For the future of navigation, they represent very good news: what are the unmanned “ghost ships” that have crossed the waters of the Pacific.
The suggestion would surely have pleased Edgar Allan Poe, who, in the short story “Manuscript found in a bottle”, speaks precisely of a ghost ship. The same story could tickle the conspiracy theorists: the most addicted to the conspiracy theories will be back with the memory of the infamous “Philadelphia Experiment”, an alleged scientific test for military purposes, which, during the Second World War, would determine the disappearance of the destroyer USS Eldridge, moored near the dock of Philadelphia, and its reappearance after a few minutes in Norfolk, Virginia.
What Pacific Ghost Ships Actually Are
Nothing of the sort, the unmanned ghost ships sailing across the Pacific Ocean are actually the maritime equivalent of the sci-fi, sure, but perfectly real self-driving cars. Tests report to the U.S. military, which is breaking them in over long distances and with success.
The NOMAD, for example, traveled 8,187 kilometers (or 4,421 nautical miles), landing on the Pacific coast after an extensive round trip through the Panama Canal from the Gulf Coast. Ninety-eight percent of the time, NOMAD steered itself. The remaining 2% involved the difficult crossing of the Panama Canal, for which the decision was made not to rely on computers
In October 2020, a similar feat was accomplished by the RANGER, also, like NOMAD, part of the Ghost Fleet Overlord program (which translates as the Overlord of the Ghost Fleet – fanfares playing in the background).
Because it is the US Navy, and therefore a military experiment, the operation of ghost ships is a mystery. The use of artificial intelligence and a machine learning system is therefore only a hypothesis.
What are the advantages of self-driving vessels
In the future, the Army trusts to “demonstrate the reliability of the system” of automatic navigation and to “explore the possibility of use in coordinated operations with manned ships.” Benefits of autonomous ships include reducing the chance of an accident due to human error to zero, eliminating space allocated for crew and increasing light weight, which would make ships more environmentally sustainable.
Other surprising technologies? The t-shirt that absorbs carbon dioxide and China’s underwater train.
Giuseppe Giordano