[Archport] Vessels offer glimpse of what lies beneath

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Vessels offer glimpse of what lies beneath

Providence Journal, 10:09 AM EDT on Thursday, May 22, 2008

By Richard Salit, Journal Staff Writer

NEWPORT — You won't find any historic or dignified names on these vessels, no USS John F. Kennedy or USS Saratoga.

Instead, the collection of sleek unmanned undersea craft on display yesterday in a warehouse-style building at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center bore the type of numbing technological acronyms — BPAUV, REMUS, MARV and HAUV — you'd expect from the military and the scientists gathered here to show them off.

While their names may be inscrutable, their purpose is clear: To protect Navy vessels from hidden mines, the weapon that has wreaked more damage and sunk more ships than all others combined. What isn't so obvious, however, is the devices' practical applications, particularly their ability to reveal what's on, and beneath the sea floor.

For the past two weeks, the Navy has brought together civilian and military experts from around the country to demonstrate and test how the high-tech apparatus can be used to help marine archaeologists. The experiments have focused on several wrecks off the shores of Aquidneck Island, including British warships scuttled in shallow waters during the Revolutionary War.

"This is state-of-the-art stuff," said D.K. Abbass, founding director of the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project, which has been searching for, and studying, shipwrecks in state waters since 1991. "The images are just so much better."

The event that has united Abbass and her fellow archaeologists with military officials and technologists is AUVfest 2008, a periodic gathering the Navy hosts to support the development of so-called "autonomous undersea vehicles." This is the first time since its creation more than 10 years ago that AUVfest has been held in Newport. It began May 12 and ends tomorrow.

Yesterday, the media was invited into the secretive and typically off-limits Naval Undersea Warfare Center, while today Navy admirals and nearly 200 other guests will get to tour the same areas. The highlight of the event is a building on Narragansett Bay, where the collection of undersea vessels is on display.

Most are yellow and look smooth and narrow like torpedoes. A few have wings while one even has four fins, making it the only one "capable of swimming and crawling," according to a brochure. All have a variety of imaging systems, such as sonar, that use acoustics or magnetics or other properties to detect underwater objects. They weigh from 180 to 2,000 pounds.

The smallest of these, the HAUV, with its vaguely crab-like shape, demonstrated its ability to closely survey a ship's hull for explosives. Its operators sent it under water to inspect the bottom of the mothballed aircraft carrier Saratoga, tied to a pier near AUVfest's expo center.

"It moves without touching it," said Jerome Vaganay, a spokesman for its designer, Bluefin Robotics. It follows a precise pattern during an inspection, he said, but "you can stop the vehicle with a joystick" to have it focus on suspicious areas.

Those on hand came from government labs, private companies and academic institutions, such as applied research labs at Pennsylvania State University and the University of Texas, according to William H. Schopfel, demonstration manager for the Navy's Office of Naval Research.

He and others emphasized the collaboration between the Navy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, the University of Rhode Island and area archaeologists, including Abbass' group and representatives of the state Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission.

The commission owns the four abandoned wrecks that the high-tech instruments were sent to probe during the past two weeks. These included the British frigates Cerberus and Lark, which were ordered scuttled when cornered by larger French warships that came to the aid of America in 1778. The other two wrecks included a wooden barge, off Prudence Island, believed to be carrying granite blocks and a more modern steel ship.

During the week, information from the various undersea vehicles that scrutinized the murky Bay waters was transmitted to a room at NUWC equipped with computers and large monitors. There, operators sought to instantly produce images of objects being studied and to create three-dimensional maps of the underwater areas.

"The exercise is to see if we can use more technologies … to secure a port as quickly as possible," Schopfel said.

But other benefits include improved charts, detection of undersea debris and abandoned fishing gear and archaeological discoveries.

"We found something that isn't on the charts," said Schopfel. "It is a large piece of metal on the bottom."

He showed yesterday's audience numerous images of the sea floor that showed ghostly, blurred objects and patterns. One, he said, was curved and resembled an anchor while another was long and narrow and metallic.

"Everyone is pretty much in agreement this is a cannon," he said.

"The technology is very impressive and moves us forward in very exciting ways," Abbass said.