Echo Seeker

Echo Seeker is an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) built by Boeing.

The vehicle is a larger version of Boeing's earlier Echo Ranger AUV, and was designed and built by the company's Advanced Technology Programs division in Huntington Beach, California, which publicly unveiled Echo Seeker in July 2015. Echo Seeker measures about 32 ft long, and is powered by a bank of silver zinc batteries that give it an endurance of about three days and a range of 265 mi at its service speed of 3.5 mph. It has a payload of about 6000 lb, and can submerge to a depth of 20,000 ft. Once deployed, Echo Seeker operates largely autonomously, with communication to the surface limited to a weak acoustic system. When submerged, it navigates via a synthetic aperture sonar system that allows it to map a 2 mi wide swath of seabed with a resolution of 10 cm from a height of 300 ft.