Originally Posted by
VinRouge
I think its not particularly well thought out. The weapon has a reactor for endurance purposes. Even so, how is the weapon going to be re-tasked in the event of a change of heart? Not as if you can send an RF signal to under water. It comes across as a great idea on paper, not great from a command and control perspective, especially if it pokes off in a random direction, with no means to terminate, then ends up detonating on the coast of somewhere that will retaliate in kind.
The impression I get is that it's a bit more like an unmanned submarine than a giant torpedo, so it might be launched in advance of an attack, creep up on and loiter closer to potential targets, possibly track them, and then be commanded to strike (or maybe even return to base) sometime later. Communication would presumably be via the same means used by conventional attack submarines, except that the drone might not need to transmit, thereby making it harder to detect.
If you're not filling the things with people you can build more of them more cheaply, deploy them for longer, and presumably put them into riskier situations. With a reactor and no crew to feed, endurance could be almost indefinite...
It might even function as a strategic deterrent. Rather than having a handful of SSBNs cruising around the oceans, you deploy a bunch of these and leave your adversary to wonder whether they're sitting on the seabed outside its major ports...