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More on Underwater Gliders
ianjk writes "Abcnews.com is reporting on two underwater gliders developed by the University of Washington and Webb Research. Both use very little energy and have quite long ranges (thousands of kilometers). Of course, the US Navy is showing quite an interest in the project." We mentioned these earlier.
From a technical Navy employee...
You would think that the Navy would be getting all sorts of funding for these types of projects nowadays... but really what's happening is that funding is being diverted to war operations type stuff... so those of us working on new technology for the Navy have gotten huge budget cuts...so don't expect much in the way of cool techie things any time soon.
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
Have been under study for years- the Mk48 Torpedo is basically a wire-guided drone; it reports information back to the mother sub and can be steered using a joystick.
The USN has been looking into extreme-depth tethered drones- really strange things start happening to sonar and weapons performance at extreme depth.
Of course, this will all come in handy if the USN needs to fight the Third Battle Of the North Atlantic, but for littoral (inshore) warfare, the navy might want to start researching some brown-water navy stuff.
The energy being used by the glider is harnessed through dropping and rising in relation to the Ocean's surface. It is really not a comparison between Air going gliders and Undersea going gliders, or the effeciencies thereof. It is about utilizing the conditions of the ocean itself as a powersource for a long endurance underwater craft. Its also pretty damn cool!
As for the sea transport bit at the end... While it didn't actually have anything to do with the article, you should probably be aware that most products arrive from overseas on ships- not airplanes. That's why the lockout of the longshoreman on the West Coast last week required Bush II to step in.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?