A recently awarded contract reveals that the U.S. Navy is stepping up its AI capabilities in order to 'hunt' for Iranian mines along the Strait of Hormuz - one of the most important shipping routes on the planet.

Donald Trump said that the U.S. Navy was clearing Iranian mines out of the Strait. This is a crucial sea route for oil shipping, and its disruption is increasingly damaging the global economy. The search for underwater explosives could take months, despite the tenuous ceasefire that has existed between Iran and the U.S. in their week-long conflict.

This process could be accelerated by a?contract worth up to $100,000,000 for San Francisco's artificial intelligence company Domino Data Lab. The software can train?underwater robots to detect new types of mines within days.

Thomas Robinson, Domino’s Chief Operating Officer, told. It's becoming an AI job. The Navy is paying for the platform which enables it to train, govern and field AI at a pace required for contested water that blocks global trade and threatens sailors.

The U.S. Navy has awarded a contract worth up to $99.7million to expand Domino’s role as AI backbone for Project AMMO, Accelerated Machine-Learning for Maritime Operation, which aims to make underwater mine-detection faster, more accurate and less dependent on humans.

The software combines data from multiple sensors, including side scan sonar and imaging systems. It allows the Navy monitor how various AI detection models perform in the field.

The Navy and Domino's core pitch is speed. Prior to the company's involvement in the Navy's unmanned?vehicles?vehicles, updating AI models to power the UUVs to recognize new or previously unknown mines could take as long as?six month. Domino claims to have reduced this cycle from months to just days.

Robinson explained the relevance of Domino's technology to the Middle East Crisis: "If UUVs were in the Baltic Sea, trained on Russian mines and then needed to be?"deployed? to the Strait of Hormuz in order to detect Iranian mines. The Navy could be prepared in a week instead of a year."

A Navy spokesperson was not immediately available to comment. (Reporting and editing by Tom Hogue in Washington, with Mike Stone reporting from Washington)

(source: Reuters)