COSMOS Summary piece on Orca/Echo Voyager XLUUV

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:

“...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."

BEST TO READ THE WHOLE COSMOS ARTICLE HERE

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Separately the above 2016 Boeing Youtube on Echo Voyager is still highly relevant.
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Pete