The US Navy has selected Boeing to develop a fleet of massive drone submarines under a $43 million new contract. Over the next few years, the firm will design and test four Orca Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (XLUUVs) based on its autonomous Echo Voyager, which can operate at sea for months at a time. The robotic submarines will be modular, meaning they can easily adapted in the future to implement'cost-effective upgrades' and support a variety of missions. Boeing is expected to complete the vehicles by June 2022. Boeing has been chosen to develop four drone submarines, called Orca Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (XLUUVs), for the US Navy.

The 6-foot, unmanned submarine is known as an LBS-Glider System and was operating from the USNS Bowditch on Thursday 50 miles from Subic Bay, gathering unclassified information for Navy charts and other maritime data like water temperature and sound speed, the Pentagon says. It surfaced and set a radio frequency for its home ship to pick it up, when a Chinese navy Dalang III-Class ship that had been shadowing the Bowditch launched a boat and intercepted it first.