from the in-the-Navy-AI-can-sail-the-Seven-Seas dept.
The Navy is embracing autonomous vessels:
Shipbuilder Austal USA has just delivered a ship to the US Navy that can operate for up to 30 days at sea without human intervention. The delivery comes after the Chief of Naval Operations said uncrewed vessels would start to play an increasingly important role within the military branch.
Austral writes that it has delivered Expeditionary Fast Transport USNS Apalachicola (EPF 13) to the United States Navy. Its 337-foot hull makes it the largest surface ship in the fleet with autonomous capabilities. This class of ship can travel at a maximum speed of 40 knots, has a maximum payload capacity of 544 metric tons, and a daft [sic] – the vertical distance between the waterline and the bottom of the hull – of just 12.5 feet, allowing it to operate in comparatively shallow waters.
The Spearhead-class Expeditionary Fast Transport ships, designed by Austal Australia, already feature automated hull and mechanical & electrical systems, but the Austal USA team added automated maintenance, health monitoring, and mission readiness to EPF 13, allowing it to operate autonomously for up to 30 days.
[...] Admiral Michael Gilday, Chief of Naval Operations, sang the praises of autonomous ships at the West 2023 conference in San Diego. "We're getting to the point, probably within the next four or five years, where we'll begin to deploy unmanned platforms with carrier strike groups," he said. "And the idea is that we need more ships, we need more. We need to distribute ourselves across the Pacific Ocean and across the globe [...] We can do that faster and, we think, more effectively by having a combination of manned and unmanned."
Gilday has a strategic vision of a fleet compromising 373 manned ships and 150 uncrewed vessels, along with unmanned aircraft to contribute to maritime domain awareness, submarine-hunting missions, surface strikes, and more, writes Defence News.
Those unmanned aircraft could come from Lockheed Martin, whose training jet was recently flown by an AI for 17 hours, marking the first time that artificial intelligence has been engaged in this way on a tactical aircraft.
Concerns over the use of AI in the military led to the first global Summit on Responsible Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain (REAIM) this month, where 60 nations signed an agreement to put the responsible use of AI higher on the political agenda.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Snospar on Thursday February 23, @04:07PM (4 children)
So the ship's "daft" is just 12.5 feet, I wonder what its draft is? Or is it a daft ship?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23, @04:20PM (1 child)
That boat needs an onboard electronic music cover band, they could call it "Draft Punk"!
I'll see myself out...
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday February 23, @06:03PM
That bloat would be considered to be using an acoustic weapon.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 3, Informative) by corey on Thursday February 23, @08:48PM (1 child)
They’ve also misspelled Austal at least once in the summary as “Austral”.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Saturday February 25, @12:50PM
Austal US is a subsidiary of the Australian company Austal; easy to read over typing mistakes then.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday February 23, @09:30PM (3 children)
Today's destroyers generally run 400+ feet in length, but WW2 destroyers were considerably smaller. Meaning, these craft can probably support main guns from 3 to 5 inch. Probably not anything larger, but still, a 5 inch gun is deadly to almost any target that the gun can bear on. Further, the ship could support torpedoes, medium to small sized missiles and rockets, as well as the most modern close in defense weapons.
I don't know what their ultimate plans are, but this is a full sized ship of war, not just a "transport" as they imply.
Oh yeah - with no crew, there is no need for berthing areas, no need for a ship's galley, no need for heads and plumbing, no need for food storage. Meaning, the weapons platform has a LOT of extra room for weapons and munitions. We're probably talking cruiser capabilities here, rather than a mere destroyer.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday February 23, @10:33PM (2 children)
I have to wonder if an unmanned ship such of this would, should or could have provision for carrying a very small number of persons if the need should ever arise.
When you point out all of the extra space by removing things for human support, it makes me wonder if the ship has a bridge or any kind of controls.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Thursday February 23, @10:49PM
This one appears to be operable in both manned and unmanned mode, as it's still experimental. That means it will have bunks, heads, kitchen and mess hall.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Thursday February 23, @11:48PM
That was my immediate reaction as well, if there's one thing I'd never send out without at least one universal fix-everything unit, i.e. human, on board it's a ship, there's always something, and usually more than one something, that need to be modded, fixed, patched, rewound, untangled, ...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mrchew1982 on Friday February 24, @01:51PM
I wonder if this one is going to crack like the last class of ships that they built for us, the Littoral Combat System... Those are so bad that they are worried about them breaking in half during rough seas, hence are being decommissioned after very short service life's.
Honestly the navy never wanted the LCS anyway, they are basically a bus for marines and their equipment. I think they were built in anticipation of landing troops on Taiwan during a war, but became unfit for use much too quickly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 25, @03:53AM (1 child)
Our wars are starting to look more and more like video games
How long until we have factories where you queue up the requests to build tanks and just wait for them to pop out
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 25, @04:13AM
It will happen once those factories are fully automated.
Begun, the Drone Wars [nytimes.com] have.