DARPA extends surface submarine hunting drone tests

DARPA is extending testing of its sub-hunting drone able to travel autonomously for up to 90 days using sensors and sonar technology to search for enemy submarines and other airborne and undersea threats.

The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, or DARPA, has awarded an $8.5 million contract extension to Reston, Virginia-based Leidos for continued test phase development of the Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel, or ACTUV program.

The 132-foot drone uses advanced hydro-acoustics, pattern recognition and algorithms for unmanned navigation to locate and shadow diesel-electric enemy submarines. The idea is to track them, if necessary, over a period of months so they are compelled to stay away from strategically vital areas.

DARPA officials also say the objective of the ACTUV is to generate a vessel design that exceeds state-of-the art platform performance to provide propulsive overmatch against diesel-electric submarines at a fraction of their size and cost.

Picking up the quiet hum of a battery-powered, diesel-electric submarine in busy coastal waters is “like trying to identify the sound of a single car engine in the din of a major city,” Rear Adm. Frank Drennan, commander of the Naval Mine and Anti-Submarine Warfare Command, stated on the Leidos website.

The first payload deployed by the unmanned ASW (anti-submarine warfare) ship was its Towed Airborne Lift of Naval Systems (TALONS) sensor suite, which carries intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) sensors up to altitudes ranging from 150 to 1,500 feet,” a report in Defense Systems by George Leopold explains.