Specialized U.S. Navy dive team, engineers join recovery search for 4 soldiers
A specialized U.S. Navy dive team and a group of Polish engineers have joined the recovery operation for the four U.S. soldiers who went missing in Lithuania during a training exercise, officials said Saturday.
The new reinforcements will work to recover the armored vehicle M88A2 Hercules, which was found on Wednesday, March 26. The armored vehicle remains submerged under at least 15 feet of water, clay-like mud and silt, U.S. military officials said in a statement on Saturday.
"We are going to use every resource available from all our countries to find our missing soldiers," Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, 1st Armored Division commanding general, said in the statement.
Recovery efforts will focus on removing water and mud from the area, shore up the ground around the site to support heavy equipment, and prepare the site for dive operations, officials said.
Removing the armored vehicle and recovering the missing soldiers will be a long and difficult operation, U.S. officials said. To help navigate the challenging terrain, the specialized divers from the U.S. Navy Commander, Task Force 68, who flew in from Rota, Spain, will focus on finding lift points on the M88A2 and bring to bear highly specialized equipment and training that will allow them to navigate the challenging environment around the Hercules.
The troops went missing from a training area near Pabrade, near Lithuania's far eastern border with Belarus, a nation closely allied with Russia, the U.S. Embassy in Vilnius said in a statement posted on social media.
The U.S. Army later said the hulking, 70-ton armored recovery vehicle that the missing U.S. soldiers had been operating "was found submerged approximately 15 feet under a body of water and mud in a boggy area" connected to a nearby lake.
"We're going to start off by putting our Defender [submersible remotely operated vehicle] in the water to paint a clear picture of what we can expect down there, as well as our Artemis Handheld Sona," said Senior Chief Master Diver Carlos Hernandez in a statement.
They divers were joined by 55 Polish engineers and recovery experts, they brought 13 vehicles, four engineer workshop/tool truck, one fueler with 10 tons of fuel, and three WZT-3 tracked recovery vehicles, officials said.
"We will not rest until our Soldiers are found," said Taylor.
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