Unlike other unmanned underwater vehicles, it isn’t dependent on a support ship. In recent years, Boeing has developed the Echo Ranger and Echo Seeker, autonomous vehicles capable of carrying out days-long operations. When they received a signal, they would float to the surface and release aerial drones, which could perform surveillance over shorelines. The new generation of undersea vehicles would require powerful computer brains. “I would even go out on a limb here to say we are truly the unmanned of the unmanned vehicles, and in most cases we don’t even have a man in the loop.

Source: Washington Post November 24, 2016 21:48 UTC