We know more about things on the moon and in space

than we do 10 miles off the coast of California.

To be able to go down to places like the Marianas Trench

that are 30,000 feet or more and see life forms

there that we've never seen before

would be kind of a great thing for science. [Mark Kosko, program director, Unmanned Underwater Systems]

Current submarines don't go anywhere near that depth.

We are developing the technology similar to what

unmanned aerial vehicles are doing in the air right now.

You are fighting a tough environment there.

The ocean wants to squeeze you into nothing.

Nobody's trying to crush a satellite.

There's no radio communications like an airplane has.

You can't get in touch with an underwater vehicle after it leaves the surface.

I'm not going to receive GPS signals.

There's no map sent in from Point A to Point B.

If it encounters a mountain range or a trench or something along the way,

it has to be able to figure that out on its own and not run into it.

That's another area of technology that we're developing of obstacle avoidance.

People want to use UUVs for different applications.

An ISR job—intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance—

doing a survey in the Gulf,

things like maybe cracks in the bottom of the ocean floor or volcanic plumes.

Things like that may be able to help geologists predict earthquakes

and life forms and plants and things like that that man has never seen before.

Maybe there is some medical benefit to those things.

Those are things that an unmanned underwater vehicle can do.

We're just not content to sit back and say,

"That's the ocean out there. I see the top of it. That's enough."

We want to know what's down there.

[Boeing]