The Navy has unveiled their new mine hunting drone two days ago at its annual Sea Air Space convention. The Navy is building a new fleet of mine-hunting ships that contains drone supplements to dive deep under the sea to spot the underwater weapons. This newest drone submarine, manufactured by General Dynamics, is called the ‘Knifefish.’
Knifefish is 19 feet long and 21 inch in diameter. Knifefish is designed fully autonomous and it can surf the sea bed up to 16 hours at a stretch on a full charge. The sailors just need to program the Knifefish’s navigation systems with the relevant instructions. After launching, this drone will surf on a particular sea floor to search buried mines.
If the Knifefish finds any mine, it won’t neutralize the it: rather it sends the data back to the mothership about the mine location. The Knifefish can store up to 12 terabytes of data using its acoustic sensor package. The Knifefish will be launch from a Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).
Source : Wired
Image Credit : Spencer Ackerman
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