Add The California Post on Google A fleet of autonomous vessels backed by the US Navy has been launched off California to hunt down Chinese ghost ships.
San Diego startup Seasats crafted the special boats to perform intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance missions at sea without a human operator onboard.
The 12-foot skiff, the Lightfish, has the ability to communicate the coordinates of China’s ghost fleet, track weather, signal submarines, and spot smugglers and illegal fishing operations.
“We did a demo, and then the Navy was like, ‘That works, we’re gonna buy them,'” Matt Flanigan, CEO and co-founder of Seasats told the San Diego Union-Tribune.
The ships can be operated far from shore. The boats listen for acoustic messages underwater, which it then translates into radio signals that it beams up to satellites and back to the ships’ operator on shore.
Seasats’ gadgets have earned them $40 million from investors and $100 million in defense contracts. One of the vessels encountered “multiple Chinese warships” well within Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone. None of the vessels were transmitting their identity via the Automatic Identification System.
“The Lightfish was able to track these vessels and capture images confirming their type and origin,” the company said. The trip was the first autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait, a contested waterway between Taiwan and mainland China.
The company says the ships are especially useful because they can perform reconnaissance in a covert manner, and in a way that shore-based radar systems can’t.
“In this era of ubiquitous satellites and sensors, it may surprise some that a ship can hide in the ocean environment,” Declan Kerwin, chief of staff at Seasats, said. “That’s why these long-range autonomous vessels are so compelling. They can provide maritime awareness where shore-based radars can’t reach.”
Radio-based shore systems can’t go through water, Flanigan explained. “Submarines or divers or underwater robots can’t talk to the internet, so you have to have something right at the surface of the ocean,” he added.
Seasat will fully open a new San Diego headquarters in August. The new facility will span more than 61,000 square feet and will house 70 employees across two buildings.
The Navy is working with Seasats as tensions with Taiwan and China continue to flare. The startup says it is “actively engaging with Taiwan and allied forces across the Indo-Pacific to deploy and scale persistent maritime domain awareness where it matters.”
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