assistance” for refueling?
Okay. The next step, if it’s not already in progress, is to power it with a nuclear reactor.
Next question is armament, which I see is not even mentioned in the article.
Torpedos? Cruise missiles? Laser?
All of the above plus 5″ and .5″ guns. And drones. Don’t forget the drones.
~sings~
Send in the drones
There ought to be drones
~/sings~
Manpower is one of the top expenses of a military and retention of some highly trained technicians who must be away from home repeatedly for 6+ months at a time all while living in unpleasant and often dangerous conditions and you can see why our Navy is interested. Such a ship should also be much less expensive to construct. A fleet of these could be extremely useful in the Red Sea to suppress the Iranian proxy Houthis without ever putting a U.S. sailor at risk. If executed properly this can do for the Navy what Predators and Reapers have done for the Air Force. They will necessarily have the same Achilles Heel. The requirement for fairly high bandwidth constant communication which means relayed from a satellite or high flying aircraft
The Achilles heel can be removed by making them fully autonomous. Give them the intelligence to make their own decisions about where to patrol, what to shoot, and when to shoot.
What could go wrong?
What was the name of the Star Trek episode in which the Enterprise was just such an experimental platform for reducing the crew to a few dozen?
IIRC, there were two such episodes, one in the original series and one in STNG.
From my experience as an Air Force electronics technician and later as an engineer for a defense contractor, if a robot can fix your stuff, you’re nowhere near the cutting edge of technology.
“And drones. Don’t forget the drones.”
What is this other than a somewhat more complex floating, water-borne drone? Done right, they’d be a little smaller and cheap enough to be, if not “disposable,” at least sacrificial. How would a battle group defend against a swarm of airborne and seaborne drones?
Coming next: autonomous 1/4 scale attack subs.
Now, if DARPA & Co.- meaning “Congress, the Pentagon and defense contractors” – don’t Foxtrot Uniform this by taking fourteen years to get a working prototype and making each production unit cost eleventy zillion dollars, they might have something.
I was thinking small air drones for intel over land.
Drones are probably going to have to become internally AI driven simply because of any communication system in them will be their Achilles heel.
The Ukr./Russian war has them already using fiber-optic lines for control because of enemy RF interference.
Plus, the fact that comms can be triangulated back to the operator.
Fully autonomous is going to be the next step.
Witness also that we just turned off the guidance on all US/NATO missiles in Ukraine.
Sorry Joe, didn’t read your post above first.
Such a thing requires the obvious question. HOW will we keep the Russian/Chinese et.al from hacking into these drones and taking them over.
The Iranians managed to take control of one of our predator type drones….what’s to keep someone with even better skills from doing the same.
Hell….what’s to keep Somali pirates from just sailing up to one of these, boarding it and taking off with it
Electrify the superstructure, if it has one? I saw James Mason (err Captain Nemo) do that with a submarine about seventy years ago to great success with barefoot and naked natives. I don’t think the Somali Pirates even own shoes, let alone wear them on their boats.
“The Iranians managed to take control of one of our predator type drones….what’s to keep someone with even better skills from doing the same.”
We had a problem back then with command of drones through satellite encrypt/decrypt cycles “latency”.
It could take 7 mins. to tell a drone what you wanted it to do.
So it had a second system for landing/takeoff that ran on a simple radio system.
The Iranians just hacked the radio system and told it to land where it did.
I’m pretty sure they got all that ironed out by now with spaceX low orbit satellites.
But ya, our hubris could have us wearing egg on our face again, I have no doubt.