page_title: Professional diving
section_title: Military and naval diving
hierarchical_section_title: Professional diving / Branches of professional diving / Military and naval diving
context_page_description: Professional diving is diving where the divers are paid for their work. The procedures are often regulated by legislation and codes of practice as it is an inherently hazardous occupation and the diver works as a member of a team. Due to the dangerous nature of some professional diving operations, specialized equipment such as an on-site hyperbaric chamber and diver-to-surface communication system is often required by law, and the mode of diving for some applications may be regulated.
  There are several branches of professional diving, the best known of which is probably commercial diving and its specialised applications, offshore diving, inshore civil engineering diving, marine salvage diving, hazmat diving, and ships husbandry diving. There are also applications in scientific research, marine archaeology, fishing and aquaculture, public service, law enforcement, military service and diver training.
context_section_description: Military diving covers all types of diving carried out by military personnel. There are a number of different specialisations for a military diver to choose; some depend on which branch of the military they have joined or where the military needs more divers. Typical offensive activities include underwater demolition, infiltration and sabotage, this being the type of work elite regiments such as the UK Special Boat Service or the USA Navy SEALs carry out. Defensive activities are centered around countering the threat of enemy special forces and enemy anti-shipping measures, and typically involve defusing mines, searching for explosive devices attached to the hulls of ships, and locating enemy frogmen in the water.
  Military divers need equipment which hides their position and prevents explosives from being set-off, and to this end, they use rebreathers which produce less noise due to bubbles emitted from the equipment, and few or no bubbles on the surface, and which contain no magnetic components. This continues down to the design of their diving suit, which will normally have a non-magnetic zipper, and the face-mask may be fitted with special anti-reflective glass. Some navies have gone further and given their divers special contact lenses instead of large face-masks to cut down on the risk of a reflection.
  Naval diving is the military term for what civilians would call commercial diving. Naval divers work to support maintenance and repair operations on ships and military installations. Their equipment is derived from commercially available equipment, with the US Navy using versions of the Kirby Morgan helmets and full-face masks amongst other equipment.   Typical tasks include:
  boat and ship inspection, cleaning and maintenance
  demolition of ship wreck and unexploded ordnance
  ship, submarine, downed aircraft, and other military hardware salvage or recovery
  underwater mine clearance
  investigating unidentified submerged divers
  The United States Army has its own diving personnel.  These are the Army engineer divers.
  Experimental diving, is conducted by the US Navy's Experimental Diving Unit (NEDU) and involves meeting military needs through the research and development of diving practices and diving equipment, testing new types equipment and finding new and safer ways to perform dives and related activities. The US NEDU was responsible for much of the early experimental diving work to calculate decompression tables and has since worked on such developments as heated diving suits powered by radioactive isotopes and mixed gas diving equipment, while the British equivalent (The Admiralty Experimental Diving Unit) perfected the Mark 10 submarine escape suits utilized by both the Royal Navy and the US Navy.
caption: US Navy Clearance Divers defusing a MK17 Buoyant Mine
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