The ever-industrious US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected Northrop Grumman to research whether fish and other sea creatures can be used to detect and track submarines.
In a statement, Northrop said that it had been chosen for the Persistent Aquatic Living Sensors (PALS) program to “prototype sensing capabilities using undersea organisms to assist in passively detecting and tracking undersea threats.”
In essence, the program seeks to develop an underwater version of passive radar, which uses existing radio waves, or ‘non-cooperative transmitters’, to detect and track targets. Unlike active radar, passive detection methods offer the advantage of concealment to the operator.
“The US Navy’s current approach to detecting and monitoring underwater vehicles is hardware-centric and resource intensive,” program manager Lori Adornato said. “As a result, the capability is mostly used at the tactical level to protect high-value assets like aircraft carriers, and less so at the broader strategic level.”
Whilst ASW operators already listen out for changes in the undersea ‘biological chorus’ as a rough combat indicator, PALS intends to take advantage of all outputs used by sea creatures to navigate their environment - including tactile, electrical, acoustic, magnetic, chemical, and optical means - using hardware operating 500 metres away.
AI will then be used to determine whether creatures’ behaviour is indicative of the presence of a target. The algorithm, however, must be programmed to account for differences between how fish respond to a potential targets or ‘false positives’, such as large bits of detritus.
“If we can tap into the innate sensing capabilities of living organisms that are ubiquitous in the oceans, we can extend our ability to track adversary activity and do so discreetly, on a persistent basis, and with enough precision to characterize the size and type of adversary vehicles,” Adornato said.
“Northrop Grumman will develop biological sensing hardware that has increased sensitivity for certain sensor modalities, achieving greater range. Artificial intelligence will be applied to observe patterns in the marine environment to help classify targets,” the company said.
Northrop Grumman has partnered with Coda Octopus, Duke University, University of Maryland, Baltimore County and the University of Memphis on the project.
“The detection, classification and tracking of undersea objects is a critical military capability and we are excited to work with DARPA to develop this next generation approach,” Mike Meaney, vice president of advanced missions for Northrop Grumman, said.
Interestingly, DARPA’s original request for proposals allowed for the possibility of testing modified organisms in ‘contained, biosecure facilities’ to improve their performance. It is unclear, however, whether Northrop Grumman’s prototype will take this approach.