PORTSMOUTH, England (Reuters) — Britain’s Royal Navy has released a series of futuristic submarine concepts which mimic real marine life forms and radically change the way underwater warfare could look in 50 years.
The concepts, called Nautilus 100, include a mothership shaped like a manta ray, unmanned eel-like vessels equipped with sensor pods which dissolve on demand to avoid enemy detection, and fish-shaped torpedoes sent to swarm against enemy targets.
The project, celebrating the centenary of the USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, challenged young engineers to ‘visioneer’ the Royal Navy’s future submarine fleet.
The Royal Navy’s Fleet Robotics Officer, Commander (Cmdr) Peter Pipkin, said many of the designs incorporated bio-mimicry.
“Nature has done a wonderful job over thousands or millions of years turning flora and fauna and animals into really efficient designs that work within their natural environment. Technology has always aspired to do that but struggled to do so. In the modern and the increasing innovation that we are seeing today, smart materials such as graphene and the future of autonomous and artificial intelligence is allowing us to get ever closer to those efficient and effective designs that nature has shown us,” Cmdr Pipkin said.
“If you look at the mothership in the Nautilus 100 project, its skin is coated in a nanometre thin layer of graphene scales that can move and adapt their shape to either be more sound efficient which would allow the submarine to hide from any potential hostile sonar, or it could become dynamically efficient so it can move through the water quickly.”
The futuristic design foresees the mothership launching unmanned underwater vehicles shaped like eels, which carry pods which can damage an enemy vessel, or dissolve on demand at the end of an operation to evade detection.
Unlike the submarines of today, which perform multiple roles in one hull, it is envisaged that the Royal Navy of the future would operate a family of submarines of various shapes and sizes, both manned and unmanned, to fulfil a variety of tasks.
“The maritime environment is only going to get more contested and congested as we move into the future as the world looks increasingly to the maritime environment for natural resources and also as the ability to operate in the maritime environment is simplified by off-board and autonomous vessels for a whole host of operators. So the requirement for the Royal Navy to be at the forefront of technological thinking to provide the security and protection in support of UK interests is only going to increase,” Cmdr Pipkin said.
The designs aim to create submarines that are easier to construct, cheaper to run, and more deadly in battle.
