According to Telegraph U.K, The US Navy is working on a robotic fish that will be able to swim undetected into hostile waters and send back information on the movements of opponents' ships.
Project Silent Nemo is underway at a military base outside of Washington and Navy scientists hope to begin deploying the spy fish into the field next year, according to Pilot Online.
The robot fish looks startlingly like a bluefin tuna from a distance and it is almost impossible to tell from its black dorsal fin that it is made of gears and whirring cogs.
The sea drone is five-feet long and weighs seven stone (100lb) and is expected to one day carry cameras and other naval equipment. It is controlled with a video game-style joystick but can also be programmed to follow a set course.
The Navy hopes to use it for tasks that would be dangerous for a human diver, like detecting sea mines and inspecting damage to the hulls of American warships.
Unlike other underwater machines, Silent Nemo actually swims and is powered by the movement of its own body rather than propellers.
This makes it far quieter than a miniature submarine and harder to track with sonar. "This is an attempt to take thousands of years of evolution - what has been perfected since the dawn of time - and try to incorporate that into a mechanical device," said Captain Jerry Lademan, a marine working on the project. While the navy refers to the project as Silent Nemo, its developers refer to it as GhostSwimmer.
This makes it far quieter than a miniature submarine and harder to track with sonar. "This is an attempt to take thousands of years of evolution - what has been perfected since the dawn of time - and try to incorporate that into a mechanical device," said Captain Jerry Lademan, a marine working on the project. While the navy refers to the project as Silent Nemo, its developers refer to it as GhostSwimmer.
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