Royal Navy conducts trials of underwater glider

The Royal Navy has carried out trials of a new glider-type unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) designed to explore the depths of the North Atlantic.

The UUV was deployed from the Echo-class survey vessel HMS Enterprise and was used to study areas of interest in the seas north of Scotland. It was deployed between the Outer Hebrides and the Faroe Islands and, during its ten-day outing, it studied the water column around the Wyville Thomson Ridge, a rocky plateau on the sea floor.

Throughout its submerged sorties, the glider was controlled remotely, through its online piloting technology, from over 1,100 kilometres away by a team at the National Oceanographic Centre in Southampton.

The glider complemented Enterprise‘s work while the vessel conducted military data gathering tasks in the Atlantic.

The testing team intends to use the data gathered by the glider and compare it to that collected by Enterprise itself.