Government

Navy Now Focusing on Underwater Drones: ‘Game Changers’

Navy Testing Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (UUV) in Narragansett Bay

Christopher Del Mastro, head of anti submarine warfare mobil targets stands next to an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) in a lab at the Naval Undersea War Center in Middletown, RI. (Photo: AP/Stephan Savoia)

NEWPORT, R.I. (TheBlaze/AP) — UAVs — unmanned aerial vehicles — have been getting at lot of attention in the media for various reasons of late, but they’re not the only drones out there. Underwater versions – unmanned undersea vehicles or UUVs — are being tested by the military for warfare and other purposes.

(Related: Read other recent stories on TheBlaze about UAVs)

Just beneath the placid, sailboat-dotted surface of Narragansett Bay, torpedo-shaped vehicles spin and pivot to their own rhythm, carrying out missions programmed by their U.S. Navy masters. The bay known as a playground for the rich is the testing ground for the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, where the Navy is working toward its goal of achieving a squadron of self-driven, undersea vehicles.

One of the gadgets recently navigated its own way from Woods Hole, Mass., to Newport, completing several pre-set tasks in what the military calls an unprecedented feat.

Technology under consideration by the military is often tested aboard cylinder-shaped vehicles with a diameter of about 20 inches. But the center also tests its own prototypes, including one dubbed Razor, which can propel itself by using flippers, like a turtle, for stealth.

The Navy hopes its drones will eventually pilot themselves across oceans. The vehicles are already used to detect mines and map the ocean floor and, with tweaks over the next several years, the military says they will be applied more to intelligence gathering and, in the more distant future, anti-submarine warfare.

“We do see these autonomous undersea vehicles as game changers,” said Christopher Egan, a program manager at NUWC.

Watch AP’s report on the UUVs:

Compared with aerial drones, the undersea vehicles can be challenging to control from a distance. The water distorts the transmission of signals, and the drones have to contend with boat traffic, swirling currents, and obstacles on the ocean floor.

They are typically powered by batteries, but their endurance has been sharply limited by the lack of a stronger power source that will allow for safe handling by sailors who deploy and collect the devices aboard submarines.

With advances in alternative energy sources, particularly fuel cells, the Navy says it is close to achieving a fully independent drone. By 2017, the Navy aims to have a large, unmanned vehicle that can stay out for 70 days. Within the next decade, it wants to field its first full squadron.

Navy Testing Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (UUV) in Narragansett Bay

A group of scientists at the Naval Undersea War Center work on an emergency shutdown system for an unmanned underwater vehicle in a lab. (Photo: AP/Stephan Savoia)

“We’ve seen the advances of unmanned aerial vehicles and what that provides to the war fighter,” said Navy Capt. Brian Howes, who is involved in planning for the vehicles as commander of Submarine Development Squadron 5 in Washington state. “We’re pushing the technology to have the same leap for our unmanned undersea vehicles.”

In a time of tight federal budgets, the Navy also sees drones as a cost-effective way to extend the reach of its submarine fleet, which has been gradually shrinking in size since the end of the Cold War.

Norman Friedman, a New York-based naval analyst, said the UUVs are a necessary investment. Whether they deliver on their promise, he said, will depend on success at finding the right power plant.

“The big obstacle is going to be energy,” he said. “I don’t get the feeling anyone has jumped up and said this is not a problem anymore.”

The bay is perfect environment with shallow water, varied features on the bottom and commercial traffic, Egan said. At times, however, the engineers have to contend with interference from pleasure boaters, including one man who was approached by a Navy vessel after trying to grab a vehicle near the surface.

“We’ve had occasional interactions where a boat operator sees an opportunity to maybe snap up a cool device,” Egan said. “We’ve had to deter them on occasion.”

The Navy has used unmanned vehicles to simulate enemy submarines for training purposes since the 1970s, but officials say they have made dramatic leaps in autonomy.

