A waterman from Maryland found a surprising catch when he went crabbing earlier this month. Instead of crabs, he caught a 7-foot underwater drone out of the Chesapeake Bay. Northtrop Grumman said in a statement Thursday that it owns the drone, reported the Baltimore Sun.
Northrop, a defense contractor, has been conducting research in the Chesapeake Bay, and the underwater drone had just completed a mission involving sonar research. A team had been dispatched to retrieve the autnomous unmanned submersible vehicle, but David Haas, the waterman, beat the team to it.
"He said it was really foggy and almost hit it," Haas' wife told My Eastern Shore MD. "It was floating on top of the water. They thought it was an upside-down sailboard at first."
Haas' crew bought the yellow drone home to inspect it further. The crew found a service number on the vehicle's underside and traced it to Kongsberg Gruppen, a Norwegian company that manufactures underwater vehicles. Haas contacted the company and relayed the news about his catch. A representative from Northrop Grumman later came to collect the vehicle.
It is not clear whether the Northrop drone can be used as a weapon. The U.S. Navy is developing a slightly longer umanned undersea vehicle that somehow resembles the drone, which is believed to be capable of carrying a weapon, as HNGN previously reported.
