The Self Defense Test Ship (SDTS) is one of the assets of the

US Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

. It is a refurbished ship that is in some cases operated by remote control; that capability is designed to support self-defense engineering, testing, and evaluation. When uncrewed, it can avoid the safety constraints and other problems associated with crewed ships. During typical operations, launched threats attack the ship, and the combat or weapon system being tested responds to these threats, defending the ship. The pre-arranged attack is, in practice, aimed at a decoy barge pulled 150 feet behind the SDTS in case of damage. Systems installed on the SDTS include MK 57 NATO

Sea Sparrow RIM-7 Sea Sparrow is a U.S. ship-borne short-range anti-aircraft and anti-missile weapon system, primarily intended for defense against anti-ship missiles. The system was developed in the early 1960s from the AIM-7 Sparrow air-to-air missile as ...

, MK 23 Target Acquisition system,

Rolling Airframe Missile The RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) is a small, lightweight, infrared homing surface-to-air missile in use by the German, Japanese, Greek, Turkish, South Korean, Saudi Arabian, Egyptian, Mexican, UAE, and U.S. Navies. It was orig ...

, AN/SLQ-32(V) 3 ESM, and Phalanx Close-in Weapon System. The current SDTS is the former , now known as ''Ex-Paul F. Foster''. In addition to being a remote-controlled ship, she is a test-bed for numerous systems, technologies, and weapons, ranging from bio-fuels to lasers. She replaced the former in 2003.NSWC Port Hueneme Welcomes New Self Defense Test Ship
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References

{{US-Navy-stub Ships of the United States Navy Autonomous ships Experimental ships