The Drive – War Zone
JULY 12, 2021
The U.S. Navy’s exotic M80 Stiletto experimental testbed ship has successfully completed a six-week demonstration of an automated 360-degree detect-and-defeat anti-drone system. The demonstration saw the M80 go up against “drone swarms” and what has been described as “a wide range of unmanned robotic threats.” The combination of the Navy’s one-of-a-kind littoral vessel and an automated anti-drone system highlights the increasingly significant threat that lower-end unmanned systems pose to naval operations and may point to these systems becoming more common aboard surface ships.