The US Navy launched a missile from a ghost ship. Wait, what?

The uncrewed surface vessel Ranger is one of at least two robot ships that the Navy uses to test autonomy, in collaboration with the Department of Defense’s Strategic Capabilities office. Testing these ships, from autonomous travel to operations alongside other vessels, is part of the ominously named “Ghost Fleet Overlord” program. Like human sailors in the Navy, robot ships must follow the Law of the Sea Convention, a set of rules and practices agreed to by the United Nations, despite the fact that the US has yet to ratify the treaty. Virtually all other sailors follow these rules at sea. For peaceful maritime travel, it’s important for sailors to know the rules of the road, but for robots those rules have to be coded into how they operate. Firing a missile falls well outside the scope of peaceful oceanic transit. It is a way for the humans remotely monitoring and commanding the ships to see if the command links are secure, timely, and if the robot vessel can perform as expected. Testing if the ship can launch a missile is the first part of the work of making an armed robot ship. The harder challenge is testing if that robot can fire a missile in such a way that it hits a target. How the missile launchers integrate with sensors and how those sensors communicate information back to off-ship human overseers is a big question. Where in the process a human approves a robot’s target selection, and if the human can instead decline the attack, are important considerations for human control over the entire process, and to mitigate error. Because Ranger and Nomad are built on top of existing, familiar, durable ship designs, the focus in testing can be less about the specific engineering of these robotic vessels, and more about how the robotic components work together. By incorporating a familiar missile launcher into that overall package, the Navy can see if a kind of plug-and-play approach works. This is especially important because the next two vessels planned for the Ghost Fleet Overlord program are going to be original prototypes. Two dedicated robot prototypes are already under construction for the Navy, to be used in future tests. Both Nomad and Ranger are headed to the Navy from SCO later in 2022, for further experimentation. Like human sailors in the Navy, robot ships must follow the Law of the Sea Convention, a set of rules and practices agreed to by the United Nations, despite the fact that the US has yet to ratify the treaty. Virtually all other sailors follow these rules at sea. For peaceful maritime travel, it’s important for sailors to know the rules of the road, but for robots those rules have to be coded into how they operate. Firing a missile falls well outside the scope of peaceful oceanic transit. It is a way for the humans remotely monitoring and commanding the ships to see if the command links are secure, timely, and if the robot vessel can perform as expected. Testing if the ship can launch a missile is the first part of the work of making an armed robot ship. The harder challenge is testing if that robot can fire a missile in such a way that it hits a target. How the missile launchers integrate with sensors and how those sensors communicate information back to off-ship human overseers is a big question. Where in the process a human approves a robot’s target selection, and if the human can instead decline the attack, are important considerations for human control over the entire process, and to mitigate error.