6m 15sLength

The United States Navy's Office of Naval Research (ONR) is developing the Swarm project, a fleet of robotic patrol boats that can not only act as escorts for larger warships or merchant vessels, but can also autonomously swarm around a threatening craft and destroy it. The destroyer USS Cole, which on October 12, 2000, while refueling in the Yemeni port of Aden, was crippled when a small rubber dinghy came alongside and detonated. It blew a 60-ft (18-m) hole in the side of the ship, killing 17 sailors and wounding 39 others. The reason for this vulnerability is that when warships are at anchor or moving in or out of port, they cannot use their speed and maneuverability, nor their weapons, to deal with small, fast-moving craft in narrow waterways. The agency has developed a kit - the Control Architecture for Robotic Agent Command and Sensing (CARACaS) - that can be fitted to almost any boat to turn it into an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) – robot attack craft – that can operate with a fleet of similar boats in synchronization with one another, navigate to their intended locations, and swarm enemy vessels while escorting or guarding Navy warships.