A Navy Ship Sailed to Hawaii and Back With No One on Board

g5000

Diamond Member
Nov 26, 2011
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Pretty cool.

A Navy Ship Sailed to Hawaii and Back With No One on Board

A 132-foot-long self-driving ship made history by traveling from San Diego to Hawaii's Pearl Harbor and back again without sailors aboard to guide its way.

The Sea Hunter, an autonomous trimaran developed for submarine hunting and counter-mine missions, traveled thousands of miles between San Diego and Pearl Harbor last month. Naval News was first to report on the ship's breakthrough voyage.


Crew members from an escort vessel boarded the Sea Hunter for short durations to check electrical and propulsion systems, according to a press release from Leidos, a science and technology company that designed and built the Sea Hunter. For most of the voyage, though, the ship was unmanned.
 
This is why if there is another world war, it will be fought in cyberspace before a single shot is fired.

Just a cheery observation.
 
This is why if there is another world war, it will be fought in cyberspace before a single shot is fired.

Just a cheery observation.
Drone fights!
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132 ft? That's not a ship. It's more like a remote control toy.
What do they need though? It's not like it needs crew berths and all the other crap that comes with safely housing human beings, it's for hunting subs and mines. The trimeran design should make it as seaworthy/stable as larger ships, and autonomous operation with long time on station is perfect for what it's role will be. All it needs is sensors to navigate and search for objectives, some sort of ASW offensive weapon (torpedoes?), and a mechanism to remotely detonate mines.

At estimated cost of $20 million you could buy 80 of them for the price of a destroyer, 4-6 of them running as part of a carrier group would greatly expand the ASW surveillance footprint.
 
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