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Low Frequency Active Sonar Gains US Gov. Approval 68

Posted by michael from the can-you-hear-me-now dept.
burntout writes "According to bbc online the US government has finally approved the use of low frequency active sonar. Apparently the navy has been granted an exemption from the marine mammal protection act for this, which is apparently 'necessary because of new superquiet Chinese, Russian, and German subs'."
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Low Frequency Active Sonar Gains US Gov. Approval More

Low Frequency Active Sonar Gains US Gov. Approval

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  • Germans? (Score:3, Funny)

    by nosferatu-man ( 13652 ) <spamdot@homonculus.net> on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @01:22PM (#3895502) Homepage
    We taught them a lesson, in 1918,
    and they've hardly bothered us since then. - tl
    • Maybe i am missing the joke, but didn't they need a lesson in 1937-1945? I thought they were considerably more dangerous then as well.
      • 1939 methinks. I don't remember the allied powers doing much to stop the German involvement in Spain and that was about it for German military action that year. Of course, 1939 is only when the war started for countries that hadn't finished selling military technology to the fascists yet.... bad Big Blue, bad [wired.com]
      • It's a quote from a Tom Lehrer song, actually. Maybe a bit oversubtle.

        'jfb

  • This is an overhyped issue... (Score:3, Informative)

    by duffbeer703 ( 177751 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @01:41PM (#3895679)
    Active sonar is only used in emergency situations.

    Using an active sonar array advertises your position to any other submarines in 30-90 nm radius.

    The most common use for active sonar is to acquire a definitive lock on a target after torpedoes have been launched.

    • Re:This is an overhyped issue... (Score:5, Funny)

      by heikkile ( 111814 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @02:16PM (#3895970)
      Using an active sonar array advertises your position
      to any other submarines in 30-90 nm radius

      Who cares! Once they are within a micrometer, or even a whole
      meter from you, you are toast anyway!

    • Active sonar is only used in emergency situations

      Not entirely true. :)

      Sometimes it doesn't matter if you advertise your position. Active detective ranges are so much longer than passive detection ranges that sometimes it's possible to just ping like hell and hold the threat at standoff range until you are ready to kill them.
      • actually, on normal targets passive detecion range is much greater, but less precise. you know where he is, but not quite precisely where.

        however, today's submarines are sooooo quiet, that they make less noise then the ocean background.

        active is great for very high precision location at relatively short ranges.

        if you are banging out active pings, your nice quiet enemy, just outside your active detection range knows where you are and can fairly easily maneuver around you.

        the counter tactic to this is a team of subs, some pinging and some passive, with the passive guys in the gaps trying to catch the sneaky bastards....

    • Quite so. In the trade of submarine warfare, as has been amply evidenced, stealth is everything. If you find yourself needing to use an active sytstem, it is fairly certain you have bigger concerns on your mind than its effect on local fauna.
    • That's true if you're on a sub, but not the case if you're a skimmer and your sole role is to drag an LFA array around.

      Also, as a sub, it's still best not to ping. If you do, it's to get a final range BEFORE you shoot. The torpedo will do a lot of pinging of it's own when it's closing on the target. If you're in the ball park with your firing solution, the torpedo will find it just fine.

      Something else to remember, you can be detected more than twice the distance than you can detect someone with active SONAR. Which is one reason we tagged the breakers OFF when we went on deployment.
  • ...how very sophisticated. Guess the Navy can add whale-watching trips to their recruitment literature now.
    • ...officials say they will require the personnel to use special protective measures such as a visual scan for marine mammals and shutting down the sonar if the animals are detected.
      Noble theory, but I do not see that happening in practice because it's a sure bet that sub captains will exploit this to the hilt.

  • re: overhyped issue (Score:4, Informative)

    by burntout ( 224048 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @01:55PM (#3895790)
    . . . good point DuffBeer; however, if you had read the article, you might have noticed that this is towed array sonar, based on ships. The issue here is not stealth, it is detection.

  • Sonar and whale strandings (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Peter T Ermit ( 577444 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @02:14PM (#3895949)
    Though this issue is a bit overhyped, once in a while, the Navy does kill a few whales. For instance, in March, 2000, 17 beaked whales died due to getting battered with sonar. (Link to NOAA press release here [noaa.gov].)
    • And the Army probably mauls a few dozen rabbits, groundhogs and skunks under tanks and troop carriers. The Air Force nukes its share of birds with high powered radar.

