The Virginian-Pilot
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CORRECTION: This story originally misspelled the last name of the Navy unit's executive officer. He is Lt. Cmdr. John Schiller.
NORFOLK
They're designed to do the hunting, but this week, four unmanned underwater vehicles are being hunted in Hampton Roads.
Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit 1 from San Diego was operating 13 UUVs on Sunday around Thimble Shoals Channel as part of a military exercise when it lost communication with four of the devices.
Each vehicle, called a REMUS Mark 18, is 5 feet long, weighs 80 pounds and looks like a torpedo. They are mostly black with bright orange rubber pieces.
Together, the four UUVs cost about $1 million, said Lt. Cmdr. John Schiller, executive officer of the unit.
Self-propelled and equipped with a camera and side-scanning sonar, the UUV searches for mines and sends sonar snippets back to a computer for analysis. If contact is lost, it cannot transmit its location.
Schiller said the four missing devices were operating together near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel when they stopped transmitting data.
"Sometimes glitches occur and you lose assets," Schiller said.
The Navy has been searching for the missing equipment - which is not hazardous, Schiller said. Navy dolphins taking part in the exercise were put on the case, and teams in small boats and helicopters have been searching.
Even if the search ends without success, there's a chance the vehicles will turn up.
"They tend to rise to the surface and wash ashore," Schiller said.
Kate Wiltrout, (757) 446-2629, kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com
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Very Hard Mission
Doing anything complex and technical in the field is extremely hard and risky. These are cutting edge technological devices that keep America far more advanced and ahead of those who would like to subjugate us. Our technical culture and heritage is why we lead the world right now. I have seen so many experiments using simulations that aren't the "real deal". You have to experiment in field where you get "graded by god" on your technologies and I applaud all of those programs that figure out how to make these extremely capable clever systems "work in fact". I suspect the Navy will find it's robots, and if it doesn't, the loss is a critical cost to our safety as a nation, and not particularly significant in the grand scheme.
Code Name
Operation Flipper? Don't forget to use that boat horn underwater to call the dolphins back, like in the show.
If this doesn't work, they can always call Aquaman.
I am confident they will recover them and some
American and German WW-2 torpedoes still out there locals still find from time to time.
Maybe they did their job and
Maybe they did their job and found mines......BOOM !!!