Saturation diving as a submarine rescue tool.

The U.S. Navy Submarine Rescue Diving and Recompression System (SRDRS) uses saturation diving to provide human intervention at the hatch of a disabled submarine. The system incorporates the basic elements of traditional saturation diving platforms to provide life support to divers at the worksite as well as in a decompression chamber in between work assignments. The demands of the submarine rescue mission require that the system provide quick response to an emergency virtually anywhere in the world. To answer these demands, SRDRS uses a mixture of state-of-the-art diving technologies and traditional approaches to life support in a quickly mobilized, easily transportable diving system capable of operating in extremely harsh environments.