      And a van full of PETA demonstrators recently hit a deer while driving to some protest.

      --
      Evan

      • And a van full of PETA demonstrators recently hit a deer while driving to some protest

        That's hilharious... this is OffTopic, but I thought it was worth seeing. From http://www.nmagriculture.org/shear_wisdom2.htm [nmagriculture.org]

        PETA Staffers Kill Deer With Car, Sue NJ Department of Game and Fish for Damages -- According to a news release from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, (PETA), the organization plans to take action against the New Jersey game management agency for damages caused to the car driven by two anti-hunting campaigners when it hit a deer on a New Jersey highway. Rather than slow down, or be thankful they weren't hurt seriously, as thousands of drivers in all states do every year, they faxed Bob McDowell, director of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection's Division of Fish and Wildlife, and John Bradway, chairman of the Fish and Game Council, a notice of intent to sue them as a result of the collision late last November.

        PETA maintains that this accident--as well as thousands more that take place every year-- was caused by the state's mismanagement of the deer population, which includes purposely increasing herd sizes in order to provide more live targets for hunters and so jeopardizes the well-being of people who use the roads. In 1999 alone, there were more than 14,000 deer-vehicle collisions reported in New Jersey.

        PETA argues that by placing the interests of hunters, who amount to barely more than 1 percent of New Jersey's population, above the safety of the more than 8 million New Jersey residents and countless out-of-state travelers who use the roads, wildlife agencies are violating the state's constitutional mandate to provide protection and security to its people. PETA also opposes the fear, the disruption of herd members' relationships, and the bloodshed suffered by the deer on grounds of cruelty to animals.

        Plan to Protect Deer Backfires -- In a related story received by email, a PETA plan to protect Ohio deer from hunters brought different results than were intended.

        An Ohio safety law requires hunters to display at least 400 square inches of hunter's blaze orange on their person when in the woods. Capitalizing on the fact that hunters do not usually shoot orange because of its identification with hunter's garb, PETA bulk purchased blaze orange vests and affixed them to live-trapped deer in Youngstown suburbs.

        According to PETA spokesperson Katie Reese, a total of 405 vests were successfully put into circulation on deer by mid-December, and the anti-hunting group was still catching and vesting more deer.

        Youngtown entrepreneur Guy Lockey, of Guy's Outdoors then offered rewards for returned vests. Hunters who successfully bagged a vested deer could register for a drawing for random and biggest animal awards. Some 308 of the vests were recorded as bagged, based on returns by most of the hunters registering for Mr. Lockey's drawing.

        "It's so easy, you can see them coming a mile away" said one first year hunter after checking in his first spike buck. "

      • Yeah, but whales are an endangered species. Rabbits, well they breed like rabbits.

        I used to be a Bradley driver. We would go out of our way to prevent harm to animals. If we were doing live fires and a deer crossed onto the range. We shut down until civilian officials verified the area was clear.

        Destroying the environment to protect ourselves is counter-productive.
    • Explosions and loud noises are fun, especially when they are far away, but the sea is not empty and water carries sound much beter and further than air.

      Though obviously half baked it's hardly overhyped. It's very different from past sonars. Did you look at the decibel level of the output? The frequencies are also the same the ones the whales actively uses. ie. their ears are best tuned to.

      Whales and many other large sea animals depend on having good ears / sonar to go on living. As an urbanized human you technically don't need your ears for survival, but having the sound equivalent of jet engines go off unexpectedly behind your ears would have adverse effect on your fitness. In a worst case, this will mung the ears of large groups of animals rendering them unfit for survival. In the best case it will drown out or interfere with their communication (mating and food finding) and lower their survival fitness.

  • The Chinese, Russian, and German haven't reallye been developed the swedish, and dutch submarines are the really quiet ones using sterling engines, but this limits them to shallow, costal waters. Active mode is rarely used in historical systems, but this system is much lower in which a strong transmitter is used at a distance and closer sensors hear the echo so there isn't much chance of detection. I'm not quite sure how one knows if this is harmful to marine life, a loud noise to a creature that depends on sound for communications and navigation can't be too happy about someone yelling in thier ear.

