ONWARDS & UPWARDS
ME2 Daniel Liao, who helms one of the fast craft utility on board RSS Persistence, prepares the craft for a night launch. Low visibility and swell heights of up to two metres made the operation challenging, but the crew was trained and ready, he said.
Swift response A frigate, RSS Supreme and a missile corvette RSS Valour were deployed on 28 December 2014, the same day Air Asia flight QZ8501 went missing. RSS Persistence departed the next day with two Super Puma helicopters embarked. Over the next three days, mine countermeasure vessel (MCMV) RSS Kallang and submarine rescue vessel MV Swift Rescue joined the operation. MV Swift Rescue had both a dive team and an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle team embarked, the latter flown in to enhance the underwater search. There are rough templates that search operations of this nature are based upon, standard operating procedures refined over the years. But the specific needs of each search operation vary, and so must the responses.
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The six-man Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) team embarked on MV Swift Rescue deployed their AUV to scour the seabed in a predetermined search pattern.