A New 'Area 52' Could Help the Navy Up its Autonomous Systems Game forbes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from forbes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
This post is part of a series looking back at the top naval stories from 2021. This year began with a level of uncertainty for Navy acquisition, as an administration change left naval observers wondering how the new Biden administration would approach the future fleet. While the Trump administration at the end of 2020 unveiled a […]
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Navy: Large USV Will Require Small Crews for the Next Several Years
Ghost Fleet Ship Nomad arriving at Point Loma, Calif., on May 29, 2021. Image via Twitter
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. The emerging fleet of U.S. military Large Unmanned Surface Vessels (LUSV) are set to navigate the open seas, avoid other vessels and carry out complex directives from a land-based command center over a secure commutations network. What they can’t do yet is pump their own gas.
For the foreseeable future, the LUSVs will require a small crew detachment aboard to carry out tasks not conducive to machines.
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Navy Takes Delivery of Sea Hawk Unmanned Vessel
Seahawk USV. Leidos Image
A second medium-sized unmanned surface vessel prototype has delivered to the Navy, builder Leidos announced this week.
Sea Hawk, sister ship to the Navy’s Sea Hunter, was built on the Gulf Coast and is now bound to join the Navy’s Surface Development Squadron One in California, the company said in a Wednesday press release.
In 2017, the Office of Naval research awarded Leidos a $35.5 million contract to build the 145-ton trimaran as a follow-up to the original L3-built Sea Hunter that was developed by DARPA as a high-endurance platform to track submarines.