In 2003, I was on a small team using a similar WHOI system called REMUS to take surveys of ports and waterways, looking for mines. We had been training with the system, mainly in Southern California and when Iraq started up, they decided that they wanted to try the new technology there. We did, and it was successful. http://www.joetalbot.net/pages/030401-N-3783H-075A.htm In the course of our training, we managed to get the things stuck, beached and lost several times despite a system that would take it to the surface when it's little PC-104 mind was blown. Remember, there are things down there (plants, critters, caves, rocks, ships and junk) that are unknown to us before these things are launched (that's often why we launch them, you know? To take surveys?). These things navigate underwater using a small network of buoy "transponders" the respond to pings from the unit. The slight response delay (caused by the water and very predictable) tells the unit how far it is from the buoy, who's locations are known to the units (windows) programming software. These things are pretty cool and useful, but they're also kind of primitive. We used to attach a "pinger" to the units so that when they got stuck, we could recover them with divers. A pinger is a small capsule that contains a device that periodically emits a 20-70 khz "ping" that is easily picked up by a hand held, very directional receiver carried by a diver. http://www.benthos.com/undersea-pingers-locators-product-overview.asp Given what the system is worth, I would imagine that it has a pinger for location as well.

The Navy did the "biggest IT contract ever let" and it was pretty much an expensive bloated disaster. See http://www.itsmwatch.com/itil/article.php/3813651 I'm beginning to think that "too big to fail" means "too big" and that failure is inevitable.

This smells like another attempt to get politicians or eco-opportunists into "the climate business".Remember, they almost pulled it off. It was really disappointing and scary to me that there are some out there who wold pull any kind of stunt and use any tactic to support using allegedly "settled science" to achieve very questionable political goals. Once again, don't get your science from Politicians, celebrities or lawyers. Examine why you believe what you do. Honest skepticism is healthy. To those who call skeptics "deniers" (like holocaust deniers), please keep your religion to yourself.True scientists are skeptical, as they should be.

Never had a call drop? Never been someplace where there is "no network"? Never had a conversation that you simply couldn't understand because of the "stacked" aggressive compression? C'mon! Thanks to the wireless companies, people have lower standards now, in terms of audio quality, reliability and availability. I used to work for Jabra years ago, before they had any market share and weren't really sure what direction to take. I was brought on to improve audio quality for various products. One was the small "all in ear" headset. It had terrible audio due to the lack of "proximity effect", there was really no way to "fix" this problem. I used to piss everybody off by calling it "an ear mounted speakerphone" in meetings. People would never accept the poor quality on land line phones (the headset market at that time). Poof! Along comes wireless and the lack of quality is expected by the consumer. Result: sell product and then company! People who have only a cell phone are nuts, and deaf!