The U.S. Navy is significantly improving its artificial intelligence capabilities to search for and clear Iranian mines in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most critical shipping lanes, according to a new contract document. The Strait of Hormuz is responsible for the transportation of a large amount of crude oil. Due to tensions caused by the Iran war, once the waterway is blocked, it is increasingly threatening global economic stability.
U.S. President Donald Trump previously said that the U.S. military was clearing Iranian mines in the Strait of Hormuz. In the weeks-long war between the United States and Iran, even if the two sides currently reach a fragile ceasefire, clearing underwater explosives in complex waters may still take months.
According to the terms of the contract, Domino Data Lab, an artificial intelligence company headquartered in San Francisco, has received an order of up to $100 million. It will use its software platform to help the Navy speed up training underwater drones to identify new types of mines, shortening the time to adapt to new threats from months to days.
“Mine clearance used to be the task of warships, but it is now becoming the task of artificial intelligence.” Thomas Robinson, chief operating officer of Domino, said in an interview. “The Navy pays for this to obtain a platform that allows them to train, manage and deploy artificial intelligence capabilities at the required speed in contested waters that are related to global trade and threaten the safety of sailors.”
Last week, the U.S. Navy awarded Domino a new contract worth up to $99.7 million, further expanding the company’s role in the Navy’s AMMO project (Accelerated Machine Learning for Maritime Operations), making it the artificial intelligence backbone of the project. The project is designed to enable the Navy to achieve faster and more accurate mine detection while reducing direct reliance on active duty officers and soldiers.
Domino's software can integrate data collected by multiple sensors, including side-scan sonar, visual imaging systems, etc., and help the Navy real-time monitor the performance of different artificial intelligence detection models in actual combat environments, identify model failure points, and quickly push correction updates to improve overall detection capabilities.
The core selling point of Domino's cooperation with the Navy is "speed." Before the company stepped in, it could take up to six months for the artificial intelligence models that power the Navy's underwater unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) to be updated to identify a new or never-before-encountered mine type. Domino said that through its platform, this cycle has been compressed to a few days.
Robinson used the current situation in the Middle East as an example to illustrate this point: "If some UUVs were originally deployed in the Baltic Sea, mainly trained to identify Russian-made mines, and then need to be quickly transferred to the Strait of Hormuz to detect Iranian mines, with the help of Domino's technology, the Navy can be ready in about a week, instead of a year."
A U.S. Navy spokesman said that he could not immediately comment on the contract and related technology deployment.