Posted on 12/25/2013 2:18:35 PM PST by MarkBsnr
While you were out shopping Sunday for those last-minute holiday gifts, the Navy pushed ahead with its own vision of an underwater sugar plum: a fleet of “long endurance, transoceanic gliders harvesting all energy from the ocean thermocline.”
Fact is, the Navy has been seeking—pretty much under the surface—a way to do underwater what the Air Force has been doing in the sky: prowl stealthily for long periods of time, and gather the kind of data that could turn the tide in war. The Navy’s goal is to send an underwater drone, which it calls a “glider,” on a roller-coaster-like path for up to five years. >P>A fleet of them could swarm an enemy coastline, helping the Navy hunt down minefields and target enemy submarines. Unlike their airborne cousins...Navy gliders draw energy from the ocean’s thermocline, a pair of layers of warm water near the surface and chillier water below. The glider changes its density, relative to the outside water, causing the 5-foot (1.5m)-long torpedo-like vehicle to either rise or sink—a process called hydraulic buoyancy. Its stubby wings translate some of that up-and-down motion into a forward speed of about a mile (1.6 km) an hour in a sawtooth pattern...Such information is critical for calibrating sonar to ensure it provides the most accurate underwater picture possible. But there are additional efforts underway to convert such data into militarily-handy information...
Slocum Gliders rise and fall as they traverse the ocean’s depths, transmitting what they learn via tail-mounted antennas that periodically break through the water’s surface...“Carrying a wide variety of sensors, they can be programmed to patrol for weeks at a time, surfacing to transmit their data to shore while downloading new instructions at regular intervals, realizing a substantial cost savings compared to traditional surface ships,” the company’s Webb Research division says.
(Excerpt) Read more at swampland.time.com ...
So it would be prudent to scratch Sub-Aquatic Lair as a bugout location off the list?
They have been testing the heck out of these probes, but the real money is when they mate them with the devilish MK-48 torpedo.
Someone in jest said that once an MK-48 has been fired at you, the best thing you can do is ground your ship, abandon it to its fate, and have the crew change into civilian clothes as they go into town. This will force the MK-48 to hunt down each of you individually.
Related...
SCOUT: The Autonomous Transatlantic Boat
http://gotransat.com/
They used Kickstarter to fund their project.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/601285608/scout-the-autonomous-transatlantic-boat
News article about it.
http://www.engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticles/ArticleID/6400/Robotic-Boat-Attempts-Atlantic-Crossing.aspx
I am not getting how it generates power.
Exactly the same way that winds occur in the atmosphere.
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