Drones

 "Don't look down on death, but welcome it. It too is one of the things required by nature. Like youth and old age. Like growth and maturity. Like a new set of teeth, a beard, the first gray hair. Like sex and pregnancy and childbirth. Like all the other physical changes at each stage of life, our dissolution is no different. So this is how a thoughtful person should await death: not with indifference, not with impatience, not with disdain, but simply viewing it as one of the things that happen to us.

Now you anticipate the child's emergence from its mother's womb; that's how you should await the hour when your soul will emerge from its compartment. Or perhaps you need some tidy aphorism to tuck away in the back of your mind. Well, consider two things that should reconcile you to death: the nature of the things you'll leave behind you, and the kind of people you'll no longer be mixed up with.

There's no need to feel resentment toward them-in fact, you should look out for their well-being, and be gentle with them-but keep in mind that everything you believe is meaningless to those you leave behind. Because that's all that could restrain us (if anything could)-the only thing that could make us want to stay here: the chance to live with those who share our vision. But now? Look how tiring it is-this cacophony we live in. Enough to make you say to death, "Come quickly. Before I start to forget myself, like them." - Marcus Aurelius

 Drones are pretty cool devices, and the technology has been moving swiftly in this area.  Everyone has seen drone footage by now.  I've posted about it here before as well.  The bird's eye views that a drone can provide are stunning. 

Amazing and creative video!  Of course not all drones are used for fun and entertainment - they can also be used for much less pleasant purposes.

Maybe you were aware (or maybe you weren't) that there are now submersible hobbyist drones:

Most of these underwater drones seem to require a tether, so they are pretty limited compared to their aerial cousins.  The ship in the above image must be reasonably near the surface, or there would be no ambient light - so that means you could scuba-dive it, or maybe even reach it with fins while holding your breath.

But... just like their aerial cousins, the underwater drones have a military analogue.  And now we have reached the subject I wanted to discuss:  Unmanned autonomous submarines.  Yes, we are going there - you probably just weren't yet aware of it.

Below:  August 2014 - The US Navy takes delivery of the first unmanned submarine LTV 38 UUV (LTV = Large Training Vehicle, UUV = Unmanned Undersea Vehicle).  This was very likely a test bed for technologies that would be incorporated into larger and heavily armed submersible drones.

And here we go, about 1-1/2 years later, March of 2016:  Boeing has built a larger (51 ft. long) undersea drone with many more bells and whistles, the Echo Voyager.  

The top side of this thing is painted yellow, so its clearly intended to be seen and monitored by surface vessels.  Therefore it's still a test platform to make sure it can:

• Figure out what hazards it needs to avoid (sailing and powered ships, buoys, shorelines, etc)
  
• Navigate itself without colliding with those things
  
• Call home discreetly if it gets in trouble
• Accept new instructions from a remote station
• Manage to follow perform its duties after it submerges, when it can no longer receive direction.

There is a lot of military potential here, because you no longer have to risk putting a large, expensive ship full of volunteer military kids into harm's way.  You can surveil whatever you want.  If someone manages to capture the drone, you can easily destroy the entire ship and its top secret contents without getting anyone killed.

Furthermore, since the vessel will not have to carry food, make fresh water, worry about air quality, or other human frailties, it can be made much smaller than a manned submarine.  This provides additional advantages:

• Due to the smaller size, for a given hull thickness, it will have a greater operating depth than a larger vessel.
  
• Smaller dimensions will make it less easy to detect.
  
• With no need to re-supply food, it should be able to stay on station for very long periods of time
  

Of course, Russia is developing the same sort of thing.  Below: The Klavesin-2R: (2R probably refers to 2nd generation, because that's what this is).  The cover story for this vessel is that this will be used to map the ocean floor.

More impressively, Russia is deploying a *nuclear-powered* underwater drone vessel, named Poseidon.  It's about 80 ft long.  There are only a couple of tantalizing and blurry photos of this one.  Reportedly it is capable of launching nuclear or conventional weapons.

The Wikipedia page on this drone is fascinating.  For one thing, it mentions that this is an asymmetric response to US missile defense systems that could render Russian ICBMs useless.  Therefore the Russian military needed to come up with a nuclear weapon delivery system that would not be vulnerable to missile defenses.  Underwater would appear to be a worthy technique.

The Wiki states that the vessel can reach speeds as high as 100 kph (64 miles/hr), which is faster than any surface navy vessel with the possible exception of hydroplane boats.  This high speed run would likely be the final sprint before detonating a small nuke in the middle of an aircraft carrier battle group.  

The Wiki also mentions the possibility stationing these on the sea-floor in watertight storage containers, to be released as needed.  Personally, I wouldn't do that.  The US has a spectacular history of uncovering big secrets that were supposedly safely lost to the depths of the ocean.  Here is an example.  Here is another.  

In stealth mode, one of these could sneak into a major port, carrying (instead of torpedoes) a 50-100 megaton "Tsar Bomba" fusion bomb attached at the front.  Then again, all of this speculation might just be people fear-mongering to get big military procurement contracts.  Everyone wants to get their hands on the taxpayer wallet.

However this "appears" to be a serious effort, as the Russian Navy has now launched two submarines that were built for the purpose of carrying and releasing these submarine drones, and the Russian Navy has reportedly ordered 30 of these drone submarines.