An army of underwater drones equipped with advanced artificial intelligence technology could hunt Russian submarines near the UK. The autonomous mini-hunter submarines, which can lurk underwater for months at a time, will use AI to listen out, detect, and identify Russian vessels.
The gliders—or drones—are part of a new system called Lura, which will, in essence, “illuminate” the oceans and make submarine-hunting simpler, The Times reports. Lura can, it is said, tell the difference between two ships of the same class because of acute differences within each vessel’s acoustic signature. The system, developed by European defence firm Helsing, uses what is described as a “constellation” of underwater sensors to trawl through acoustic data instead of humans to speed up reaction times.
Gundbert Scherf, co-founder of Helsing, told the newspaper: “Lura detects so our navies can deter. We must harness new technologies to keep pace with the threats against our critical infrastructure, national waters and way of life.
“Deploying AI to the edge of underwater constellations will illuminate the oceans and deter our adversaries.”
The Lura system has been designed for use on underwater gliders known as the SG-1 Fathom, which were originally developed to track whales and underwater conditions.
Helsing’s lead technology expert Niall Cartwright said a huge number of the gliders could be deployed at sea to listen out.
He said: “When they hear something, a Russian submarine or something doing an unusual activity, they then pop up and report that back. One on its own can’t do much but the fact is they are so cheap and simple you can throw hundreds or thousands of these in the water. They [the enemy] will think twice about coming through.”
Lura has been developed after being contracted by the Royal Navy to look into the use of AI for monitoring acoustic signatures. There are hopes it will be rolled out across the Senior Service in the future.
It is reportedly capable of identifying the differences between submarines and tankers, passenger vessels and members of Russia's shadow fleet.
There are growing concerns over the protection of Britain’s undersea cables.
It comes as the Baltic Sea has seen a series of incidents in which power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines have been damaged following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine - many of which have been blamed on Moscow.
Defence Secretary John Healey revealed that in a rare move, he ordered a Royal Navy attack submarine to surface close to a Russian spy ship in November last year after it had been detected “loitering” over critical British undersea infrastructure.
Last month, the Russian ambassador to the UK did not deny allegations that his country has hidden sensorsaround British waters to try to track the Royal Navy’s nuclear submarines.
