In addition to spy satellites in the sky and long-endurance drones, the US Navy also deploys a lot of spy equipment at sea. For example, the infamous wave glider has been caught by fishermen in recent years. This thing can play a role in reconnaissance, and recently, the United States has publicly demonstrated its new equipment - unmanned surface ships.
On December 12, U.S. Central Command began testing new unmanned surface ships in the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea. The unmanned surface vessel is not entirely new, it is a modified model of the san Francisco Ocean Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Company's marine unmanned sailing ship, which was previously used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to detect hurricane weather data.
The unmanned sailing ship at sea is 7 meters long and 4.88 meters high, and mainly relies on fixed sails perpendicular to the hull, but can also generate electricity through solar panels on the sails.
It can be predicted that this kind of unmanned sailing ship at sea has a strong endurance, and the cost is not high, and there is no pity if it is damaged. Therefore, the U.S. Navy is equipping such unmanned ships in large quantities.
According to the U.S. Navy's official website, the new unmanned surface ships will be deployed to Task Force 59, which is the U.S. Navy's first unmanned ship mission unit, which is mainly responsible for maritime surveillance, confrontation operations with the maritime forces of countries in the region (mainly the Iranian Navy), exploration and research of unmanned ship applications, and artificial intelligence.
As can be seen from the above picture of U.S. military personnel looking at unmanned ships, the device will definitely be used in the field of the U.S. Navy. As for the civilian role, there must be, but it is also a spy ship built for the army.
To this end, the new unmanned surface ships are equipped with sensors that can be connected to the combat network on the basis of unmanned sailing ships at sea, which can transmit image information to other units in the network, so it can be regarded as a maritime reconnaissance and monitoring platform.
It should be noted that unlike the U.S. Air Force's unmanned aerial vehicles, in the U.S. Navy's equipment plan, unmanned surface ships are unified with traditional surface ships for development planning, and are included in the "355 Ship Plan" formulated in fiscal year 2017, so the new unmanned surface ships, although small in size and limited in the scope of tasks, are not low in the U.S. Navy, and the U.S. Navy may monitor surface targets through a large number of unmanned surface ship formation networks to achieve a "distributed early warning" effect similar to that of the U.S. Air Force.
Considering that the U.S. Navy is studying the ability of artificial intelligence to identify surface targets, these unmanned surface ships will become information nodes that cannot be ignored and difficult to deal with in the future.