US Navy deploying Beaufort Sea sensors

During testimony to the U.S. Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee on May 14, Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, chief of naval research for the U.S. Navy, said that in March the Navy had deployed sensors in the Beaufort Sea, offshore northern Alaska, and would be measuring the retreat of summer sea ice. The comment, which came in response to quizzing by Sen. Lisa Murkowski about the Navy’s Arctic research, presumably referred to passive acoustic monitors that had been proposed under the Navy’s Assured Arctic Awareness Program, a program conducted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA.

Klunder also said that the Navy will be going to Prudhoe Bay in July to deploy autonomous underwater and surface vehicles to complement the monitoring operation.

According to information on the DARPA website, remote sensing “may offer affordable advantages over traditional methods of monitoring the region - aircraft, satellites or manned ships and submarines - due to the great distances in the Arctic.”

With ship traffic likely to increase during the summer and commercial activity focused on the seafloor, DARPA plans to develop new technologies for an advanced, distributed sensor system for the year-round monitoring of the Arctic, above and below the ice, to provide situational awareness without the need for a human presence, the website says. The research program seeks advances in sensor systems, to enable station-keeping that is rugged enough to withstand Arctic conditions, is economical to operate and has minimal economic impact, the website says.

- Alan Bailey