Broadening the Scope

With the 3rd day of REP the stage was set for a more ambitious exercise bringing into the fold AUVs, UAVs and ASVs. The E5 (ASV + UAV has communication relays for AUV) exercise began its first trials on open waters on the outside of Sesimbra harbor. A large fraction of the operational team was allocated to this effort since it required 3 operation locations.

The exercise was divided into 3 iterations, starting in the harbor and then moving out to open water. The focus was to use the UAV as a communication's relay that would bridge the network gap between the operation hub on land and the smaller operation network, centered on the ASV. With the UAV bridging the two networks the land site would be able to collect that from the AUV, operating beneath the ASV. These trials also allowed for multi-hop acoustic testing, taking advantage of the active acoustic communication between the ASV and the AUV.

Concurrently to this exercise another team was dispatched to perform E17 (Xtreme-2 Survey) with the focus of testing the Xtreme-2 vehicle, and its new sidescan payload, to try and detect sunken wreckage. These deployments were made from the NRP Auriga in coordination with the exercises from the Belgium contingent.