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Veteran submariner on how sonar crews tirelessly hunt enemies they can't see
- canada_dry 6y ago> The second step in classification requires analysis. It takes 30 to 45 seconds to get a look at a new detection and discover what kind of engine she’s running, what kind of hydraulic pumps are online, and what screw blade configuration she is using. One can imagine ML making this job somewhat obsolete in the not-too-distant future.
- rootlocus 6y agohttps://xkcd.com/1897/ https://xkcd.com/1897/
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- stickfigure 6y agoNot sure why this was downvoted - it almost certainly is heavily automated already, and the article hints at it. Tom Clancy described a primitive version in The Hunt For Red October in the 80s. You'd expect the Navy to be very interested.
- mhh__ 6y agoThat's if they aren't already. Without having the data I can't try but I'd guess that Fourier analysis (or something a bit more clever to deal with noise e.g. Welch) would get you a lot of the way there even without invoking AI
- ghaff 6y agoEven if you're also using ML, Fourier transforms can be pretty useful in this sort of analysis.
- zkms 6y agoThis is not based on any classified information and sonar signal processing is not something i know much about, but cyclostationarity (and other higher-order statistical signal processing) does tend to be useful when processing signals that are generated by processes where there's multiple periodicities at work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclostationary_process#Angle-time_cyclostationarity_of_mechanical_signals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclostationary_process#Angle-...
- hchz 6y agoSignal separation techniques for characterizing cyclostationary signals are also more robust to noise. For example, analysis of the second order FFT can resolve the signals of incipient faults in rolling bearings because it can resolve the signals of the bearing components rotating (at a much lower frequency than the shaft) whereas simple FFT analysis would generally only measure the magnitude of the structural resonance of the machine, with spikes at the mains, rotational, and slip frequency.
- virtue3 6y agoIf you ever watched the hunt for red october, they already had computers doing this (doubt it was ML'd tho).
- jwithington 6y agoIt is ML depending on what we're calling ML. Is gradient descent/MLE ML? If yes, then the Dallas (the US sub) in Red October was using ML.
- zentiggr 6y agoClancy did embellish a few things and speculated rather a bit to make an entertaining scenario. All told, a good solid read, and accurate in a bunch of not-quite critical details, but don't lean too hard on the edges of the story. Same with Red Storm Rising. Very well told, close to a solid "what if", but lots of little touches to make it entertaining as well.
- dylan604 6y agoIs it really something for ML? Shazam isn't ML, and it's the same basic thing. Take the current sound and then compare it to a huge database of known sounds. Report the result.
- nickff 6y agoAgreed. ML and AI are (currently) useful in situations where there is a lot of data, of different types, usually from disparate sources, often sparse, with no known pattern or causal relationship. Shazam and sonar analysis don't really fall into any of those areas.
- jwithington 6y agoCan confirm that USN and sonar systems have been using "ML" techniques since the 90s. Y'all were late to the game!
- ghaff 6y agoI was at a day of research presentations in January before everything shut down. One of the presentations was on using ML to identify individual dolphin speech signatures--with some degree of accuracy. One of my thoughts was that the more sophisticated navies probably already have this sort of thing pretty well developed.
- Apofis 6y agoFrom TFA: "Patterns are matched and measured with onscreen tools and cursors. Automatic artificial intelligence algorithms flag potential targets for the sonar operators to verify. "
- adriancooney 6y agoI'm not normally one to promote Hollywood but the film Greyhound (2020) with Tom Hanks does an _excellent_ portrayal of this technology (albeit slightly more primitive) in fighting German U-Boats in WW2. Well worth a watch if this interests you.
- jonplackett 6y agoI was just going to say exactly this. It’s amazing to see them doing this with such incredibly basic technology. - Having to draw their ship and the submarine and constantly update its movement. - sonar guy is just looking at a screen that blips every now and then. - all communication by morse code - must be horrendously slow in the heat of battle - even communication within the ship is passed between multiple people so big chance of Chinese whisper type errors. I don’t know how realistic it is to real life but it gives you an appreciation for how smart and situationally aware the captain of the ship needs to be.
- stormdennis 6y agoThey wargamed live during North Atlantic convoy attacks on the floor of a building in Liverpool. Players received instructions through letterboxes around the room perimeter and each could only see a fraction of the the battle. They could not see the u-boats at all as those were same color as filters they looked through. Information was radioed in from convoy escorts and scenarios were played out. Battles could last a couple of days.
- wcarey 6y ago
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- robotnikman 6y agoI've heard the sonar ping from a submarine is so powerful that it will kill you if your a diver near the sonar dome.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y ago235db! Apparently also kills wales and dolphins. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/93222/could-submarine-sonar-kill-a-diver https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/93222/could-subm...
- VBprogrammer 6y agoThe only saving grace is that they only use it as a last resort since sending out that kind of noise would let everyone in that hemisphere know exactly where you are.
- Anechoic 6y agoKeep in mind that's likely not related to the dB sound pressure level in air that we're all familiar with. dB is a logarithmic ratio to pressure to a reference. In air, that reference is 20µPa, acoustic pressure in water typically uses a different reference (1µPa). There is also an adjustment of 36 dB to account for the higher impedance of water. So 235 dB in water is roughly 173 dB SPL -- still loud, but many orders of magnitude lower. [0] https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/acoustics.htm https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/acoustics.htm
- GCPGCP 6y agoThis is what you can expect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCmyZYYR7_s&t=90s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCmyZYYR7_s&t=90s This diver was near a sub base for training.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y agoComments say this was very likely not a sub‘s sonar.
