Silent and stealthy, this drone promises a transformed approach to intelligence gathering.

A new underwater drone that resembles one of the most graceful and majestic creatures in the ocean was unveiled today. The Manta Ray, built by Northrop Grumman, was built to perform long range, long endurance military missions. The underwater craft—built for the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA) and capable of harvesting energy from the seas—has been four years in the making.

Manta Ray began life in 2020, and the project’s goal was to develop a “new class of long duration, long range, payload-capable unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs).” Manta Ray is supposed to be capable of carrying out underwater missions with as little human oversight as possible.

This is not as easy as it sounds. Seawater is corrosive, sea life (such as barnacles, jellyfish, and seaweed) can foul moving parts, and various types of electromagnetic radiation (particularly sunlight) don’t propagate well in seawater. It’s a complex set of technical challenges that DARPA saw the opportunity to solve with a single program, advancing the state of the art in UUV technology.