  • 235 decibels or greater ! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by UranusReallyHertz ( 567776 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @03:54PM (#3896978)
    Holy sheeet! Anyone know how much juice that must take? http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/lfa.htm The shallow-water acoustics problem has risen in importance due to the increased salience of regional conflicts where the US Navy may to encounter slow, diesel submarines close to shore. The shallow-water, slow submarine is significantly more difficult to detect and classify acoustically than the cold war threat, due to the complex propagation, high clutter, and low target Doppler. Effective sonar performance requires new processing algorithms which cannot be implemented on current Naval platforms due the high processing requirements. A Hybrid Digital/Optical Processor (HyDOP) is to demonstrate the feasibility of using embedded scalable high performance digital and optical processing to solve this problem. This requires application of computationally intensive algorithms which cannot be implemented in real time using conventional processors. A high-speed optical correlator being developed by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) will act as a coprocessor to an Intel Paragon XP/S-25 computer.

  • War is good... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by noxavior ( 581294 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @04:03PM (#3897047) Homepage Journal
    To provide excuses for any action. Destroying the world's most peaceful creatures because we want to kill each other is ironic and disgusting.
    • How else do you think morons get re-elected? They have to come up with a good war to boost ratings.
    • Who modded this a troll?
      It's interesting or insightful or something, definatly not a troll.
    • And if they had any brains they would do the same thing to us. Fictional story about real attacks. [melville.org]
    • Um, a lot of whales are predatory, which isn't notably peaceful. (Actually, I think they're all technically carnivores, but I wouldn't call straining plankton from the water "violent," either. But killer whales, sperm whales, and at least a few others are fearsome predators.) I agree that we shouldn't wantonly kill them off, but the main reason they don't have weapons is that they don't have hands. If they did, I suspect we'd have found the ocean a much harder environment to exploit ...

  • Extremely sad (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MrIcee ( 550834 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @04:54PM (#3897370) Homepage
    This is on our front pages of todays paper here in Hawaii. This is a blow for the island and the marine creatures that surround it.

    Yes... it causes whales and dolphins to die. Much of the experiments were carried out in the water around Hawaii, thanks to the military idiots that abound here.

    And yes, they know that it cause havoc with the animals. It's sad, because whales travel thousands of miles each year to give birth to their babies off the coasts of our islands. Not only will this dissrupt their normal cycle of life, but also will drive them away (which also hurts our tourist industry as well as our scientific industries who try to study the whales).

    But, like everything else... our government has it's preverbal head up it's ass and only thinks of itself with it's MIGHT MAKES RIGHT mentality.

    I think personally, it is time for Hawaii to secceed the US... kick out the military, and bring back a balance to life on these beautiful islands.

    • I would love to see the Hawaiian islands returned to the Hawaiians. But US politicians don't have any morals, and the Hawaiians aren't likely to militarily defeat the US Army, so it's not really likely.
    • I think personally, it is time for Hawaii to secceed the US... kick out the military, and bring back a balance to life on these beautiful islands.

      Boy, what an intelligent statement. Just 60 fucking years ago you would have been invaded by the Japanese, had your women raped, children murdered, been beheaded during sword practice, etc. if it weren't for the U.S. military.

      And boy, nevermind the fact these young guys volunteer to sit on g-ddamn Navy ships/subs for months at a fucking time to defend your ass. God forbid we kill a couple of dolphins or whales to defend ourselves. Unless you're a Dalai Lama-type and brush insects out of your path so as not to step on them, you have no reason to whine.
      • Boy, what an intelligent statement. Just 60 fucking years ago you would have been invaded by the Japanese, had your women raped, children murdered, been beheaded during sword practice, etc. if it weren't for the U.S. military.

        And boy, nevermind the fact these young guys volunteer to sit on g-ddamn Navy ships/subs for months at a fucking time to defend your ass. God forbid we kill a couple of dolphins or whales to defend ourselves. Unless you're a Dalai Lama-type and brush insects out of your path so as not to step on them, you have no reason to whine.

        First of all, you moron, the main reason the islands were attacked was BECAUSE THE US MILITARY WAS HERE. Second, you moron, the US took over hawaii ILLEGALLY, and even this year the world court sided with the hawaiians on the issue. Thirdly, you moron, you can stick your GUN back in your pants. We don't need your fucked up american viewpoints - your *without the US you will die* mentality... that is EXACTLY the type of viewpoint that makes the US hated world wide.

