Admiral Gary Roughead, the Navy’s top officer, came to the Office of Naval Research’s science and technology conference with one major item on his wish list. Can some engineer out there please get a power source in place for drone submarines?
Roughead’s been a consistent advocate of developing undersea drones that can spend weeks at a time hunting for intelligence and detecting mines. He considers them a potential “breakthrough” in naval warfare, since, among other reasons, spending long times at great depths underwater is physically taxing on human physiology. Developing those unmanned subs are part of his guidance for the Navy in 2011. But right now, the Navy doesn’t know how it can send a drone sub out below the sea with enough power for a weeks-long mission. Cracking the power problem would be the “one thing” he’d most like to see the Navy’s scientists accomplish, Roughead told the conference.
Even though the Chief of Naval Operations has been calling for the Navy to get into gear on underwater drones for the past year, Roughead told Danger Room after his lunchtime speech that “we’ve not really energized the base that may want to come forward with options.” That’s because most of the Navy’s “attention and investments” in drone subs “were going to the sensors” that they’d carry to collect information. (Like, perhaps, a “Blue Dart” signals-intelligence sensor.)
But that doesn’t take advantage of drone subs’ potential. “If I have a wonderful sonar system that I can keep at sea for a day, that’s not really useful to me,” Roughead told Danger Room. “I need something I can keep out for weeks, that can move in strong ocean currents, that can close distances quickly. And so we’ve redirected ourselves, we’re looking at every potential suggestion, to see where we can take this.”
Rear Admiral Nevin Carr, the chief of Naval research, said he wasn’t sure how long it could take to develop those fuel sources. But he told Danger Room that “increased attention” on powering up submarine drones is on its way. “We’re getting tremendous input from industry. We don’t have a magic bullet yet,” Carr said.
Two options Carr said were under exploration: fuel-cell technologies and radioisotope thermoelectric generators “that can provide low amounts of power for very long periods of time.” If the Navy went the radioisotope thermoelectric generator route for powering the drone subs, it might start thinking about setting up drone refueling stations. “You might deploy a remotely-manned underwater generator that sits on the bottom in a secure area,” Carr said, “which is a secure location where your forward-deployed vehicles might come back and recharge.”
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