ANTX-Coastal Trident Event Delta Hones Emergency Response Skills While Testing Maritime Technologies

Divers, unmanned vessels, underwater sensors and a small plane were all in the water for Event Delta, part of the Coastal Trident series of Advanced Naval Technology Exercises (ANTX-CT).

The various players had different objectives, but they worked together to hone emergency response skills and test maritime technologies during the exercise, which Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division (NSWC PHD) orchestrated at the Port of Hueneme in California from Aug. 6 to 9.

“This exercise was a clear example of the collaborative relationship between public safety training and technical experimentation that makes ANTX-Coastal Trident unique,” said Brendan Applegate, NSWC PHD’s principal investigator for the annual program.

Event Delta drew 10 vendors of unmanned systems, sensors and other technologies as well as law enforcement agencies from five counties around Southern California. The latter contingent included personnel from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) — the biggest such agency in the country — which highlights the value of the training opportunities that ANTX-CT offers, according to Applegate.

“We’re able to provide them something unique enough that they’re willing to come up (to Port Hueneme) and train,” he said.

Plane down

Search-and-rescue divers and bomb squads from Ventura, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and Riverside counties joined Event Delta on different days to train in and around the submerged aircraft, simulating the aftermath of a crash.

Divers from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office (VCSO) had towed the approximately 900-pound plane fuselage, with its engine removed and wings detached, to the small boat launch area of the commercial port and dropped it to the bottom — about 40 feet deep.

The emergency personnel responded to scenarios involving explosive devices on the seabed, contraband in and around the downed plane, and multiple fatalities. The detached wings also served as props.

At the small boat dock on Aug. 7, eight members of the LASD Reserve Dive Team slipped into their wetsuits and scuba gear and splashed into the dark water. The team is composed of volunteer divers, both sworn officers and civilians.

They first assessed the scene and searched for planted “evidence” — phones, a bag of money and a bag of contraband, all fakes — in and around the sunken aircraft, explained Andy Graziano, chief diving officer of the LASD Reserve Dive Team. Coincidentally, they also found a knife, which was not part of the exercise.

Next, the divers attached lift bags, which look like oversized pillows, to the plane and inflated them via air hoses connected to compressors on the dock. The bags floated the fuselage to the surface, and the divers grabbed hold of it and moved it a short distance as part of the training.

Graziano said the exercise was especially helpful to his dive team members who don’t have law enforcement experience.

“It gives them exposure to different things they might find out there,” he said.

The day before, bomb squad divers from VCSO and the Los Angeles Police Department converged on the submerged plane to find and neutralize a simulated explosive device. Then search-and-rescue personnel dove to the wreckage to practice looking for fatalities.

The emergency response aspect of Event Delta was relevant to NSWC PHD and Naval Base Ventura County, according to Applegate, because the participating agencies possess the capabilities to respond to similar situations that could arise on the base or on a ship — such as a person falling overboard and going missing at sea, a fire breaking out in the port, or a bomb threat on the command’s campus.

“It’s in the Navy’s interest to make sure those capabilities are maintained,” Applegate said.

Those training scenarios also presented opportunities to test technologies that could help the Navy for other purposes.

Targets of opportunity

As divers swarmed around the submerged plane on Aug. 7, representatives from Burlington, Massachusetts-based HydroNet Inc. lowered their hydrophone into the water. The modem-equipped device is designed to detect different sounds, identify what types of objects are emitting them and send real-time tracking to the user.

With the divers as targets of opportunity, the hydrophone listened passively — without emitting its own sounds — and gathered data to help train the company’s HydroID system, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create signatures for different objects, explained Amani Alshawabka, AI and wireless systems engineer.

“This is our first time collecting divers’ data to add to our system,” she said.

Accumulating a variety of data — whether from divers, underwater vessels or marine mammals — helps the company develop a more precise system, Alshawabka added.

Raffaele Guida, senior research and development engineer with HydroNet, said the company’s system can bolster security in sensitive areas by detecting, characterizing and tracking threats in the water.

“It’s a distributed network of devices that can fuse, merge data and create a virtual barrier to protect a port or Navy base,” Guida said.

Offshore of Port Hueneme, other Event Delta experiments were underway aboard an unmanned surface vessel (USV).

Trondheim, Norway-based Maritime Robotics supplied its Mariner USV, with Safe Harbor Maritime LLC from San Diego providing a chase boat to support the unmanned vessel. Norbit ASA, also of Trondheim, Norway and Sidus Solutions LLC of San Diego tested their respective sonar systems and cameras that can pan and tilt on the Mariner USV.

“The ability to remotely pan and tilt a directional sensor underwater is a big deal in the world of unmanned systems,” Applegate said.

Also aboard Maritime Robotics’ Mariner, Canadian company Sensor Technology Ltd. tested a remote-controlled winch to deploy its Compass hydrophone array with no one aboard the USV. That array, tethered on a thin line and towed behind the vessel, passively collected acoustic data in the water.

Applegate said that Sensor Technology, which is based in Collingwood, Ontario, used the ANTX-CT event to reduce risk before participating in NATO’s Robotic Experimentation and Prototyping using Maritime Uncrewed Systems exercise, known as REPMUS, in Portugal in September.

“This is a really good environment for them to experiment,” Applegate said. “They bring it here to make sure it all works out.”

Esbjerg, Denmark-based MacArtney Group brought its DOMUS platform to Event Delta, integrating sensors from several other companies onto a metal frame and positioning it on the seabed of the port to detect and classify different targets of opportunity.

Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc., headquartered in Newport News, Virginia, also contributed to the DOMUS experiment by integrating acoustic detections and tracks into a common operational picture.

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