Sea Hunter, the world's first robot warship that's capable of patrolling 10,000 nautical miles of ocean without a human crew but unable to use its weapons without human command, is expected to enter service with the US Navy Third Fleet once it becomes operational in the next few years.

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This fleet, which can call on four Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, has an area of responsibility of 50 million square miles consisting of the eastern and northern Pacific Ocean areas, including the Bering Sea, Alaska, the Aleutian Islands and a sector of the Arctic.

In the event of war, this fleet's primary wartime mission is the defense of the western sea approaches to the United States, including Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. It can also cooperate with the US Navy Seventh Fleet operating in Asia.

"You can imagine anti-submarine warfare pickets. You can imagine anti-submarine warfare wolf packs. You can imagine mine warfare flotillas. You can imagine distributed anti-surface warfare action groups ... and you might be able to put a six-pack or a four-pack of missiles on it," said Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work.

"Now imagine 50 of these warships ... operating together under the hands of a flotilla commander. This is really something," he added.

Work believes that when the US Navy begins using the Sea Hunter-class warships, it will "be a Navy unlike any Navy in history, (with) a human-machine collaborative battle fleet that will confound our enemies."

The sleek 132-foot long warship with the contours of a Formula 1 racer was built to hunt down and destroy submarines, specifically the stealthy diesel electric submarines like those operated by the Russians and the Chinese that are difficult to detect.

Once locked onto a submarine target, the robot can either destroy it immediately with its missiles or continue to dog it for weeks until the submarine is forced to surface to recharge its batteries.

Sea Hunter will enter fleet service in 2018 following two years of exhaustive tests that will validate the faith the US Navy has placed in this robot developed by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA.

Sea Hunter is an autonomous unmanned surface vehicle (a naval drone) launched and christened in 2016 as part of the DARPA Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) program. Built at a cost of $20 million, the prototype is a trimaran having a central hull flanked by two outriggers containing submarine hunting equipment. Its top speed is 27 knots or 50 km/h.

DARPA will test the ship off the San Diego coast to record how it interacts with other vessels and avoids collisions using its sensors and advanced optical systems.

TagsSea Hunter, US Navy Third Fleet, Pacific Ocean, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel