Called the "Sea Hunter," the 132-foot (40 meters) unmanned vessel is still getting its figurative sea legs, but the performance tests off the coast of San Diego have steered the project on a course to enter the U.S. Navy's fleet by 2018, according to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the branch of the U.S. Department of Defense responsible for developing new technologies for the military.

The Sea Hunter "surpassed all performance objectives for speed, maneuverability, stability, seakeeping, acceleration/deceleration and fuel consumption," representatives from Leidos, the company developing the Sea Hunter, said in a statement.

The autonomous submarine-hunting ship was christened in April, and is part of a DARPA initiative to expand the use of artificial intelligence in the military. The drone ship's mission will be to seek out and neutralize enemy submarines, according to the agency.