With the submarine threat on the rise, the US Navy looks to autonomous water sensor drones February 17 The Navy is looking to update its fleet of autonomous sensor gliders used to measure water data needed for hunting enemy submarines. (Photo: Navy) WASHINGTON – The U.S. Navy is collecting proposals for a new autonomous glider drone that can collect data — such as water temperatures over time — as a way to improve how it hunts for enemy submarines. The system will be the next generation of the current Littoral Battlespace Sensing Glider, which generally deploys from one of the Navy’s five oceanographic survey ships. That glider became the center of an international incident in 2016 when China seized the drone, calling it a hazard to navigation.