        Finally, you moron, your fucking military bombs our lands and our waters... kills our fish. Your mainland corruption drains our resources and money from the islands. We do not need people with your mindset. So just stay on the mainland and play battleship in your little bathtub with your little toy gun.

        Aloha

        • first of all, you moron, without the us military being on the island 60 years ago, you wouldn't have been bombed, you would have been invaded and siezed. go ask a few koreans how that trick works. the primary difference is, native hawaiian women tend towards being overweight, and hawaiian men are slow and tend towards laziness, so unlike the koreans you wouldn't have made good whores and slaves. you wold probably have been suitable for being marched off a cliff at gunpoint though.

          second, you moron, a 90% popular vote in favor of statehood sounds like something that was really twisting arms out there. whatever your non-existent "world court" was babbling about, the US for some reason, let your worthless island in, and now we're stuck with you.

          thirdly, you moron, as a previous post pointed out, without the US you pretty much will die. There are damn near a million people on those rocks with pretty much no identifiable sources of income aside from tourism and leeching from the us government. Little things like all your food, drugs, spam, toilet paper, refrigerators, school textbooks (however little good they seem to do you), cars, tires to put on them, gasoline to put in them, a stable, world respected form of currency to buy everything with, laws, airplanes, roads, building materials, are you getting the picture yet? comes to you courtesy of the shipping facilities on the west coast of the US. Take this all away, and you go back to living the way you were found, a bunch of wild savages living hand-to-mouth and cudgel-to-brain. Please don't tell me you've bought into the disneyland image of the great enlightened culture you try to sell to the tourists. Before the english found you and started educating the people there, stacking a few rocks on top of each other and hooting at people while waving stick-spears was about the height of advanced civilization there.

          You have a million people packed into a bunch of islands with exactly 3 natural resources. Rocks, pineapples and Fish. Rocks are common, and you will not be able to earn enough money to feed your million overweight people by exporting rocks. Fish are common, and you will not be able to earn enough money to feed your million overweight people by exporting fish. You may be able to feed a million overweight people by catching all those fish....until your waters become depopulated and you have destroyed your precious little environment. Pineapples can be grown elsewhere, and almost certainly are. I just don't feel like looking right now. While pineapples may provide you with some sort of income, it would probably be difficult to grow them effectively without the fertilizers and pesticides you get from the US, and the money and regulations the FDA and USDA provide to ensure they're safe for consumption.

          Finally, you moron, our military bombs our lands. Plain, boring lifeless piles of volcanic rock. Not much point in bombing water, is there? Our "mainland corruption" (just out of curiosity, are you one of the idiots who called into the radio stations on september 11th last year saying the WTC problems were "mainland crap" that weren't important to you) can't possibly drain resources from the islands, as there are no resources to drain. The reverse, hoever, is quite obviously true, as your island consumes many resources that could be much better used in America. As far as draining money from the islands, without the US you would have no identifiable form of currency other than cracked seashells and shiny bits of coral. It is the Hawaii that drains money from the United States, by leeching hard earned money from tourists who fell for the vast amount of overstated hype and bullshit about how beautiful and perfect everything is out there. If you, moron, want to see a drain of money, Please go ahead and try to secceed, and start counting the cashflow when all our tourists decide not to bother getting visas and passports, and spend their time on the beautiful beaches and islands of Florida, parts of California, the Gulf Coast, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Caribbean islands, all of which are US states and/or territories, accept US dollars happily, are significantly cheaper than your overpriced crap, usually have friendly, polite, happy people, and beaches more than 20 feet wide with fifty thousand people crowded onto them.

          Although bitching about how horrible the US is is the official pastime out there, you really should think about what you're talking about. While I know that isn't something you're used to, it does have benefits. Hawaii needs the US a million times more than the US needs hawaii. If you go, no one here will notice, or care. A few people will have to change their vacation plans, but they'll be happy to do so when they get to St. Johns, USVI and spend a few days on the beautiful beaches, with some of the best snorkeling in the world (vastly superior in every conceivable way to Hanauma bay, that really is a dump) , enjoying some fine domestic rum. Until California can pick up the slack in the pineapple industry (they can grow everything else...) maybe a few people will have to suffer to eat their ham without pineapple for a few months. The military could give a shit, most of them are disgusted with hawaii, and bases in America and on Guam can provide the support they need.
        • First of all, you moron, the main reason the islands were attacked was BECAUSE THE US MILITARY WAS HERE.

