Ross Wilkers
SAIC Inc. will enter phases two through four of a unmanned sea drone program for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Defense Department announced Wednesday.
In phase one of DARPA’s Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel, the company proposed a trimaran platform based off of trade studies.
During the next three phases, the company will be responsible for designing, constructing and demonstrating a prototype unmanned vessel for tracking diesel electric submarines.
DARPA says one goal of the program is to explore potential of the platform under the premise that a human should never enter the sub at any point during operations.
The agency also wants to have unmanned maritime systems carry out missions for thousands of miles in range and months of endurance, manage its own system automatically and conduct autonomous interactions with adversaries.
In July, the Navy asked industry to give feedback on how software for undersea drones could be made available as an open source platform.
