A 180ft 240 ton unmanned ship was just spotted on the Washington state coast. This ship is the USS Defiant, a ship that is part of the Navy’s NOMARS program. The Defiant is a big step in the NOMARS program being a large fully unmanned ship that was able to start its trials.
First off what is DARPA?,or SERCO? And what are the NOMARS program goals? DARPA or the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency is a branch of the US Department of Defense. DARPA focuses on investing in breakthrough technologies. They do this to help maintain a US Technological edge in the world, usually DARPA invests in projects that are high-risk high-reward. SERCO is a provider of professional, engineering, management, and technology services to commercial and government clients alike. The NOMARS program (No Manning Required Ship program) is intended to remove the need of human crew on ships to help improve upon Stealthy features, at-sea reliability, and hydrodynamic efficiency. SERCO is providing this aid to DARPA and its NOMARS program to help streamline the development processes of a fully unmanned ship, which is very difficult.
A success in the Defiant’s Trials could lead the NOMARS program to make significant technological advancements like learning how to improve a computers performance to carry out complex operating procedures that many sailors have come to master. Computers operating the ship are already advanced but the US Department of Defense (the DOD) and the NOMARS program will learn a lot from the Defiant’s Trials. The DOD will use the knowledge acquired from the Defiant’s trials to improve upon future unmanned ships and the operating systems behind those ships, one day there may be fleets of unmanned ships patrolling the waters of the world. It is a genuine question of whether or not these unmanned ships will completely replace manned ones, and for many reasons the complete replacement of manned ships is extremely unlikely (In the near future). But these unmanned crafts are meant to increase efficiency at sea which means the DOD and Navy will want to spend more time testing and investing in the NOMARS program. The ships do have great promise because these ships could improve accuracy on Naval missions whether they are research oriented or not. The ships could also decrease casualties from naval battles, because if we do see more of these crafts in the Navy’s future fleets it will mean less sailors in hostile environments.
The NOMARS program is a very promising project and could bring some great improvements in unmanned vehicle operation. Many of the World’s militaries are investing in ways to improve unmanned vehicle technologies. Many active war zones are seeing a great usage of unmanned drones and other vehicles to reduce casualties and carry out risky missions. These unmanned vehicles are usually never the size of a ship meaning the NOMARS program is making great technological advancements in their development of the USS Defiant. Many hope that one day people will not have to be put in dangerous situations in times of war and the NOMARS USS Defiant is a step in the right direction on that front.
Related Stories:
https://militaryembedded.com/unmanned/payloads/autonomous-ship-completes-construction-darpa-reports
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Learn about some of NOMARS other missions:
https://www.darpa.mil/news/2024/nomars-success
Learn about the importance of unmanned vehicles in war:
