The UARS vehicle as seen through the launching hole cut through 20-foot- 

 thick ice. The vehicle is about 40 feet below the surface of the Arctic Ocean. 



provide a capability to conduct research under ice with unmanned, 

 untethered vehicles. This will permit necessary work under ice in 

 support of arctic environmental, submarine, and weapon programs 

 to be conducted with a high degree of control at relatively economical 

 support costs, as compared to operations that use manned 

 submersibles. The UARS system has been deployed to arctic areas 

 on two occasions and used successfully there to support R&D 

 programs. A wide variety of oceanographic and other environmental 

 information can be collected with different configurations of the 

 system including profiles of the under-ice surface; lower ice surface 

 profile and texture; water temperature, sound velocity, and salinity 

 variations; acoustic volume reverberation data related to biological 

 activity; internal wave measurements; ocean bottom magnetic field 

 strengths, and subbottom geophysical characteristics. The system 

 can also be applied to numerous other studies by varying its 

 instrument packages. At the request of the Navy, control of the 

 UARS system was given to the Naval Ordnance Systems Command 

 in the spring of 1973 for use by that organization in arctic research 

 and development missions. 



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