Royal Navy Icebreaker’s Crew Tests Drones to Scout for Ice Leads

Published
May 24, 2021 9:27 PM by

The Maritime Executive

The Royal Navy’s sole polar research vessel is testing out a pair of drones for the critical task of spotting leads in the ice. 

HMS Protector, an icebreaker built in 2000 as the ICE 05-class survey vessel Polarbjørn, was originally designed for commercial offshore work in the Arctic. Repurposed as a Royal Navy icebreaker for the British Antarctic Survey in 2011, Protector makes regular deployments to the Southern Hemisphere for scientific…