NAVAL DRONES

It's time for our annual wrap-up of the stories on unmanned naval systems that most resonated on this site, social media feeds, and the public writ large.  Here are the top naval drone stories of the year: The introduction of UAVs for maritime missions by non-state actors, specifically migrant rescue and anti-piracy , became reality. The Royal Navy established a UAV Squadron  to intitutionalize its ScanEagle operations . Despite continued operational testing with the X-47B prototype, politics and indecision created further delays with the U.S. Navy's  UCLASS RFP (still not released by the way). Unmanned systems were key in the Malaysian Airlines Flight #370 Search . The  MQ-8C Fire Scout made significant strides towards its first operational deployment. The U.S. Navy's  Swarming USV program , really a plug and play unmanned craft system, garnered significant interest. Interestingly, the story that seemed to p...

The US Navy recently announced that it will make more use of submarine drones, contracting with marine technology developer Teledyne Benthos to re-purpose the Slocum Glider as an instrument used for military activity. The contract is worth $203.7M.   If you haven’t heard of it yet, here is what the Slocum Glider is: a 5 foot-long autonomous underwater vehicle capable of moving to specific locations and descending to depths of 4,000 feet. It is driven by variable buoyancy, and it can move both horizontally and vertically.   The Slocum Glider can be programmed to patrol for weeks at a time, collecting data on its environment, surfacing to transmit to shore while downloading new instructions at regular intervals. Compared to traditional methods, the drones have a relative small cost: the need for personnel and infrastructure is reduced to its minimum and the vehicle is able to work around the clock and around the calendar. It works very well: in November 2012, an auto...

If airborne search assets succeed in finding the wreckage of Malaysian Airlines Flight #370, what happens US Navy Towed Pinger Locator. next?  Generally, the key to determining the cause of air plane crashes at sea is dependent upon the recovery of the data recorder, or "black box" as it is generally known.  A black box has an acoustic "pinger" which is activated upon hitting the water and transmits a signal, sometimes for up to 30 days.  Once crash debris is spotted on the ocean, salvage experts will use predictive modeling software to determine an approximate location of where the aircraft actually went down.  Even small ocean currents of a knot or two can push floating debris hundreds of miles away from the original crash site over a two week period. At that point, if it is determined that one or more of the regional navies involved will search for the black box, a towed pinger locator will be deployed from a ship, a...