– Defense One – In the decade ahead, unmanned underwater vehicles, or UUVs, may have the same sort of disruptive effects on militaries as their flying counterparts. More than 12 countries are at work on undersea robots, which some militaries, including the United States, use to check for mines, map the sea floor and collect weather data. There’s no reason they couldn’t be used to defend battleships from small boats or even carry out attacks on enemy divers. But what will they look like?