A British designer named Phil Pauley has come up with a concept design for a submarine equipped with tank treads that would drive across the seabed. You know, for fun.

The design is called "Pathfinder" and exists to fulfill the requirements of an entirely fictional "Transatlantic Seafloor Research Challenge," also cooked up by Pauley. Those requirements include an average working depth of 4,000m and the ability to spend two to four weeks submerged.

The objective of the made-up challenge is to cover the longest distance in continual contact with the ocean floor, crossing the Atlantic between the United Kingdom and the United States.

The design includes provisions for emergencies – the Pathfinder comes with an emergency escape device that can carry all of the crew on board – a pilot, a co-pilot and a communications engineer.

It measures between 10 and 15 meters long, three to five meters high and two to four meters wide, so it'll be a little tight in the interior, especially as no waste is allowed to leave the vehicle. It's planned to be powered by a lithium battery.

On the surface, the craft will be monitored by a support vessel, which will also have an emergency ROV that can recover the Pathfinder craft, or provide power to life support systems in emergencies using an umbilical cord.

As it's just a concept created to satisfy the requirements of an equally fictional competition, there are no plans to build the Pathfinder. Still, it's an interesting design that conjures up utopian visions of sub-sea highways, shuttling passengers between the United Kingdom and the United States with rather less carbon emitted than a plane flight.

It also has some history. During WW2, the Germans attempted to come up with a submersible tank design to invade Britain, but they didn't get too far. Modern tanks can submerge completely in some cases, but it's less likely that they'd be able to cope with the pressures at the bottom of the Atlantic.

Find more details about the Pathfinder on Phil Pauley's website.

Photo: Phil Pauley