The U.S. Navy and Coast Guard have expressed interest in the 30-ft.-long Protector, which comes mounted with a machine gun and could be retrofitted for commercial use.
Robots versus pirates -- it's not as stupid, or unlikely, as it sounds. Piracy has exploded in the waters near Somalia, where this past week United States warships have fired on two pirate skiffs, and are currently in pursuit of a hijacked Japanese-owned vessel. At least four other ships in the region remain under pirate control, and the problem appears to be going global: The International Maritime Bureau is tracking a 14-percent increase in worldwide pirate attacks this year.
And although modern-day pirates enjoy collecting their fare share of booty -- they have a soft spot for communications gear -- they're just as likely to ransom an entire ship. In one particularly sobering case, hijackers killed one crew member of a Taiwan-owned vessel each month until their demands were met.
For years now, law enforcement agencies across the high seas have proposed robotic boats, or unmanned surface vessels (USVs), as a way to help deal with 21st-Century techno Black Beards. The Navy has tested at least two small, armed USV demonstrators designed to patrol harbors and defend vessels. And both the Navy and the Coast Guard have expressed interest in the Protector, a 30-ft.-long USV built by BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin and Israeli defense firm RAFAEL.
The Protector, which comes mounted with a 7.62mm machine gun, wasn't originally intended for anti-piracy operations. But according to BAE Systems spokesperson Stephanie Moncada, the robot could easily fill that role. "Down the line, it could potentially be modified for commercial use as well," she says. Instead of being deployed by a warship to intercept and possibly fire on an incoming vessel, a non-lethal variant of the Protector could be used to simply investigate a potential threat.
A favorite tactic of modern-day pirates is to put out a distress call, then ambush any ships that respond. The unmanned Protector could be remote-operated from around 10 miles away, with enough on-board sensors, speakers and microphones to make contact with a vessel before it's too late. "Even without the machine gun, it could alert the crew, give them some time to escape," Moncada says.
The 55-mph Interceptor could become the long-range patrol boat of the future, while the jetski-size Sentry (inset) could help prevent a terrorist plot such as Al Qaeda's attack on the USS Cole in December 2000.
Read more about the pirate-hunting robot boat and other stories from our friends at Popular Mechanics in an exclusive feature on Military.com.
-- Christian
There isn't a pirate problem. There is a law problem.
As long as every anti-pirate action can be labeled a violation of human rights and reviewed in international courts the nations of the world won't let their navies do very much.
Right now the pirates have to be caught almost in the act and the level of proof is set very high.
Once pirates have control of the ship they can't be attacked because that endangers the crew. Or the cargo is too valuable, etc.
Every decade the restraints on the navies grow and every year so does piracy.
Pirates find another line of work when they can and will be hanged at sea. It will not be necessary to catch every single one.
Posted by: K at November 18, 2008 07:26 PM