The U.S. Navy is teaming up with DARPA to develop autonomous, robotic ships that are completely human free. The NOMARS (No Mariners Required Ship) concept, if successful, would be a huge leap over current unmanned surface vessel development efforts. The result could be a warship able to do the tedious, dangerous, and dirty jobs all by itself, keeping human-crewed ships safe from harm—and boredom.
- DARPA is working with the U.S. Navy to create a class of ships that would be completely unmanned.
- If successful, it would represent a ten year leap over the current pace of technological development.
- The Navy is still working on a separate project to develop optionally, or lightly manned warships.
The Navy, struggling to grow the fleet on a flat defense budget, is making a big push into unmanned surface vessels, or USVs. The Navy plans to build ten Large Unmanned Surface Vehicle ships, 200 to 300 foot long vessels displacing 2,000 tons, in five years. LUSV would act as a scout, sailing ahead of the fleet to detect threats early, or floating magazine, carrying a large load of missiles. LUSV would ideally be autonomous, or optionally manned with a small crew.
NOMARS is a separate, parallel effort to develop an entirely autonomous ship. While LUSV is based on existing ship designs and will have built-in accommodations for humans, NOMARS will be an unmanned ship from the ground up. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) told C4ISRNet that the project will take what the Navy wants to do with the ship, hull size requirements, and other factors and try to make a ship out of it......snip~
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