A recent Navy and Coast Guard experiment to demonstrate certain aspects of future sea-going sensor packages in the port security role was successful, an industry official whose firm supported the experiment tells TR2.
The week long experiment late last month in the Tampa Bay, Fla., region made use of two autonomous underwater vehicle systems (AUVS) that are part of the Navy’s Mine Countermeasures Mission Modules that will be deployed aboard Littoral Combat Ships. Participants included the Coast Guard, Navy, the non-profit research firm SRI International, the National Forensics Science and Technology Center and Florida State University.
The AUVS components of the mission module were deployed independent of the LCS, which is still in the development stage. The systems were used to do baseline scans of the port environment to give the responsible security officials a good understanding of the subsurface environment, says Larry Langebrake, director of SRI’s National Center for Maritime and Port Security.
Then after SRI introduced mock improvised explosive device (IED) threats into the port environment, the Navy used the AUVS to search the marine area with sonar-based technology. The systems provide photographic images and in the case of the experiment led to the discovery of the inert IEDs, Langebrake says.
Another part of the experiment included the recovery of exploded IED fragments for forensic analysis and support. In this case an underwater team used special techniques to recover fingerprints from the fragments and then relayed those prints to Washington, D.C., where they were checked against a database, Langebrake says.
The underwater team was also able to find residual traces of TNT on the bomb fragments, he says.
The experiment was also an opportunity to work through interagency communications, which also went well, Langebrake says.