It is useful to read Drew Turney's excellent article for COSMOS:
THE SCIENCE OF EVERYTHING. That article is Orca will change US undersea battle-readiness, of July 29, 2019, at https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/orca-will-change-us-undersea-battle-readiness. The following are excerpts from the article:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Separately the above 2016 Boeing Youtube on Echo Voyager is still highly relevant.
---
“...with Boeing’s
new Orca we’re entering the age of the XLUUV
– the Extra-Large Unmanned Underwater Vehicle.
...Unmanned
submarines are not only deployable in far more dangerous waters, they’re
ultimately disposable. And without all those life support systems, they seem to
be far cheaper [than manned submarines].
Boeing,
the company contracted by the US Navy to provide four craft under the Orca
program, is charging just US$43.2 million...The first [UUV] was developed at
the University of Washington in 1957, and since then they have taken almost
every form, come in almost every shape and size, and done everything from
scientific research to mapping the seafloor for oil and gas prospecting.
But
the Orca will be in a class all its own. It’ll be based on an earlier craft
from Boeing called the Echo Voyager, a 50-tonne missile-shaped
craft the company said was a test case for further development.
Like
the Orca will, Echo Voyager runs on a hybrid combination of batteries and
marine diesel generators and can be deployed and recovered from a pier –
removing the need for a launch and support ship in dangerous or hard-to-reach
places. Land-based crews can control the fleet, issuing orders on a
set-and-forget basis...[Echo Voyager, now Orca] can surface to get a fix on its position via GPS and
both send and receive findings, orders and other data via satellite.
Even
though Orca will be a war-fighting tool, it will use the same modular design as
its predecessor. It can carry equipment weighing up to eight tonnes in the
cargo bay, and there are also dongles to attach other instruments or weapons to
the outside of the hull.
...Whether
you’re testing the extent of an oil spill, deploying a mine in a hostile port
or undertaking any number of other tasks underwater, the hardware/payload
system and open software architecture means you can not only configure the Orca
for very different purposes, you can redeploy it for another application
quickly.
For
the US Navy, that means “mine countermeasures, anti-submarine warfare,
anti-surface warfare, electronic warfare and strike missions”.
That
covers a lot of ground (or sea, as the case may be), from launching missiles to
finding enemy ships by sonar and reporting their positions to nearby forces.
....the
physics involved in underwater travel imposes several stumbling blocks. For
one thing, water distorts the transmission of radio signals – if you’re in a
dry airspace even a few metres down your mobile won’t work – so operators need
confidence the [Orca] is following instructions (or [as an AUV]
figuring out the best way to do so by itself ) without being able to communicate
or report on progress. It needs the autonomy to detect and avoid contact with
objects that could damage it – anything from a large rock on the sea floor to a
passing whale.
...The
Orca is scheduled for delivery by June 2022."
Separately the above 2016 Boeing Youtube on Echo Voyager is still highly relevant.
---
Pete