Our Acoustic Advantage is Narrowing

[X Bubblehead]

Former predictions are rapidly coming true: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...or-u-s-general

During the Cold War, any Russian boat entering the open sea had a limited shelf life if the balloon went up. The US enjoyed an overwhelming acoustic advantage in sensors and sound silencing technology. It was only a matter of time before Ivan got hot and did something about it - especially after the Walker Spy Ring clued them in. Thirty-five years later and the gap has narrowed considerably.

Hopefully, American engineering will provide another breakthrough technology, making the ocean more transparent to return us to a similar overmatch situation. My guess is a network of fixed and mobile active acoustic sensors laid by submarines that when cued, communicate with other platforms, sort of like an AI-CAPTOR mine. CAPTOR was awesome! I was involved in some of the testing and once it detected you, it was game over . . .

[tom dougherty]

One avenue being actively explored are UUVs that can move independently, are small and very quiet, and get a lot closer to a potential target for acoustic signature analysis. Submarines are currently working with UUVs and UAVs for multiple tasks, including remote surveillance. Items such as blue green lasers have limited underwater range, but if a small drone is in close, they can quickly do a raster-like scan of the target, generating an image.

When my son was at Naval Postgraduate School, one of his classmates in computer science had been operating a drone from a Virginia class submarine. And that’s about all he told him, as you would expect.