US Navy Builds Program to Facilitate Modifying Undersea Drone Missions

Scientists and engineers at the Naval Surface Warfare Center have developed an “Autonomy in a Box” system that makes changing unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) mission information as easily as updating an application on a cell phone, the US Navy said in a press release.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The technology is designed to dramatically reduce the effort and lead time to program an underwater drone’s mission.

"Autonomy in a Box is designed to make installing configurations of autonomy software on a vehicle as easy as installing an application from an app store," Naval Surface Warfare Autonomous Systems Engineers Drs. Matthew Bays and Drew Lucas explained in the release on Wednesday.

In February, US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said that the Pentagon would spend nearly $600 million over a five year period on UUV research, development and testing to improve the Navy's lethality on and under the sea.