          Yeah, like you aren't in a strategic position or anything. Japan would have _never_ bothered you.

          Second, you moron, the US took over hawaii ILLEGALLY

          Well, you know, human history is full of injustices. I could moan about my Welsh ancestors having their homeland being invaded by the Anglo-Saxons. Does it _really_ effect me? Does it _really_ effect you? Appreciate what being part of the United States politically and economically has brought you. You'd be much worse off, and probably had been taken over by another county with _much_ less regard for human dignity and freedom.

    • Re:Extremely sad (Score:3, Insightful)

      by p3d0 ( 42270 )
      Can you imagine a sound so loud that it kills you? It's mindboggling. Not a nice way to die. I have heard estimates as high as 235 decibels. That's a hundred thousand times louder than pressing your ear up against a jumbo jet engine.
  • What ever happened to the sonic shadow left by super quiet subs. This would detect super quiet subs, leave the wild life alone and not advertise it's location. Wouldn't this be the best option?
  • They just wan't to show who's the boss to those pesky
    teenagers with huge subwoofers and extra-amps in their cars.
    Is bad for other mammals though.
  • Isn't there a single hard-hearted individual out there that is willing to speak out "against the whales?"

    Frankly, I'm all for the sonar. If it saves a few lives (Well, at least lives on -my- side), to hell with the whales.

    Whales are -animals-. That doesn't mean I advocate going about and randomly slaying them, but put your views in perspective. This sonar isn't going to be in action all the time, only when there is the possibility that there is an enemy submarine nearby.

    Personally, I don't feel like being nuked by an off-shore sub, just because we didn't want to deafen some wet mammals.
    • This sonar isn't going to be in action all the time, only when there is the possibility that there is an enemy submarine nearby.
      Bullsh*t. The military spends far more time (orders of magnitude) in training than it does in actual combat. And the only way the Navy will be satisfied with the combat readiness of it's sub hunters is by practicing with live sonar.

      So, the Navy will be killing marine mammals regardless of whether any actual lives are saved.

      • Yep, that's entirely true. The military kills mammals. The only reason you're protesting so strongly is the fact that they are whales, and since your childhood you've been told:
        "Whales are gentle creatures, who never hurt a fly and are hunted down by cruel humans"

        Well... cows are gentle mammals too. (Well, most cows). Would you be offended if the military killed some cattle in order to be ready to
        -Protect your life-?

        Get your priorities straight.
  • Why don't we just destroy all subs and weapons and just get the fuck along ? It seems every day the US Army is looking for a fight and it's just pathetic.

    Save the whales, save the money and most importantly save the PEOPLE!
    • Why don't we just destroy all subs and weapons and just get the fuck along ? It seems every day the US Army is looking for a fight and it's just pathetic.

      It's about time someone said it! I mean, really, we've put with the ruse long enough. It's no longer funny. We should just end all these shennanigans and get back to the peace, love, and well-being that was all of human history before the Illuminati talked everyone into starting up the Great Generational Gag of 1937. Come on, soon no one will be alive to remember that it was all just a big joke, and people will think things like hunger, famine, and disease were meant to be taken seriously or, even worse, were the natural order of human history!

      Let's just put an end to it all.
  • A few years back I came across this low frequency active sonar technology and realized that the physics associated with it would help make for an interesting side story in a thriller I was writing. The first LFA towed-array sonar ship due to be commissioned in the series was the Impeccable, and so I sketched my guesswork of how the navy might use this vessel in a combat scenario. In the end the writing turned out to be some of the more interesting stuff in the book. It would be hard to imagine how marine animals would not be affected by 230 dB of noise when the beam hits them. On the other hand, it also seems like a technology that the navy couldn't possibly give up. The book is Ninth Day of Creation [ninthday.com] if anybody wants to see how this LFA sonar works (or possibly does) in practice. I did have to make some conjectures--it's not as though the navy was very forthcoming in its answers to queries about the ships!

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