The vehicle that completed the 26-hour voyage from Cape Cod to Newport in October 2010, for example, plotted its own course without relying on GPS positioning or other communications, Egan said. Guiding itself by features on the sea floor, it passed through the pylons of a bridge, circumnavigated the island of Jamestown and surfaced in a pre-determined spot inside the harbor.

The laboratory at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, which has 65 engineers and scientists dedicated to UUVs, works closely with private companies, academic institutions and other government agencies involved in similar research. The gadgets have a wide range of applications beyond the military, as demonstrated last year by vehicles that recovered the flight data recorder from an Air France plane that crashed in the mid-Atlantic.

The submarine community is particularly eager to see what the vehicles can do. Electric Boat in Groton, Conn., has designed a module to help future attack subs deploy and recover the drones, transporting them through the payload tubes.

“If you can do reconnaissance with multiple UUVs or one UUV, then in effect you extend the area the submarine touches,” Friedman said.

Comments (22)

  • Ironeagle
    Posted on August 7, 2012 at 7:10pm

    Now if they can just get these things to take and hold a beach.

    Report Post » Ironeagle  
  • Deibido
    Posted on August 7, 2012 at 4:16pm

    Do we ever do anything anymore that is not published and exploited? The way we operate now…would have cost us WW2. Tell everything, publish everything, and lie about all the rest. Hell-of-a-country in the last twenty years! Wake the F@@K-up!

    No telling what the current administration has given-up in the last four years just to be friends with our enemies and build a One-World government… When a new administration come into power the Obama skeletons will be falling out like roaches in a Detroit housing project!

    Report Post »  
    • stumpy68
      Posted on August 7, 2012 at 4:33pm

      If we are seeing it now chances are its already a done deal and their working on the next thing.

      Report Post » stumpy68  
    • Spirit 72
      Posted on August 7, 2012 at 5:03pm

      @ DEIBIDO;
      Pre-zactly. WW2 saw 11% of our men in uniform; Vietnam saw 4.3% over a 12 yr period which included the Cold War. Since 2001, we have had only a total of 0.45% of our population in uniform. Can you imagine 34 million in uniform today (as an equal percent to WW2 participation) vs what few we do have? That was on the heels of a Depression, too.

      Report Post »  
    • smokeysmoke
      Posted on August 7, 2012 at 5:36pm

      right who needs a fleet of subs when you got computer controlled devices to recon and attack

      Report Post » smokeysmoke  
    • Chuck Stein
      Posted on August 7, 2012 at 5:59pm

      @ Deibido
      Thanks for saving me some time — I was about to post pretty much the same.
      Underwater stuff can be kept secret a lot more easily than stuff up in the air.
      Robots should make it even easier — no crews to get drunk and tell tales.
      So much for “The Silent Service”

      Report Post »  
    • Spirit 72
      Posted on August 7, 2012 at 6:45pm

      @ Smoke & Chuck
      Pls see my 1st post below with Seadog.
      NOTE: “Seeing” them is not enough. We need the capability (perceived by the enemy or real) to “shadow” any ship or sub with a silent & small torpedo with nice sized warhead. The Chinese are increasing their sub fleet at an alarming rate.
      HOWEVER, we also need a White House & Congress who are not as leaky as a strainer. That is why we must continue to develop and to be vigilant about who is in the WH. It is not just our troops lives which are at stake!

      Report Post »  
  • anonymitty
    Posted on August 7, 2012 at 4:14pm

    If shielding can be worked out, the power plant for UUV’s could be a lump of some highly radioactive element. Don’t fuel the UUV until right before the mission, of course. There are several isotopes with half lives on the order of a year. The mission could thus go several months without fueling or coming up for air, and the “fuel” could be stored for weeks or a month or two aboard the launching vessel.

    If the fuel was released into the environment, the short half life would ensure that very little of it would remain after five years or so. This isn‘t something we’d want to do as a general rule, but if a real war came along, some short-lived, small-mass pollution would be the least of our worries.

