The News
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The US Navy's S-47B, a tail less, stealth, unmanned, autonomous aircraft flew on Feb 4, 2011. Under development by Northrop Grumman since 2007, it is expected to begin carrier trials by 2013. The Navy's new Top Gun is going to be a robot, and an autonomous one at that. The fighter sized aircraft will be armed and deadly some day soon, not to suffer from fatigue, with the ability to stay on station as long as the equipment holds out. War will soon be shoved off to our robotic counterparts, which while it will save lives, will cease to be horrible, which does slow down the human race's eagerness to get involved in war in the first place.
This, however, is quite a feat. The human race is proving itself capable of building robotic equipment that can go to war, fly to and explore other planets, and drive ourselves around. That capability isn't completely accepted yet for our highways, but the ability to make cars drive themselves is already done. One does think that we may be too clever, and that Cyberdyne's Skynet may be lurking just around the corner.
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According to the BBC, an old British Mk 9 topedo was found floating in the English Channel off Beachy Head by a fisherman. A tag attached to the torpedo documents the year 1955 as the last time it was serviced. It was hinted at by the bomb disposal team that it was a practice torpedo, and it's explosive charge had corroded off and was at the bottom of the channel. The Mk 9 was principally a surface ship torpedo used onboard cruisers and destroyers.
A similar torpedo, the Mk 8, was the most successful British torpedo of WW2, fitted to submarines, and was last used in the Falklands War. During that war, the captain of the nuclear powered submarine HMS Conqueror sighted the General Belgrano, an ex US light cruiser now a part of the Argentine Navy. To engage the ship, the Conqueror could have used the Mk 24 Tigerfish torpedo, an accoustic homing wire guided last word in the torpedo world torpedo or use an old relic from WW2, the Mk 8. The Mk 8 was chosen and down went the ship.
To be fair, the Mk 24 at the time was an abject failure. The Royal Navy couldn't hit the broad side of a barn ship with it, and it's reliability was so bad they even entertained the notion of hanging a nuclear warhead on it to be able to sink something. Things are better now, and the British Navy uses the Spearfish torpedo, built by BAE, which weighs 2 tons, and boasts high speed, deep diving, and can autonomously choose what to do enroute (now that part is scary!).