Much has been made of the recent release of the report by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) into the emerging era of undersea warfare. The wide coverage that the report received in Australia (see here, for example) focused largely on the assertion that “submersibles drones would make submarines obsolete.”
The report’s author Bryan Clark posits that “technological advancements, many of them driven by rapid increases in computer processing power, will likely spur a new round of dramatic changes in undersea warfare.” Those changes are expected to be new capabilities to find submarines, improvements to submarines that will improve stealth and submerged endurance, and new underwater weapon, sensor and communication systems.