Imagine standing in Pearl Harbor, right along Battleship Row, the same stretch of water where history forever changed on December 7, 1941. Massive battleships and aircraft carriers sit moored nearby. Just beyond them is a series of dry docks, immense industrial structures designed to hold and service ships that weigh tens of thousands of tons.
A dry dock is essentially a controlled lock. Water is pumped in to allow a ship to enter, the vessel is positioned precisely on blocks, and then enormous vacuum systems remove millions of gallons of water back into the harbor. When you really think about it—the size of the ships, the precision required—it’s mind-bending.
Those vacuum systems rely on massive impellers and propellers housed deep within concrete shafts. The access points, called manways, measure roughly five feet by five feet, large enough for a person to stand inside, even though entry is strictly prohibited.
This is where our mission began.
To access the underside of the dock, our team had to lower ourselves—tools, equipment, and all—about 30 feet down into the harbor using two fiberglass dinghies. Each dinghy was maybe seven feet long and could carry two people, no more. There were four of us total: the drone pilot and an engineer in one dinghy, and myself with another engineer in the second.
Once in the water, we rowed underneath the dock itself.
The pilot launched and recovered the drone directly from his dinghy. My role was to maintain signal integrity in an environment that was almost entirely reinforced concrete, some of it nearly five feet thick. The moment the drone turned and descended down the shaft, we’d lose signal without help.
I used a 28-foot fully telescoping pole, similar to what painters use on tall buildings, with a signal repeater zip-tied to the end. Standing in a small dinghy, I held that pole steady for hours. Fully extended, with the repeater mounted, it easily weighed close to 100 pounds. I had to hold it in place for the entire duration of each flight.
And one flight wasn’t enough.
We would send the drone in, inspect until we hit battery limits, then carefully bring it back out. The only person who could realistically catch the drone was the engineer in the pilot’s dinghy. He’d grab it mid-air like a basketball and hold it steady while it powered down. Batteries were swapped, my arms got a brief rest, and then we went right back in.
We repeated that process for nearly eight hours.
What we captured was remarkable. Beneath the docks, the contrast was stark; sections of badly deteriorated concrete alongside areas that were clearly newer and in excellent condition. These waterways had to be inspected, but traditional methods had failed. They had tried using a crawler, but it simply wouldn’t work in that environment. That’s why they came to us. This was the first time a drone had ever been used for this type of inspection there.
For me, the experience carried an added, personal weight.
I was stationed at Pearl Harbor over 40 years ago. This mission marked my first time back. As we worked under heavy security, escorted everywhere by Navy personnel, I found myself telling young sailors and even officers that I had once served right where they were standing. Pearl Harbor today is dramatically different: more built up, more controlled, more crowded. Even the Arizona Memorial, which once required little more than hopping on a shuttle, now has lines wrapping around the building.
Between the six-hour time difference and the intensity of the work, my internal clock was completely off. I was waking up at two in the morning most days. But there was something surreal about being there on the water, under the docks, launching drones into confined spaces beneath one of the most historically significant harbors in the world.
Behind us was the harbor. Beyond that, the Pacific Ocean. And right there, beneath our feet, was a problem no one had solved before.
On our first day, we didn’t even fly. It took an entire day just to get fully badged and cleared. The security process was intense. That night, I went to dinner with the Navy captain, who had been my primary point of contact throughout the project. Sitting there, after everything it took just to get started, it really sank in how unique this mission was.
This was cutting-edge technology being used in one of the most challenging inspection environments imaginable, one that was confined, submerged, concrete-dense, and historically sensitive.
And for me, it wasn’t just another job.
It was a full-circle moment. After four decades, I returned to Pearl Harbor not as a sailor, but as someone trusted to help protect and maintain the infrastructure beneath it using tools that did not exist when I was stationed there.
That’s the kind of work we’re proud to do at Sky Ladder Drones.
