The U.S. Navy is set to demonstrate the ability of an uncrewed underwater vehicle, or UUV, to launch and recover a smaller drone that can both swim and fly. The service says it wants the two platforms to be able to go through the deployment and retrieval processes autonomously — without any human involvement.
The Office of Naval Research (ONR) announced today that it had hired SubUAS to “develop and demonstrate launch and recovery capabilities of the Naviator from and to a UUV (using a UUV surrogate).” The total value of the contract, which was formally awarded on November 8, is nearly $3.7 million, if all options are exercised.
What ONR is currently referring to as the Subsurface Autonomous Naviator Delivery (SAND) system must be able to launch and recover the Naviator “without a human-in-the-loop,” according to a brief statement about the deal with SubUAS.
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“Naviator is scalable to multiple sizes, with a 16-foot wingspan and 0-90+ lbs payload, and is optimized for a variety of sensors, cameras, and other payloads. Naviator is faster to deploy than existing underwater Remote Operating Vehicles (ROVs), and is also able to reach its target faster via flight,” according to a 2020 U.S. government press release. “It has longer embedded mission capabilities than similarly sized drones, and utilizes precise GPS and visual position hold, as well as power-saving buoy sentry mode. The platform can easily surface, send data, receive new instructions, and begin a new mission.”
The same release also said that Naviator was capable of “tetherless operation with remote pilot control, and the ability to conduct autonomous missions.” SubUAS’s website notes that smaller versions of the drone could be used in swarms.
A rendering from SubUAS showing another Naviator configuration. SubUAS
SubUAS has said in the past that existing Naviator types are capable of reaching underwater speeds of up to 3.5 knots, and could potentially get up to 10 knots depending on their size and configuration. It’s unclear how fast the drone can fly in its aerial mode.
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“Mines are probably the biggest problem for the Navy,” Diez, the professor at Rutgers behind the Naviator design, said back in 2015. “They need to map where mines are. Now there are a lot of false positives. This could be a better technology to rapidly investigate these potential threats.”
A graphic depicting, in very general terms, how a Naviator might help locate mines in its underwater mode, surface to transmit that data back to friendly forces, and then go back down below the waves to continue searching for more threats. SubUAS
In a naval context, “the drones could emerge quickly from the depths, get a quick glimpse of enemy ship deployments, and then hide again,” a news item from Rutgers at that time further noted. “An air-and-water drone could also help engineers inspect underwater structures, such as bridge and dock piers, ship hulls and oil drilling platforms.”
In this role, Naviator could help protect friendly forces by checking the hulls of ships and coastal infrastructure below the waterline for evidence of mines being placed or other signs of hostile infiltration.
A rendering depicting a Naviator drone inspecting underwater oil or natural gas-related infrastructure. SubUAS
Naviators could help with search and rescue missions, too. “For instance, the vehicle could scan the water from above to locate missing swimmers and sailors, and upon spotting shipwreck debris could dip underwater to further examine the scene,” Rutgers’ 2015 news item notes.
There are also various potential civilian scientific research and commercial applications for the Naviator.
For the U.S. Navy, being able to employ Naviators in swarms and deploy them discreetly using UUVs, which themselves could be launched via crewed submarines, opens up additional possibilities and offers additional operational flexibility. For instance, a swarm of Naviators could scour a broader area around the UUV for threats and do so relatively rapidly.
The Navy also said just last week it hopes, as part of a program called Razorback, to begin fielding a new UUV that can be launched and recovered using the torpedo tubes on its existing crewed submarines within a year. This follows the cancellation of the Snakehead UUV program last year in part due to that design being too large to find inside a standard torpedo tube, limiting the options for deployment and retrieval. The Navy has developed other torpedo-tube-launched drones in the past, but these have typically not been readily recoverable by the same means.
It remains to be seen what will come from the Navy’s new project to launch and recover Naviators from other underwater drones, and do so without the need for direct human involvement. What is clear is that this effort is completely in line with the kind of capabilities the service is pushing to field in the near term.
