Theseus suspended above launch ice hole, Ellesmere Island, Canada. 1995. Photo credit: Bruce Butler
THE THESEUS AUV
A COLD WAR LEGACY by Bruce Butler, P.Eng.
THE COLD WAR In 1987, the Canadian government released a long-awaited White Paper on Defence, identifying perceived gaps between Canada’s current defence capabilities and its commitments to NATO. Even though the Cold War was waning, Canada was concerned that in times of conflict, Soviet submarines could use the deep channels of the Canadian Archipelago to reach the North Atlantic. The Canadian government tasked its Department of National Defence (DND) with determining how to monitor Canada’s Arctic waters for submarine activity. DND initiated a joint Canada-US defence research project, codenamed “Spinnaker,” to install a prototype, seafloor-mounted acoustic listening post on the edge of the Continental Shelf north of Ellesmere Island, Canada’s northern-most point of land. This would require laying nearly two hundred kilometres of fibre-optic cable on the seafloor in waters with a permanent ice cover. To solve the cable-laying problem, DND scientists assigned to Project Spinnaker consulted Canadian subsea experts. International Submarine Engineering Ltd. (ISE), based in British Columbia, Canada, had recently completed development of the ARCS autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), built for the Canadian Hydrographic Service for under-ice hydrographic surveying. The DND scientists held several exploratory meetings with ISE engineers, and they soon agreed that a purposebuilt AUV was the best solution.
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