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by KennyBlanken 1074 days ago
> . What they're really listening for now are reactor plant noises.

Yep; a fanatical obsession with reducing plant noise is why US subs were so quiet compared to everyone else. The author knows fuck-all about what he's talking about going on about cavitation.

It's also why diesel hybrid subs from Sweden are nearly undetectable. There's virtually no plant noise - probably just a coolant pump or two - while running on battery. They are sometimes 'hired' by other navies for exercises because they're so incredibly quiet.

He's spouting pure bullshit about the Navy retroactively going back over their 'tapes'. He first explains that for decades the Navy has run computerized classification systems, but then we're supposed to believe that a highly sensitive listening array did not detect the extremely energetic implosion that would sound like nothing else?

Cameron said that buddies in the navy told him very quickly that they'd heard the implosion, but they were confirming what he already knew when he heard that telemetry was lost at the same time as comms; telemetry came from a completely separate external pressure vessel. It going silent means it was destroyed, and the only way that could have happened was the sub imploding.

The bit about it being unrecognizable as an implosion because of its unique construction is complete supposition.

This is what happens when you have an article about submarines written by a guy who checks is a github engineer who likes 80's and 90's phone technology.

3 comments

Also, SOSUS being secret until 1991, as per article, and being famously and prominently featured in the book Hunt for Red October 1984...
He said it was classified until 1991, but that it had been revealed accidentally multiple times before then. So that checks out.
> The bit about it being unrecognizable as an implosion because of its unique construction is complete supposition.

the theory that it would have been correctly classified by the trained system seems an even less likely complete supposition - the only arguments I've seen in favor of it are argument ad incredulity fallacies

Since you are appealing to qualifications, I am genuinely curious what your qualifications are. I have never heard of the author before but I have also never heard of you, so it would be interesting to get your technical background to compare.