Why the New Frontier for Battle Drones Is Underwater
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Welcome to TechNews Briefing. It's Monday, January 6th. I'm Julie Chang for The Wall Street Journal. Electronic trackers have been used to find lost luggage for years. Now, Apple's latest OS updates allow users to share AirTag locations with some airlines. We'll tell you why that could help them to find your lost bag. Plus, drones have changed how wars are fought in the sky. Why defense companies and navies are betting that the new frontier for drone warfare is underwater.

But first, we hope you've never experienced the misfortune of an airline losing your luggage. But if you have, tracking devices like Apple AirTags are a way to help ease some of that anxiety. Powered by the vast and visible network of millions of Apple devices, AirTags have not only been used to locate lost luggage, they've also helped pinpoint stolen campaign signs and even loved ones with dementia. And AirTags can now share a missing bag location with some airlines.

Our personal tech columnist, Nicole Nguyen, recently wrote about the best ways to use AirTags to get your luggage back. And she joins us now. Nicole, in your column, you mentioned that it matters where you put your AirTag. Explain that a bit for us. Yeah, so AirTags run by Bluetooth rules. And that basically means it is...

dictated by the physics of wireless signals. Materials like glass, metal can be obstructive to wireless signals. So if there's something nearby that is interfering with the AirTag's ability to communicate with other devices on the Apple Find My Network, that can be iPhones, iPads, or Macs,

then it's less likely to give you an inaccurate signal. So I usually tell people to press their air tag up against the side of their luggage, not mixed in with their clothes where the signal could be interrupted by a nice glass jar of face cream or something like that.

And people need to be using other devices in order to track their error tags. How important is it for those devices to have, say, the latest OS? It's always important to update your Apple devices to the latest software update, to any device to the latest software update for security reasons. But in this case, it will give you more features. The latest update, 18.2.

rolled out the ability to share your AirTag location with third parties, such as airlines. And some airlines even have a little portal that can accept that link. United is one of them. And so, yes, in the latest iOS 18.2 update, when you go look at the location of a lost AirTag, you can generate a link, a web link, that shows the location of that AirTag. So you can potentially locate your lost luggage before the airlines themselves.

And that link expires within seven days. And you can see if anyone's actually looked at the link. So you can keep tabs on the airline to see if they've been looking at where your luggage actually is. You mentioned United, but what other airlines are participating in this? So some airlines that have already signed up for this AirTags integration are Delta, Air Canada, Turkish Airlines, Aer Lingus, Lufthansa, Swiss Air, Eurowings, British Airways, and Iberia, with more to come.

We're talking about iPhones here, but do Androids offer a similar kind of feature? - Yes, so there is a Google Find My app and a Google Find My network that works with all Android devices. So in countries, basically every country except for the United States where Android is more popular, you'd think that that could actually be a great solution.

The caveat there is that Android users have to opt in to this setting that allows them to be more discoverable on the Google Find My Network. All of this to say the Google Find My Network is not as powerful as Apple's Find My Network because all Apple devices are opted into this network automatically.

privately and automatically. And are there any other trackers that work with these smartphones? Tile makes a tracker which works with a combination of Amazon Echo sidewalk network that basically takes little wireless signals from ring doorbell cameras, Amazon Echoes within the neighborhood to increase the finding power of the Tile network. There are also third-party trackers

with Apple's Find My Network and Google's Find My Network built in. So I really love this company called Pebbleby because they make a AirTag or Google Find My Equivalent with a rechargeable battery. Chipolo is also a really great company that makes these third-party devices. They also have a really fun card-sized super slim tracker. So if you leave your passport behind often or your wallet,

then that can be a great solution. That was WSJ personal tech columnist, Nicole Nguyen. Coming up, why defense companies are building bigger, more autonomous vessels for underwater drone warfare. That's after the break.

