It’s the SOSUS warning net in the Atlantic used by NATO to monitor soviet submarines.
it’s just a lot of data to sift through.
It’s mentioned in Tom Clancy novels.
2 Likes
Some of it has been over the line, but different people have different lines.
My question is why this was such big news in the first place?
2 Likes
Submarine rescues are unusual, complex & require lots of resources & even if you locate an intact sub on the bottom it may not be possible to retrieve.
Lots of ships are lost around the world & it doesn’t make the news because it’s too common.
2 Likes
Plus Titanic, which is always news.
1 Like
I thought it was pretty obvious from the get-go that the craft had imploded. So many design flaws with the vessel that even the CEO admitted to but still went for it anyways. Playing around with nearly 400atm of pressure is never a good idea when you think that “safety is just pure waste”.
If you look at other deep exploration vehicles they have failsafe after failsafe and were tested to the depth they were actually going to, looking at the deepsea challenger (DCV1) it’s cockpit was rated to 140% of the depth it went to. The oceangate CEO said that there was no way to test theirs (simply untrue). Admitted to combining titanium and carbon fibre which he said was “breaking a rule”, in this case it’s because mixing those two materials can lead to galvanic corrosion. The submersible had a viewport that was only rated for about a third of the depth they were going to. They had been down in the sub multiple times before and experienced “communication losses” which quite simply shouldn’t happen (especially multiple times), the DCV 1 had acoustic and marine VHF communication links rather than texting over starlink. There are many more failures here that really should not have happened.
The media reaction has been interesting to say the least, and the implosion was apparently heard by “top secret US acoustic detection systems”, so they knew pretty much immediately that the implosion occured.
It may be tragic, but it is also unsuprising. Hopefully something people can learn from.
I wouldn’t call SOSUS a secret, it’s been in place since the Cold War.
3 Likes
Yes, I agree, but no one has confirmed that’s what picked it up. I’d have though if it was SOSUS that picked it up they’d have spoken about it already. Currently it’s just information that’s been leaked by someone wanting to stay anonymous because they’re essentially leaking state secrets 
I don’t think it would be SOSUS otherwise they would probably just say that outright. SOSUS has been declassified for ages now.
Also some SOSUS arrays have been deactivated and replaced with mobile arrays (Wikipedia, but no citations for this so take with a pinch of salt)
I would guess that it’s one of those things that the USN doesn’t discuss openly even though it’s existence is no longer secret. (Thank you Tom Clancy). Afterall it’s one thing for the Russians to know it exists, it’s another to know that it can hear a DSV implode off Newfoundland.
I’m pretty sure SOSUS was always augmented by mobile arrays (SURTAS I think it was called) I’d say it’s a good bet that the bits that have been declassified are the old/original bits and that their is a newer version in place these days. The original SOSUS would be 40 odd years old these days.
1 Like
SOSUS is known about, but the tech it uses is still classified, so to the layman that makes SOSUS “top secret”.
Pretty Damning from James Cameron who says the craft failed for the same reasons the Titanic sank, they ignored warnings.
2 Likes
I mean its likely an array of highly sensitive microphones arranged in a way such that they can do Doppler direction finding (same concept used for radio direction finding) don’t think they could accurately calculate distances without using data from multiple of the arrays and basically drawing lines out and finding their intersect (at least with a passive system like SOSUS, but newer systems which are active could potentially with frequency modulation). Would be some pretty interesting tech to have a look at really.
I came across SOSUS at Brawdy in the 80s, good guys in the USN.
1 Like
Got told about super hush-hush SOSUS when I was an AEOp on Nimords, late 1970’s. Don’t talk about it unless actually airborne, etc, etc.
Then, much to everyone’s surprise - Panorama ran a programme on it!! 