The United States faces decisions requiring information about the oceans in vastly expanded scales of time and space and from oceanic sectors not accessible with the suite of tools now used by scientists and engineers. Advances in guidance and control, communications, sensors, and other technologies for undersea vehicles can provide an opportunity to understand the oceans' influence on the energy and chemical balance that sustains humankind and to manage and deliver resources from and beneath the sea. This book assesses the state of undersea vehicle technology and opportunities for vehicle applications in science and industry. It provides guidance about vehicle subsystem development priorities and describes how national research can be focused most effectively.

The oceans are a hostile environment, and gathering information on deep-sea life and the seabed is incredibly difficult. Autonomous underwater vehicles are robot submarines that are revolutionizing the way in which researchers and industry obtain data. Advances in technology have resulted in capable vehicles that have made new discoveries on how th

Deep-diving manned submersibles, such as Alvin, which gained worldwide fame when researchers used it to reach the wreck of the Titanic, have helped advance deep-ocean science. But many scholars in this field have noted that the number and capabilities of today's underwater vehicles no longer meet current scientific demands. At the same time, the relative value of manned and unmanned vehicles is often disputed. The report finds that new submersibles-both manned and unmanned-that are more capable than those in the current fleet are needed and would be of great value to the advancement of ocean research.