Our Take
The United States and other nations are pouring money into the development of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) for anti-submarine warfare. Issues with power and endurance continue to be technical challenges for underwater drones, but as they are solved, militarizes will have to make technological advancements in order to keep submarines unnoticed in more crowded waters.
An accelerating debate over Britain’s nuclear-weapons policy has focused on the government’s plan to replace the existing, Vanguard-class Trident ballistic-missile submarines with the Successor-class. More recently a new ingredient has emerged to complicate matters: whether the world’s oceans are becoming transparent through new detection technologies, which could make the new submarines obsolete before they are even launched.