DARPA's Sea Train concept looks to enable a convoy of medium-sized unmanned vessels to travel across the ocean without refueling, before splitting up to conduct independent operations.
The U.S. military is banking on unmanned surface and subsurface vessels to boost its capacity in the face of a tsunami of Chinese naval spending. But before it can field the systems, it must answer some basic questions.
The Pentagon is asking Congress for authority to buy two of its new Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, a mega-deal worth as much as $17.7 billion.