{"id":37046,"date":"2026-09-23T06:27:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T10:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/?p=37046"},"modified":"2026-09-22T09:55:41","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T13:55:41","slug":"underwater-robot-torpedo-tube-submarine-drones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/underwater-robot-torpedo-tube-submarine-drones\/37046\/","title":{"rendered":"A 12.75-inch underwater robot autonomously entered a submerged 21-inch torpedo-tube test fixture in New York and then backed itself out, a precision maneuver that could eventually let U.S. submarines launch and recover drones without sending divers into the water"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Getting an underwater robot<\/a> home can be harder than sending it out. U.S. shipbuilder HII\u2019s REMUS 620 demonstrated that return trip by docking autonomously inside a submerged torpedo-tube test fixture<\/a> at Seneca Lake, New York, then backing out and separating safely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The demonstration helped underpin a submarine launch-and-recovery contract HII announced on April 27, 2026. But there is an important boundary between the achievement and the ambition. The REMUS 620 test used equipment representing a Virginia-class submarine\u2019s torpedo tube, not an operating submarine at sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A narrow opening with an important qualification<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The drone\u2019s hull measures 12.75 inches across, compared with a 21-inch torpedo tube. Subtracting those diameters gives roughly 4.1 inches on either side when centered, before accounting for the docking capsule and other hardware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Read More: In 1999, workers filled a 42-foot nuclear reactor vessel with 200 tons of concrete and moved the 1,020-ton package 300 miles by barge and a 320-wheel trailer, but 791 spent fuel assemblies from the same Oregon plant are still waiting in storage today<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

That calculation conveys the scale of the challenge, but it is not a published measurement of actual docking clearance. HII\u2019s announcement confirms successful autonomous recovery without giving a numerical steering tolerance or describing the water\u2019s visibility during the test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How the drone docks and leaves backward<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The REMUS 620 docked with a device called SAFECAP, short for \u201cshock and fire enclosure capsule,\u201d positioned inside the submerged fixture. It also demonstrated a \u201creverse swimout,\u201d backing away from the tube rather than turning around inside it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HII worked with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)<\/a> and the Navy\u2019s Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Newport on the demonstration, announced in October 2025. WHOI\u2019s Carl Hartsfield described teams that \u201crapidly conducted testing runs, quickly evaluated the data, and made substantive adjustments to the vehicle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The practical lesson is that autonomy<\/a> does not mean engineers disappear from the process. In this case, the robot performed the maneuver, while people prepared the system, reviewed results, and refined its behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 110-hour battery figure has a size penalty<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

HII advertises up to 110 hours of endurance and 275 nautical miles of range. Its specification sheet assigns those figures to the three-battery base configuration, measuring about 169 inches long and weighing 719 pounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The single-battery version is considerably smaller at 105 inches and 414 pounds, with 42 hours of endurance and 110 nautical miles of range. Moving to three batteries therefore adds about 5.3 feet and 305 pounds, not just more hours underwater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Add sonar for detailed seafloor imaging<\/a>, and the figures shift again. HII lists 50 hours and 132 nautical miles for a two-battery configuration carrying Kraken sonar, versus 80 hours and 200 nautical miles for the two-battery base vehicle. The three-battery sonar combination is marked \u201cN\/A,\u201d without an explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Read More: Sweden imported 3.86 million metric tons of other countries\u2019 waste in 2024 and gets paid to burn it for heat and electricity, but the system still releases fossil CO2 and is not the same as recycling<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

What the Navy has already demonstrated at sea<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

An older model has gone further in operational testing. The Navy reported in 2025<\/a> that a Yellow Moray vehicle based on the REMUS 600 completed three missions from USS Delaware, each lasting about six to 10 hours, without divers assisting launch and recovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That success followed setbacks, not a flawless first attempt. During earlier operations in a Norwegian fjord, the vehicle failed to return to the torpedo tube, was recovered by a surface vessel, and required a damaged component to be replaced before subsequent successful operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those missions matter because they show why dependable recovery deserves as much attention as endurance. They also belong to the REMUS 600\u2019s record, and should not be presented as proof that the newer 620 completed the same submarine operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A separate role in restoring ocean habitats<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The REMUS 620 also has a documented civilian job. Separately from the naval trials, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has reported using two of these vehicles<\/a> for high-resolution seafloor mapping in its restoration work following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NOAA explains that limited information about deep habitats before the spill made assessing damage and tracking restoration difficult. The wider restoration effort has since gathered thousands of square kilometers of mapping data, helping researchers build models of where coral habitats occur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For researchers, better maps can help turn a largely unseen landscape into something they can study and revisit. That is an environmental use of ocean robotics<\/a>, separate from the military goal of launching and recovering vehicles covertly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the new contract does and does not establish<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The April 2026 award from the Defense Innovation Unit covers a system intended to deploy and recover REMUS vehicles autonomously from Navy submarines. HII\u2019s announcement does not disclose a contract value, delivery quantity, or schedule, and still identifies the REMUS 620 recovery as a test-fixture event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Read More: South Fork Wind\u2019s 12 turbines off Long Island are already working as artificial reefs, and black sea bass catches were ten times higher at nearby Block Island, but scientists warn that more fish around a turbine doesn\u2019t mean more fish in the ocean<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The remaining question is how the 620\u2019s test-fixture performance translates to an operating submarine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The official press release on the contract was published on HII\u2019s website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Getting an underwater robot home can be harder than sending it out. U.S. shipbuilder HII\u2019s REMUS 620 demonstrated that return<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":37045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","resize-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37046"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37175,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37046\/revisions\/37175"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}