DUDE, THERE’S MY DRONE!

Joy in sub­ville: the U.S. Navy has found its mine-​​sweeping, torpedo-​​shaped drone.
When the mini-​​submarine was lost off of the coast of Norway nearly two weeks ago, the local gov­ern­ment sent out a fran­tic, nation­wide call, ask­ing their good cit­i­zens to be on the look­out for the 3.5 meter-​​long, yellow-​​orangish ‘bot. The American mine­hunter Swift joined in the search, too, leav­ing a mil­i­tary exer­cises to go hunt for the Battlespace Preparation Autonomous Underwater Vehicle.
Today, the drone was found — nearly 200 miles from where it dis­ap­peared, the AP reports.

A man going for walk along the coast near Stavanger, on Norway’s west coast, spot­ted a small, torpedo-​​like object marked “Department of Navy” grounded just off the beach and called the police.
“A police offi­cer went to the scene, found the sub­ma­rine and pulled it into land,” Arvid Jensen, of the Stavanger police, told Norwegian news agency NTB…
A Norwegian Navy boat was imme­di­ately dis­patched to the scene to recover the sub­ma­rine so it could be returned to the Americans.

THERE’S MORE: The Navy is blam­ing the fresh water of Norway’s fjords for the drone dis­ap­pear­ance, accord­ing to Inside Defense.

The weather forced some of the [drone’s] exper­i­men­ta­tion to take place inside a fjord off the coast of Christiansand, a small city on the south coast of Norway. Unbeknownst to Navy offi­cials at the time, the fjord had sig­nif­i­cant amounts of fresh water, a grave prob­lem for the UUV which is bal­lasted for saltier water. [The Office of Naval Research’s Tim] Schnoor said the vehi­cle sank through the fresh­wa­ter layer about 100 feet down before becom­ing neu­trally buoy­ant between the fresh and salt water layer.
“There was cer­tainly noth­ing tech­ni­cally wrong with the vehi­cle, he said in an inter­view ear­lier today. “It was just improp­erly pre­pared for the water mass in which it was launched.“
Schnoor said he has been informed the recov­ered vehi­cle is still in “good shape” and will be returned shortly.

May 11th, 2004 | Drones | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.