"Earlier this month the U.S. Navy's research office rented out a conference center in Washington, D.C., to show off some of its hottest new technology.

On display was an electromagnetic gun, and drones that could swarm around an enemy ship. But it wasn't all James Bond-style gadgets.

In a little side room was a yellow machine, shaped like a torpedo with stubby wings sticking out of its side. "Looks like a banana — straightened out banana — to me, but that's maybe just the way my mind works," says Martin Jeffries, an Arctic researcher with the Office for Naval Research, which paid for the development of the strange device."

Geoff Brumfiel reports for NPR February 15, 2015. [2]