Submarine Stealth vs. AI, Drones, and Sensor Networks
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The modern race to build undetectable submarines dates from the 1960s. In that decade, the United States and the Soviet Union began a game of maritime hide-and-seek, deploying ever-quieter submarines as well as more advanced tracking and detection capabilities to spot their adversary's vessels.
That game continues to this day but with a wider field of players. In the coming months, the U.S. Navy plans to homeport the USS Minnesota on Guam. This Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarine is among the quietest subs ever made. Advanced nuclear propulsion like the Minnesota's gives the vessel a superior ability to operate covertly. More of its kind will be deployed by the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia to compete with China for influence and military dominance, especially over the Indo-Pacific region.
[...] The People's Liberation Army Navy is the largest navy in the world, but it currently operates only 12 nuclear-powered submarines, a rather small number compared to the 67 attack subs and ballistic-missile subs of the U.S. Navy. And compared to U.S. submarines, Chinese boats are noisy and easily detected. But it won't stay that way for long. The U.S. Department of Defense claims China plans to modernize and expand its submarine forces significantly by 2035, including more stealthy submarines.
[...] There are two key steps to track a submarine, says Scott Minium, a former commander at Submarine Squadron 15 in Guam who has mentored the commanding officers of seven nuclear-powered subs. The first step, Minium says, is to detect the signature of a potential submarine. The second step is to classify it based on known signatures to determine if a submarine has been detected." Such signatures include the unique noise patterns generated by different submarine classes as well as other identifiers, and they're essential for detecting and tracking submarines.
Noise is the most critical signature, and so engineers working on stealth technology focus on suppressing the sound waves that submarines give off, rendering their movements nearly silent, especially at slow speeds. The thousands of rubberized anechoic tiles that cover the hull of a Virginia-class submarine absorb or distort sound waves coming from passive and active sonar, obscuring the sub's whereabouts. Similarly, vibration-damping materialsreduce the sounds that the engines and turbines transmit to the surrounding waters.
[...] Many experts say they're unconcerned about these incursions on submarine stealth. Naval operators, they claim, still have plenty of ways to protect the stealth of their submarines. These stealth-preserving techniques include 1) countering detection through noise, 2) deploying more underwater drones, and 3) using strategic moves to counter the objectives of the adversary.
The first strategy uses noise as a feature, not a bug. Instead of going quieter, Minium suggests, naval operators could try making more noise or finding innovative ways to change the acoustic signatures of submarines." For example, he says, We could make active sonar waves of submarines sound identical to whales."
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