Huntington Ingalls Is Building a Robot Navy
The U.S. Department of Defense wants to build a 355-ship Navy -- but it also wants to build that Navy at an affordable price. Building more warships as uncrewed, robotic vessels could be a way to achieve both those goals -- and Huntington Ingalls Industries (NYSE: HII) wants to help make that happen.
Case in point: Last month, Huntington Ingalls announced that the Navy is buying more of its REMUS unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). And even as the Navy slims down its budget overall, it's spending $3 billion to acquire 10 large unmanned surface vessels (LUSVs) and two medium unmanned surface vessels (MUSVs) for anti-submarine warfare.
Stretching 132 feet in length and displacing 145 tons, an MUSV such as Leidos' Sea Hunter vessel is not insubstantial, and LUSVs are even bigger -- as long as 200 to 300 feet, and displacing 2,000 tons. Yet despite their size, these robotic warships seem surprisingly affordable; Sea Hunter, for example, costs only $23 million to design and build, and L3Harris' alternative design costs just $35 million.
Source Fool.com