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Drones have revolutionized modern warfare in the sky. Now, defense companies and navies are betting they can do the same underwater. Underwater drones aren't new. Academics and offshore energy companies have been using them for decades. But now, defense companies are developing larger, more autonomous underwater vessels that can travel longer distances and do more.

WSJ reporter Alistair MacDonald has been following this and he spoke with our colleague Danny Lewis. Here's their conversation.

Alistair, why are defense companies and navies now eyeing underwater drones? Yeah, well, underwater drones have been around for a long time. They've been developed a lot for commercial uses and academic uses, and even navies have used them for specific tasks, in particular mine clearance. But more recently, navies have started to think about potential common conflicts, and one of those potential common conflicts could be in the Asia-Pacific, where strategists believe a large component of it would be naval operations.

And then secondly, there's been a lot of concerns about the vulnerability of subsea infrastructure, so cables and pipelines, etc. So that's another reason to have these assets at this time. And at the same time, shipbuilders have struggled to build ships

on time and on budget. So this is a much cheaper way of doing at least one of the roles that a submarine can do. Just to go a little bit deeper into it, what kinds of activities are authorities now looking at using underwater drones for? Primarily it would be a surveillance intelligence role, for instance, analyzing ship movements and

seeing ships on the surface and analyzing which navies they're from and what they are, and also looking at harbors and mapping out sea floors, etc. Like you mentioned, companies have used underwater drones for decades now to map the sea floor. Same with scientists. We've seen underwater drones, you know, exploring wrecks like the Titanic, etc.

What's different about designing them for defense and intelligence purposes? They have to be that much more survivable, to use the military term. Particularly the current crop of autonomous underwater vehicles, they're looking at them traveling for much further than a commercial company would really need. They're looking at them going much deeper as well. So it's that. And also the sensors and the cameras on board are going to be that much more high-end than those on a drone that would be used

would be used in commercial circles. What are some examples of some of the underwater drones that are coming into play for navies and who's building them? Yeah, so they've got very evocative names like Ghost Shark, which has been produced by a US company called Angeral for the Australian Navy, and Manta Ray, which is Norfolk Grumman. And then you have Boeing that's set to deliver long range autonomous vehicles.

for the US Navy and that one's called Orca and then BAE Systems, a British company's got a one called Hearn which it's touting to navies probably as we speak but literally every major military power is doing them now. The Germans have recently fielded one, the French are working on one, the South Koreans are certainly working on one, the Chinese have developed quite a few

The Russians have developed a few, so most sort of major military powers are developing these. It's sort of early doors in the long range ones. We're talking here about extra large autonomous unmanned underwater vehicles. They're developing them, but they're not there yet. They're shorter distance drones.

are and they've been used for a while, but the long range things that we're talking about now are still being developed effectively. Aside from the obvious difference between something that's traveling through the air and something that's traveling underwater, what are some of the challenges that drone makers are facing with making these new generations of underwater drones? Yes. The obvious big difference is that it's much easier to communicate with a drone in the air than it is in the sea. Radio waves don't really travel underwater.

And traditionally submarines, for instance, have used acoustic communications, but it's quite difficult, particularly for a smaller drone. So that's the primary thing is that communications will be much more difficult, which is one of the reasons these things are autonomous. And so the way they would communicate is they'd rise up to the surface.

And they would put out their mast and communicate in that way. The other thing is that there's potential to knock into things underwater as well, like fishing lines and fishing nets and animals for that matter. And of course, there's nobody on board an autonomous drone to actually fix it. And also, there's some very high-end aerial drones that can go to very, very high altitudes.

and they have to be equipped for that and designed for that. But any underwater drone has to be able to take a lot of pressure. That was WSJ reporter Alistair MacDonald speaking with Danny Lewis. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. Today's show was produced by me, Julie Chang, with supervising producer Catherine Milsop and deputy editor Scott Salloway. We'll be back this afternoon with TNB Tech Minute. Thanks for listening. ♪