From Tom's Hardware, April 26:
The Pentagon wants inexpensive submarine drones, and it wants to get its hands on them as quickly as possible.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. Department of War’s independent research and development agency, just issued a call for proposals to build an autonomous underwater drone. The program, which DARPA calls Deep Thoughts, is looking for the next generation of small autonomous undersea vehicles (AUVs) that can be built using readily available parts that allow for flexibility in the design. It also demands something that can be quickly produced, tested, and iterated on, with a development timeline of months or even weeks. More importantly, the AUV should be easily deployable from various platforms, so that users can launch it from submarines, ships, and even planes or helicopters.
Military drone development has been advancing at breakneck speed, with uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) taking the stage during the ongoing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian troops have taken advantage of this relatively new technology to blunt Russian armor and halt its advance, while Iran has taken to using its Shahed drones to strike targets in the Middle East when the U.S. started its bombing campaign of the country earlier this year. Chinese military scientists and engineers have also been developing drone swarms, giving individual soldiers the capacity to control up to 200 units.
The U.S. is also working on its own innovations in the UAV space —the U.S. Marine Corp introducing a 3D-printed drone called HANX, allowing units to manufacture and repair drones in-house, while a defense startup is marketing its CobraJet counter-unmanned aircraft systems (C-UAS) to defeat enemy drone swarms at a much more cost-effective way. However, it seems that the Pentagon wants to expand its drone capabilities beyond the sky and into the deep sea....
....MUCH MORE
