The US Fifth Fleet in the Middle East is implementing maritime drone exercises, testing new operational solutions. Last month the success of a small unmanned vessel when it managed to launch a missile at a pre-defined target caused great satisfaction.
According to a statement from the US Navy (USNavy), writes Defense News, the launch of the “Lethal Missile Aerial Missile System” by a drone MARTAC T38 – Devil Ray it happened during the exercise Digital Talon in the waters around the Arabian Peninsula on October 23rd.
The exercise was supervised by Task Force 59, a Navy unit dedicated to unmanned technologies and the development of artificial intelligence models.
During the exercise, the drones reached the manned ships to identify fake enemy boats: they fired several missiles that reached and destroyed all the targets.
Although the launch of the Devil Ray missiles constitutes a unique one the Navy wanted to clarify that the decision to engage and launch the missile was entirely decided and carried out by a human operator.
In recent years the Middle East has become a testing ground for Navy drone systems, where the relatively calm and stable waters have provided an ideal environment to experiment and train with this new technology.
Earlier this year, Navy leaders announced plans to field a hybrid manned and unmanned fleet over the next decade.
Prior to the Digital Talon exercise, the Navy's underwater, surface and aerial drones reached another milestone in September, when they helped track Iranian Navy and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps ships for several days inland and around the Strait of Hormuz.
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