DARPA's Robot Ship Slated For April Unveiling (nationaldefensemagazine.org) 44
93 Escort Wagon writes: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) plans to launch a 130-foot autonomous ship this year. The Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel will be the largest unmanned surface vehicle ever built at 130-feet long. It will be christened in April in Portland, Oregon, and then begin to demonstrate its long-range capabilities over 18 months in cooperation with the Office of Naval Research and the Space and Naval Systems Warfare Command.
My regards to Captain Dunsel.
My regards to Captain Dunsel.
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Not at all, salvage is a court of equity, not technicality.
Thus the question would be if the operator of the vessel needed your help.
Odds are they'd say...no, fuck off.
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10 carrier strike groups (half the world's warship (Score:2)
People have tried messing with the US Navy before. It has never worked out well.
Clinton In Chief excepted (Score:1)
The above statement does of course have an exception- when Clinton was Commander in Chief, anyone could of course attack US naval vessels at will. The response each time - not even a strongly worded email. Never before or since has the US Navy been a target one could attack without swift and sure consequences.
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At least the Cole was something of a surprise. On GWB's watch, known terrorists executed a known plan to carry out a known attack on a known target, and his administration did fuck-all to stop it.
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no. Reasonable reward if ship in real peril (Score:5, Informative)
In short, no. The vessel is still the property of the owner, as is all flotsam and jetsom.
A salvor IS entitled to reasonable compensation of the property is in "real peril". Reasonable is determined by imagining if the owner of the vessel and the salvor had time and opportunity to pre-negotiate a price for salvaging the vessel. The amount owed is roughly what they would have negotiated ahead of time, if they had the opportunity to do so, for rescuing the property. (Rescuing any people on board is separate law.)
Additionally, history suggests it is unwise to mess with a vessel of the US Navy. :)
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Coudn't Catch Some Fish First? (Score:1)
A Game (Score:1)
"It will ... demonstrate its long-range capabilities over 18 months in cooperation with the Office of Naval Research and the Space and Naval Systems Warfare Command." After that it will renegotiate its cooperation.
Who the heck is in charge of acronyms over there? (Score:2)
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Their summary isn't much better:
The Obama administration requested $2.973 billion for DARPA for fiscal year 2017, the same amount in its 2016 request, and $105 more than what was appropriated, said DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar.
So that's what, one extra Pentagon-priced can opener in the budget for $105?
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Yet Iran really does have your drone. Reality seems to disagree with you.
The intriguing (and perhaps scary) question for me, with this ship, is whether or not this drone ship can fight back. One of its stated purposes is countering mines, which I'd think would require some sort of weaponry.
any unarmed ship can be a minesweeper (Score:5, Funny)
> One of its stated purposes is countering mines, which I'd think would require some sort of weaponry.
Any ship can be a minesweeper - once.
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I wouldn't count a wirecutter, an induction coil or a loudspeaker as weapons.
Wonderful (Score:5, Insightful)
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Somebody has to build, fuel and maintain the boat - or build and maintain the robots that do those jobs.
When the robots start building robots, then we're really screwed.
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Somebody has to build, fuel and maintain the boat - or build and maintain the robots that do those jobs.
When the robots start building robots, then we're really screwed.
Those jobs already exist and are filled. Already people build boats, people fuel boats, people maintain boats, people try to build robots to do those jobs.
As the original poster stated, this ship eliminates the jobs of the crew typically used to operate such a boat. In this case, that's dozens of people per boat.
asking to be undermined, cracked, and turned (Score:2)
these things must need lots of instructions from dozen or more of remote handlers. in addition they will depend on, lots of known ( and constantly available and updated) data about locations and conditions, and systems like gps, etc etc.
these are weak points. and will certainly be exploited.
more complex the drone/robot, easier it will be to undermine.
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Time to get serious about strong encryption for military Command and Control links... oh, wait....
She was as tall as a 6 foot 3 inch tree... (Score:2)
will be the largest unmanned surface vehicle ever built at 130-feet long
Wow really? I bet it dwarfs all the other 130-feet long unmanned surface vehicles!!
who? (Score:2)
The military can’t continue to rely on big, monolithic weapons systems that take years to develop. It will never have them in time or in the numbers required to fight advanced adversaries, Walker said.
who the hell is going to fight the US that is sufficiently advanced? serious question because globalization has resulted in making all the advanced countries economically intertwined.
Uplink to skynet? (Score:2)
Hey, too easy.
Who Invented that ghastly thing? (Score:1)
I'm thinking of the goat and the Thompson Harmonizer in front of the audience in Atlas Shrugged.