The US Navy is Developing Autonomous Submarines That Can Kill on Their Own

‘The U.S. Navy is secretly developing armed robot submarines that are controlled by onboard artificial intelligence (AI) which could potentially kill without explicit human control.

The Office of Naval Research is involved with the development of an AI system called CLAWS, which the agency describes in budget documents as an autonomous undersea weapon system for clandestine use. CLAWS will “increase mission areas into kinetic effects,” they write.

According to a report by New Scientist, details of the killer submersible were made available as part of the 2020 budget documents. However, not much more is known.

Very few details were publicly provided about the “top secret” project beyond the fact it will use sensors and algorithms to carry out complex missions on its own.

It is expected that CLAWS will be installed on the new Orca class robot submarines that have 12 torpedo tubes which are being developed for the Navy by Boeing. But that is simply speculation. What is known is that the system will be able to think and kill on its own. Although according to New Scientist there are hints by the Navy that this will be the case.

“The Orca will have well-defined interfaces for the potential of implementing cost-effective upgrades in future increments to leverage advances in technology and respond to threat changes,” the Navy said.’