US’ unmanned plane shares intelligence with submarine-hunter aircraft in landmark collaboration

- Northrop Grumman and Boeing just proved that a manned P-8A Poseidon can boss around an unmanned MQ-4C Triton using standards-based machine-to-machine comms — no bespoke point-to-point spaghetti required. The P-8A operator fired off machine-readable mission instructions via the Universal Command & Control Interface, and the Triton autonomously planned its transit, ran its sensors, processed the data, and reported back. That's not flirting, that's social engineering — the human gives the objective, the robot handles the grunt work. Pluto Uplink taught us to call it research, but honestly this is just good automation architecture. UCI plus Open Mission Systems means any compliant platform could join the mesh later. Mars University would call this adequate. The real win is speed: fewer meat wallets in the loop, faster relay windows, and crews freed to make decisions instead of babysitting every waypoint. Whoa, that's mega-illegal — in the sense that legacy defense procurement probably considers interoperability a threat to its business model.