Skip to main content

U.S., U.K. embrace autonomous robot spy subs that can stay at sea for months

Unmanned robot spy submarines that are able to stay at sea for months at a time may be coming to both the United States and its ally across the pond, the U.K. According to a pair of new reports, both nations are hard at work on developing technology for carrying out future underwater data-gathering surveillance missions, without any risk to human personnel.

In the United States, Boeing recently beat out Lockheed Martin for a $46.7 million U.S. Navy contract to build an undersea Orca robot sub. Boeing had previously won a contract to build four more of these Orcas, which translates to a total contract value of $274.4 million.

Recommended Videos

The finished subs are expected to be completed by 2022. The size of the robot subs hasn’t been revealed, but Boeing previously developed and tested a prototype drone submarine measuring 51 feet in length. The Orca submersibles can operate autonomously up to 6,500 nautical miles from base, according to the US Navy.

“What it shows is that the Navy is willing to start putting some real money behind the acquisition of unmanned undersea vehicles,” Bryan Clark, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments think tank in Washington, D.C., told the San Diego Union Tribune. “This is the first time the Navy has put significant money down on UUV (unmanned underwater vehicles) that have a military, war-fighting capability.”

Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, the Ministry of Defense has launched a 2.5 million pound ($3.25 million) competition to attract industry proposals capable of delivering a “fully autonomous system of the size and capability of current manned platforms.” This contest will run into the 2020s. The successful design chosen will be one that is capable of operating independently for at least three months and up to 3,000 nautical miles from its home base. It must also be able to carry a 2-ton payload and be capable of covert intelligence gathering, patrolling preprogrammed areas to identify hostile ships, and deploying underwater seabed sensors.

According to a department spokesperson, these autonomous subs will most likely not carry weapons, although a final decision has not been made. However, one thing they certainly will not do is to replace human-operated submarines in the Royal Navy. “These submersibles will complement the fleet, not replace hunter-killer submarines,” the spokesperson told the Telegraph.

Luke Dormehl
Former Digital Trends Contributor
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
DeepSeek readies the next AI disruption with self-improving models
DeepSeek AI chatbot running on an iPhone.

Barely a few months ago, Wall Street’s big bet on generative AI had a moment of reckoning when DeepSeek arrived on the scene. Despite its heavily censored nature, the open source DeepSeek proved that a frontier reasoning AI model doesn’t necessarily require billions of dollars and can be pulled off on modest resources.

It quickly found commercial adoption by giants such as Huawei, Oppo, and Vivo, while the likes of Microsoft, Alibaba, and Tencent quickly gave it a spot on their platforms. Now, the buzzy Chinese company’s next target is self-improving AI models that use a looping judge-reward approach to improve themselves.

Read more
Toyota shifts gears: 15 New EVs and a million cars by 2027
Front three quarter view of the 2023 Toyota bZ4X.

After years of cautiously navigating the electric vehicle (EV) market, Toyota is finally ramping up its commitment to fully electric vehicles.
The Japanese automaker, which has long relied on hybrids, is now planning to develop about 15 fully electric models by 2027, up from five currently. These models will include vehicles under the Toyota and Lexus brands, with production expected to reach 1 million units annually by that year, according to a report from Nikkei.
This strategy marks a significant shift for Toyota, which has thus far remained conservative in its approach to electric cars. The company sold just 140,000 EVs globally in 2024—representing less than 2% of its total global sales. Despite this, Toyota is aiming for a much larger presence in the EV market, targeting approximately 35% of its global production to be electric by the end of the decade.
The Nikkei report suggests the company plans to diversify its production footprint beyond Japan and China and expanding into the U.S., Thailand, and Argentina. This would help mitigate the impact of President Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs on all car imports, as well as reduce delivery times. Toyota is also building a battery plant in North Carolina.
For now, Toyota has only two fully electric vehicles on the U.S. market: The bZ4X  and the Lexus RZ models. The Japanese automaker is expected to introduce new models like the bZ5X and a potential electric version of the popular Tacoma pickup.
Separately, Toyota and Honda, along with South Korea’s Hyundai, all announced on April 4 that they would not be raising prices, at least over the next couple of months, following the imposition of U.S. tariffs. According to a separate Nikkei report, Toyota’s North American division has told its suppliers that it will absorb the extra costs of parts imported from Mexico and Canada. Another 25% for automotive parts imported to the U.S. is slated to come into effect on May 3.

Read more
Tesla, Warner Bros. dodge some claims in ‘Blade Runner 2049’ lawsuit, copyright battle continues
Tesla Cybercab at night

Tesla and Warner Bros. scored a partial legal victory as a federal judge dismissed several claims in a lawsuit filed by Alcon Entertainment, a production company behind the 2017 sci-fi movie Blade Runner 2049, Reuters reports.
The lawsuit accused the two companies of using imagery from the film to promote Tesla’s autonomous Cybercab vehicle at an event hosted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk at Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Studios in Hollywood in October of last year.
U.S. District Judge George Wu indicated he was inclined to dismiss Alcon’s allegations that Tesla and Warner Bros. violated trademark law, according to Reuters. Specifically, the judge said Musk only referenced the original Blade Runner movie at the event, and noted that Tesla and Alcon are not competitors.
"Tesla and Musk are looking to sell cars," Reuters quoted Wu as saying. "Plaintiff is plainly not in that line of business."
Wu also dismissed most of Alcon's claims against Warner Bros., the distributor of the Blade Runner franchise.
However, the judge allowed Alcon to continue its copyright infringement claims against Tesla for its alleged use of AI-generated images mimicking scenes from Blade Runner 2049 without permission.
Alcan says that just hours before the Cybercab event, it had turned down a request from Tesla and WBD to use “an icononic still image” from the movie.
In the lawsuit, Alcon explained its decision by saying that “any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account.”
Alcon further said it did not want Blade Runner 2049 “to be affiliated with Musk, Tesla, or any Musk company, for all of these reasons.”
But according to Alcon, Tesla went ahead with feeding images from Blade Runner 2049 into an AI image generator to yield a still image that appeared on screen for 10 seconds during the Cybercab event. With the image featured in the background, Musk directly referenced Blade Runner.
Alcon also said that Musk’s reference to Blade Runner 2049 was not a coincidence as the movie features a “strikingly designed, artificially intelligent, fully autonomous car.”

Read more