Crapaganda.com

The US Navy’s unmanned “Fire Scout” helicopter was out minding its own business on a trial run, when its home base warship detected a suspicious speedboat on radar. That’s when Robocopter kicked into high pursuit—filming the whole way.

The subsequent three-hour chase finally ended when the speedboat rendezvoused with a fishing boat, at which time a U.S. Coastguard Law Enforcement Detachment unit from theUSS McInerney swarmed. What they found: 60 kilos of cocaine, with another 200 kilos of narcotics presumed jettisoned. Oh, and all sorts of bad guy drug traffickers.

Watch the video of the bust from the drone

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military, have a bizarre new job ahead of themselves. They are planning to produce an entirely unmanned, automatic ghost ship to cruise the oceans of the world for months or years on end without the need of any human contact.

They are calling the new project Anti-submarine warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV), and intend to assemble “an X-ship founded on the assumption that no person steps aboard at any point in its operating cycle”. The uncrewed vessel would be capable of amazing range and endurance.  It could go for “global, months long deployments with no underway human maintenance”, criss crossing oceans largely without any human input .

US plans crewless automated ghost-frigates (The Register)