- forgotthepasswd 6y agoThis[0] is an interesting account of an accident with a submarine and how sonar played a role in the event. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehime_Maru_and_USS_Greeneville_collision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehime_Maru_and_USS_Greeneville...
- ThinkingGuy 6y agoObviously, being a skilled sonarman would seem require a good physical sense of hearing (frequency range, etc.), but as as the article mentions, the ability to recognize patterns is also important. Have there been any studies or analyses to see if there's also a correlation between skill at, say, music (relative pitch, etc.) or language (detecting subtle differences in accents, etc.) and sonar skill?
- rotten 6y agoThe best sonar operators have perfect pitch, except instead of saying "that is an A-flat but there is a ghost harmonic because the slot in the bridge for that string is too wide" they would say "that is a 415 Hz sound with up doppler. sounds like a 3 bladed prop with a notch on the second blade". It was pretty amazing to watch the really good ones in action.
- rotten 6y agoThey would go to a bar and comment that the ceiling fan was spinning at 23 rpm, and the compressor motor on the cooler had a bad bearing.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y agoBlades are numbered? I would think each blade would be indistinguishable from the next, so any of them could be the 2nd one depending on where you started counting.
- h2odragon 6y ago"Over selectivity" is considered a handicap (to the point of disability) by some musicians; when they play two different tone sets and say "thats the same note"... if you can't hear it that way but hear 440hz and 850hz or whatever, it is difficult to communicate.
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- oakmad 6y agoMy father used to help design and build sonar of varying types for the Australian Navy (RANRL) when I was a kid. I used to love hanging with them all and even got to go on a submarine a few times. He had to be fully qualified for sea trials. I assume a lot of his work was adapted from other countries, but he still will not really get into details about what he did for them (70s and 80s). One little nugget he told me a few years ago: their entire UI/UX team were psychologists, engineers played almost zero role in that aspect.
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- secondcoming 6y agoThis[0] youtube channel is quite good at explaining how subs work [0] https://www.youtube.com/c/JiveTurkeyCrew https://www.youtube.com/c/JiveTurkeyCrew
- evil-olive 6y agoThe author of this article (Aaron Amick) is Jive Turkey, the same as the host of that YouTube channel [0]. His other articles for The Drive [1] are all worth reading. 0: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24638/retired-submariner-turned-gamer-gives-amazing-video-explainers-on-sub-tactics-and-tech https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24638/retired-submarin... 1: https://www.thedrive.com/author/aaron-amick https://www.thedrive.com/author/aaron-amick
- audiometry 6y agoI came to post Jive Turkeys YouTube channel. The highlight are his episodes where he takes an underwater recording, uses some Adobe audio program, and extracts all sorts of interesting detail about what we’re hearing. When you see how much he exploits from a generic public tool, makes you wonder how much more comes from super advanced, specialized tools the navy has.
- bmitc 6y agoArticles like this leave a bad taste in my mouth. They venerate the subject and participants involved and leave out the vast amount of detrimental effects they cause. Whales, other marine mammals, and other wildlife are affected by these systems, and they are never considered. The Navy is currently still trying to increase its weapons testing off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, bringing further harm to the already decimated and declining southern resident orcas. We have absolutely got to start understanding how our technology affects the world and making changes.
- rotten 6y agoThe systems described in this article are "passive". They are simply listening to the sounds around them. This is much more common for submarines than "active" sonar - which ensonifies the water around you and then you listen for echos. It is those loud pings which can threaten or frighten wildlife. However they are also like holding up a big lit sign that says "there is a submarine here!" - and the whole point of submarines is stealth. They say that if you hear a ping from a submarine, it is too late - there is already a torpedo heading your way. source - used to be a sonar tech
- GareyBaldo 6y agoThese articles leave a bad taste in my mouth because they give far more credit to the sonar shack than they deserve, with the implications that they're motivated and nobody is asleep at their console.
- munificent 6y agoSomewhat related. I went to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) in Portland last fall and did a tour of their submarine, the USS Blueback. Our tour guide was a retired Cold War-era submariner and he was fantastic. He gave us tons and tons of details about what life and working on an active sub was actually like. It felt like being there, and you could tell he delighted in being able to share his past with people.
- dawnerd 6y agoI've been meaning to check it out, it's like right there too.
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- tantaman 6y agoOh man, I worked on the software for these systems for 6 years :) specifically the ones from this image https://www.thedrive.com/content-b/message-editor%2F1597220969469-lrh1k4rb4sv41.jpg?quality=60 https://www.thedrive.com/content-b/message-editor%2F15972209... During the holidays we'd pump Christmas music through the sensors. We could do this since that's what the raw data is anyway -- sound. Made for interesting sonar displays as well as background music.
- Ao7bei3s 6y agoIf you can say, what does the dev version look like, physically? I assume you don't have a dev ship? So same HW, just in an office? Or remote access to HW in a server room? Or is there a more desktop friendly form factor? Or all virtualized?
- james_s_tayler 6y agoIt would be fun to be that guy saying but dev/QA/prod should all look the same.
- hchz 6y agoI used to be a part of this when the tracking party was manned and I was engine room sup. Using the computer tools For fusion was definitely interesting (90’s X11 gore), with a large palette of modeling tools, but the coolest experience was being taught to time/range plot on paper by the mustang weps.