Innovation of the week: The Navy's new sea drones

You've heard of drones in the sky. How about in the sea? asked Phil Stewart at Reuters. The U.S. Navy last week launched a first-of-its-kind autonomous vessel called Sea Hunter, a 132-foot drone warship that can cruise the ocean for up to three months at a time "without a crew or anyone controlling it remotely."

The self-driving unarmed vessel is designed to hunt enemy submarines and is the cornerstone of a major military effort to develop more-sophisticated unmanned sea vessels to counter Chinese and Russian naval advances. Developed by DARPA — the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — Sea Hunter will now undergo two years of testing. Deputy U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Work said the Navy hopes to deploy the first drone ships to the western Pacific within five years.

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