Underwater Glider System Study

The goals of this study are to determine how to advance from present capabilities of underwater glider (and hybrid motorglider) technology to what could be possible within the next few years; and to identify critical research issues that must be resolved to make such advancements possible. These goals were pursued by merging archival flight data with numerical model results and system spreadsheet analysis to extrapolate from the present state-of-the–art in underwater (UW) gliders to potential future technology levels. Using existing underwater gliders (legacy gliders) as calibration, this merger approach was applied to six basic glider types that were conceived to satisfy the requirements of five functional classes. Functional classes were posed based on an evaluation of the attributes and limitations of underwater gliders in the context of a broad range of potential Navy needs in the littoral and deep-water regimes. Those functional classes included: Depth- Unlimited Roaming; Depth-Limited Roaming; Virtual Station Keeping; Payload Delivery; Level-Flight Hybrids.