Navies around the world are racing to develop unmanned undersea vehicles
— drone submarines. It makes sense because it's a lot of risk and costs a lot of money to keep humans alive under the sea.
Here are some of the drone subs that are already in operation.
The Remus line of drone subs are used by the US Navy to detect mines. They are low cost and can be operated from a single laptop.
The Swordfish is designed to carry out reconnaissance missions using sophisticated acoustic transponders to help it navigate.
Designed to scan the water for potential threats to other Navy vessels, the Kingfish is used by the US Navy to keeps their ports safe.
Developed by Rutgers University for the US Navy, the Naviator can both dive underwater...
.. and fly out of the water into the air.
The Dorado Seakeeper is an impressive-looking unmanned submarine used by the Canadian navy. That thing underneath it is a towable sonar, not a missile.
Shark drone! The GhostSwimmer is a US Navy submarine that looks and moves like a shark. The military has not released details about its intended use.
This drone is called Alister. But don't be fooled by the cute name; it was designed by the French to take part in mine warfare.
The Asemar, or Auv de SEcurité MARitime, is another French drone. It uses a state-of-the-art sonar to detect mines.
Made by Saab, the AUV62 Sapphires can perform a wide variety of tasks. It can hunt mines and even pretend to be a full-size submarine, so real submarines can train by hunting it.
The Bluefin-21 is a popular unmanned sub that has already been used for some high-profile missions. One was used in the search for the wreckage of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. There's also a more military focused version of the drone — the Knifefish — but there are no publicly available pictures of it. The Knifefish weighs a huge 1,700 pounds (770 kg).
Here's an interesting one. A cameraman from Russian state TV "accidentally" caught these plans for a Russian drone sub on camera. According to the plans, the sub is designed to inflict radioactive contamination on enemy coastal targets.
US Navy
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