DARPA’s latest mad science experiment: A ship designed to operate completely without humans

[Elderberry]

Defense News 1/21/2020

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has launched its newest foray into unleashing robot warships on the world’s seas: NOMARS.

No, it’s not in reference to the former Red Sox standout infielder Nomar Garciaparra. The acronym stands for “No Manning Required, Ship,” and it’s part of DARPA’s plan to take its Sea Hunter drone ship a step further.

The idea is to design a ship from the keel up that will never have a human on board.

“NOMARS will challenge the traditional naval architecture paradigm, designing a seaframe from the ground up with no provision, allowance, or expectation for humans at sea,” according to a solicitation posted by DARPA.

“By removing the human element from all ship design considerations, NOMARS will demonstrate significant advantages, to include size, cost (procurement, operations, and sustainment), at-sea reliability, survivability to sea-state, survivability to adversary actions (stealth considerations, resistance to tampering, etc.), and hydrodynamic efficiency (hull optimization without consideration for crew safety or comfort).”

More: https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/01/21/darpas-latest-mad-science-experiment-a-ship-designed-completely-without-humans/

[XenaLee]

Defense News 1/21/2020

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has launched its newest foray into unleashing robot warships on the world’s seas: NOMARS.

No, it’s not in reference to the former Red Sox standout infielder Nomar Garciaparra. The acronym stands for “No Manning Required, Ship,” and it’s part of DARPA’s plan to take its Sea Hunter drone ship a step further.

The idea is to design a ship from the keel up that will never have a human on board.

“NOMARS will challenge the traditional naval architecture paradigm, designing a seaframe from the ground up with no provision, allowance, or expectation for humans at sea,” according to a solicitation posted by DARPA.

“By removing the human element from all ship design considerations, NOMARS will demonstrate significant advantages, to include size, cost (procurement, operations, and sustainment), at-sea reliability, survivability to sea-state, survivability to adversary actions (stealth considerations, resistance to tampering, etc.), and hydrodynamic efficiency (hull optimization without consideration for crew safety or comfort).”

More: https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/01/21/darpas-latest-mad-science-experiment-a-ship-designed-completely-without-humans/

...the LUSV as a kind of external missile magazine that can autonomously navigate to and integrate with the force, then shoot its missiles and return for reload...

Autonomously?   How is that going to work?  There has to be programming involved.  Everything that has to be programmed (computer based) can be hacked.   

So... humans will still have to program the ship, right?  So now.... all we'll have to worry about.... is human programming error and hackers?  Whew.  Sure glad we don't have to worry about operator error. (sarc)

Gotta love "progress".