    Report Post »  
  • Seadawg
    Posted on August 7, 2012 at 3:52pm

    “contend with interference from pleasure boaters” –

    Who’s ocean is it? Yours? How did your device end up that close to a boater anyway? Were you doing some spying with it already?

    Report Post » Seadawg  
    • Spirit 72
      Posted on August 7, 2012 at 4:10pm

      What diff does it make? We already have a spectrum wavelength and receiver in a few satellites which can “see” through water in order to track subs. Suface vessels? No problemo to track.

      The real question is: “Why would they need it if not to provide a nuke powered torpedo to follow enemy ships or drug subs?”

      Now as for your libertarian paranoia, cool it; high seas belong to no one.

      Report Post »  
    • muffythetuffy
      Posted on August 7, 2012 at 4:19pm

      Why are we still building $10 Billion aircraft carriers? They are as vulnerable and obsolete as battle ships. Small stealth hydrofoil high speed warships that cannot even be seen from space are the weapons of the future naval battle. We no longer need vast aircraft carriers to defend colonies, allies or a merchant marine.

      Report Post »  
    • Spirit 72
      Posted on August 7, 2012 at 4:52pm

      @ muffy…

      Wow.
      1. Our carriers occupy the safest bubble on earth. If they were so vulnerable, why hasnt one been sunk or hit?
      2. Having aircraft with lots of sting-power available to strike virtually anywhere on the globe is what defines us as a protected country.
      3. Perhaps you do not remember all the hospital facilities and water our carriers provided for the tsunami struck Indonesian countries, or Haiti & Chile just hours after their horrid earthquakes left many with no infrastructure, food, water, or hospitals.

      Report Post »  
    • Seadawg
      Posted on August 7, 2012 at 5:01pm

      Yeah I’ll ask my own questions. I appreciate you wanting to speak for me though. That darn libertarian paranoia, as you call it, just gets in the way every time doesn’t it. I mean really, it’s not like the government would ever chose to use this drone technology on its own people right? Sarcasm aside, yeah I definitely see there’s good to come from this type of technology, just not sure if it’s another pandoras box to open up.

      Report Post » Seadawg  
    • Spirit 72
      Posted on August 7, 2012 at 5:11pm

      @SeaDawg

      Good points. As I posted in the Apple/Amazon hacking story… “we must be vigilant, folks!” Because we have the technology does not mean it will always be used for the right reasons. That is why we must be extremely careful as to whom we elect.

      The thing that I ask liberals about guns usually silences them…”Do you think that criminals will go away once we make all law abiding citizens turn in their guns?” Same applies to our country. We need to keep the leading edge, but we also need to keep our neighbors informed about those who are willing to be responsible with it.

      Report Post »  
    • Seadawg
      Posted on August 7, 2012 at 5:19pm

      @ Spirit 72 – roger that

      Report Post » Seadawg  
    • Spirit 72
      Posted on August 7, 2012 at 6:35pm

      @ SEADAWG
      :-)
      “Eternal vigilance [and better weaponry] is the price of freedom”

      Report Post »  
  • Mutiny
    Posted on August 7, 2012 at 1:50pm

    War is going to become very ugly once there is no risk on one side. The side without the robots will revert to deadlier and more disturbing tactics.

    Report Post » Mutiny  
    • Stoic one
      Posted on August 7, 2012 at 3:23pm

      You have a valid point. If the opposition see nothing to gain by restraint, then why not loose everything you have..

      Report Post » Stoic one  
    • Spirit 72
      Posted on August 7, 2012 at 4:11pm

      @ MUTINY

      Ditto

      Report Post »  
  • Rothbardian_in_the_Cleve
    Posted on August 7, 2012 at 1:03pm

    How long til law enforcement puts these in our pools, ponds, lakes and bathtubs?

    Report Post » Rothbardian_in_the_Cleve  

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