people don t have these abilities nor these submersibles. you mention man submersibles and you look at these remarkable robots on the screen right now. often when you talk about man submersibles, people think of submarines and some of the finest technology is in the hands of the americans and a lot of people are asking why are we not dispatching every single submarine we have into this? colonel, you say there is a good answer there is a good answer for the americans and uk, it s a strategic asset and also a covert strategic asset. what makes submarines so effective is the fact you don t know where they are. i thought it was unusual we announced the h mrks srms was c onto the scene from the british, that carries cruise missiles the likes we used to launch on iraq in 2003. it s not good to let the world know where your strategic covert
technology that people have talked about. one are man submersibles. i would highly advise against that. it takes a lot of equipment for something that doesn t give you much bottom time and then you have towed sleds. there are pluses and minuses with those, too. i think if they are going to do it, they need to start doing it now because it is going to take weeks to get the equipment out there and to the search area. i want to ask you about the bluefin-21 because we ve been questioning all week whether or not this is the right device. it s the one they have and that s great. you mentioned others that are able to go deeper. it s exceeded its depth limit with some of these dives and people say there may be some residual risk to the vehicle because it is doing that. what does that mean? would it make the bluefin-21 inoperable? that depends. the pressure is building on you the whole time. you hear your ears pop when you dive into a swimming pool.
enough to let it loose. jake? tom foreman, thank you so much. let s bring in our expert panel to talk about all of this equipment and today s developments. david soucie is author of the book why planes crash and tim taylor, president of tiburon sub services. and miles o brien is a correspondent for pbs newshour. let s talk about one of the vehicles that tom pointed out, the alvin. man submersibles, you ve got to put a man in there and then you are limited. we have a eat and sleep and have other bodily functions and it s just your time on bottom is limited where robotics are just the way to go. you can replace shifts, the phoenix 6000 there, it will get down and stay down and you can just alternate operators on the top side and it can work for days before ever coming to the
well, it would probably be cable. the best way to do this would be with man submersibles, but the depth is prohibitive for most submersibles. when you re working that deep with an rov, seeing what you want to see is kind of tricky. it s like looking through the roll of a toilet paper tube, but you can do it, but it s better if you have people down there, the human eyeball, man submersible, but they probably won t have that capability at these depths. so, mary, if it s founded at those depths, what s the best way of pulling it up? cables, robotics, submersibles? what? it depends on what they re going after. what they will do if it s really down at that level is they will use a submersible to get the key parts they re going to need.
power and electricity and command and control to the device. and you used that apparatus in the search for the titanic? yes, it was but our dives were by man submersibles. which are free swimming. they are not tethered or operated by humans. so, when we talk about this search area, they would probably have to be the use of both. perhaps some use of manned submersables as well? they are not necessarily the ideal way to go. they are fairly rare. and they have a limited time down below they are carrying humans which breathe oxygen. a remote vehicle can operate