Revolution in waiting: Commercial work trumps military in evolution of unmanned undersea vehicles

摘要

When U.S. sailors slipped a torpedo-shaped robot into the harbor at Umm Qasr, Iraq, during the U.S. invasion in March 2003, they did so mindful of a bleak episode in American naval history. In 1991, with U.S. forces preparing to expel Iraq from Kuwait, the amphibious assault ship Tripoli struck a mine off the coast of Kuwait while serving as a base for mine-sweeping helicopters. The explosion ripped a 16-by-20-foot gash in the ship's hull, injuring four sailors. The guided-missile cruiser Princeton tried to rush to the Tripoli's aid, but it too was rocked by mine explosions that damaged its rudder and buckled its deck. Twelve years later, at Umm Qasr, the Navy used trained dolphins and an unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV) called a Remote Environmental Monitoring Unit System (REMUS) to prevent history from repeating itself. Back and forth, like a lawnmower cutting grass, the torpedoshaped REMUS traveled for 16 hours, its side-scanning sonar searching for obstructions up to 150 feet off to either side.