Yellow submarine: Navy hopes new drone revolutionizes how war is fought

The banana-hued, boxcar-sized drone was on display at the Navy’s Sea-Air-Space conference this week in National Harbor, Md. It can stay underwater for 30 days – and launch weapons.

Military officials are hoping that the Navy’s new yellow submarine – the latest high-tech advance in underwater drones – is going to revolutionize the way the Pentagon fights wars all over the world.

Developing these drones, however, means unlocking some tricky linchpins in unmanned technology in an effort to teach military machines autonomous behavior, which entails delving into what officials call “memory mapping” and other particulars of how people’s brains work.

For this reason, it’s important to understand “not just algorithms,” says Rear Adm. Mathias Winter, “but also the humanistic side – understanding neural networks and how we make decisions.”

Standing in an expo booth next to the banana-hued, boxcar-sized unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) at the Navy’s Sea-Air-Space conference this week, Rear Admiral Winter, who heads up the Office of Naval Research, oversees some 1,100 PhDs working for the service’s high-tech arm.

“I am continuously amazed with the underwater breakthrough technologies,” he says, glancing at a small “swarming” drone displayed just above his head at the expo in National Harbor, Md.

These breakthroughs include exploring not just decisionmaking technology, but also “off the charts, revolutionary” leaps forward in battery life and power storage to allow such crafts to one day operate for “months and years” underwater, Winter adds.

Beneath the world’s oceans is a rich and tough-to-navigate landscape, with mountains, peaks and valleys, shifting sands, blowing wind, wildlife, and “other man-made objects,” he says. “How do we make sure it doesn’t bump into something?”

At the moment the yellow submarine, whose Navy name is the Large Displacement Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (LDUUV), can stay underwater for 30 days. “We are pursuing weeks, months, years,” Winter says. “I’ll stop short of decades.”

When it’s ready, it can move things – “leaflets, pizzas,” he adds – and launch weapons.

These underwater drones could also one day conceivably carry smaller unmanned flying counterparts to release on command, such as the Navy’s other touted technological breakthrough, the LOCUST – or Low-Cost UAV Swarming Technology – a collection of mini-drones that move in unison.

The Navy’s aim is to show that it can use swarms of them to attack and overwhelm enemy forces – starting with 10 and moving up to dozens.

The tiny drones look like flying microphones with wings made of magic wands. They are “a science breakthrough,” Winter says.

In designing LOCUST, Navy researchers were inspired by swarms of termites. “Think about when you come out of a house and termites are swarming,” he says. “You don’t just move through gladly: You start to maneuver.”

This fact offers both “defensive and offensive opportunities.”

The Navy released an illustrated video showing a handful of LOCUST drones swooping above what appears to be a small desert town, then moving in for an attack.

Studying swarms of termites was inspirational for another reason, says Brig. Gen. Kevin Killea, head of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory in Quantico, Va.

“Without communicating, they sense the environment change around them,” he says, “and they instinctively know which way to go.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Yellow submarine: Navy hopes new drone revolutionizes how war is fought
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2015/0417/Yellow-submarine-Navy-hopes-new-drone-revolutionizes-how-war-is-fought
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe