3 ms·
I wonder if US military takes part in the project: ultra-precise pressure gauges may be exactly what's needed to detect subs
by lambdadmitry 9y ago
I wonder if US military takes part in the project: ultra-precise pressure gauges may be exactly what's needed to detect subs
- Inconel 9y agoSomewhat related to this, the US Navy did operate the SOSUS[1] network at one point. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOSUS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOSUS
- jofer 9y agoActually, you wouldn't get a signal from a sub going overhead with these. They're focused on recording relatively low-frequency response, so they don't pick up sound (hydrophones do a great job of that, and they're dirt cheap). Subs are neutrally buoyant, so there's no pressure anomaly. There will be a tiny one from the bow wake, but that's the sort of thing you're trying not to detect. Part of the entire point of these is to sum out things like waves (and possible minor blips like the bow wake from a nearby sub). You're summing over time to get a very precise average height of the water above the sensor. You're deliberately designing the sampling system to not be sensitive to small temporal blips and filtering the data to remove any that show up. Basically, if you want to detect subs, there are far cheaper and easier ways to do it. These tools are designed to do something very different.
- lambdadmitry 9y agoYeah, I was thinking about bow wake as it's probably very hard to hide that (as opposed to silencing the sound). Thanks for your explanation, it makes ton of sense!
- bluGill 9y agoyou may not need to hide it so much as disguise it. There are lots of things swimming in the oceans, some of them big. None as big as a sub, but a well designed sub can potentially present that wake signature. (maybe not all the time, but a sub can choose to go at a slow hiding pace or a fast but visible pace)