Argentina says abnormal noise heard after submarine's last contact as hopes fade | Hacker News Reader

Argentina says abnormal noise heard after submarine's last contact as hopes fade

telegraph.co.uk

42 pointswslh36 comments

Let me express deep solidary and hope for the crew and families.

On technical note, I keep wondering with all the technology available (satelites, sonars, airplans, thermo, etc.), how is it possible that they are not able to find / detect it ? Understand weather conditions are rough.

And this is the case of multi nations collaboration (best of the best ?).

Looks like submarine is very very powerfull attack vector. (?)

EDIT: Update from Guardian

"Justifying the delay, navy chiefs said that military protocol advises a 48-hour waiting period before beginning search efforts for submarines lost at sea."

[0]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/22/search-for-mis...

> how is it possible that they are not able to find / detect it ?

The ocean is a very large thing, especially when it needs to be searched in three dimensions.

Even more so when the thing you're searching for is intended to be hard to find.

>>three dimensions

This is definitely the big snag people lose themselves on. They are thinking about the search being in two dimensions, like a map. They aren't thinking about lost ships or planes in three dimensions; a formula squared vs. a formula cubed and how much faster the latter gets out of hand.

But we know it's either on the bottom or the surface right? It needs to use power to balance in the middle somewhere.

It doesn't need to use power. Ballast tanks are a thing.

But irrelevant to the point. Submarines are designed to be hard to find in an environment which very nature already makes things hard to find due to there being so much "stuff" in the way

But realistically it's not going to be neutrally bouyant while submerged. Nonetheless, a much harder task than 2-D x2...

It’s entirely possible (even probsble) that one or more countries involved have tech that they could be using to find the sub much more easily, but which they’re holding back for strategic-secrets reasons. Many stealth/antistealth techniques seem to rely on the method being kept secret from adversaries.

Why would they have to reveal the means? Just construct the discovery in parallel with a known technology. Tell everyone that your crews eat a lot of corn and that improves hearing on the sonar headsets.

Revealing that they can pinpoint the sub is already enough information to lose that competing advantage.

Improbable. The South Atlantic isn't of much interest to the major naval powers. Most likely none of them have deployed the dense undersea hydrophone networks necessary to have any chance of tracking a submarine.

I believe it as probable. Say "Submarine found in x waters 145m deep." if this isn't standard, and signals an improvement in current tech, Russia and China will wonder why and start to piece things out.

The problem is that sub designers go to great lengths to make them invisible while underwater. So if it's disabled and can't tell where it is, that's a problem, (or feature since it's stealthy.)

There is no basis in economics or physics for that belief. You're just making things up. Military powers aren't omnipotent.

You vastly, vastly underestimate how hard it is to do what you just said. Consider the inverse square law, then consider how hard it is to illuminate things underwater at a depth where there is little to no ambient light. Consider the limitations of sonar and other technologies at extreme distances.

Then extrapolate that in three dimensions across a major light trafficked area.

I get that militaries keep high-tech stuff secret, but what you are proposing is more akin to magic or teleportation than anything reasonable.

My thesis was that it's possible not to use the most advanced stuff to find them. Sure sucks that Argentinians died, but it would suck more if 1000 US sailors died and we lost the next war.

https://theconversation.com/how-to-find-a-submarine-no-its-n...

Anything in deep water is hard to detect. Submarines especially so, because they contain stealth technology to defeat trivial detection.

Submarines are stealthy. Very stealthy. She likely has magnets to counteract detection by magnetic anomaly detectors (MAD). Many subs also have anechoic tiles to make them less visible to active sonar (but I don't know if this was the case in this instance).

If its sank and the crew aren't able to deliberately make a lot of sound then it'll have to be found by sonar sweeps.

This survey can be done by the kind of ship that Russia has sent to help find the sub.

Remember when they lost a whole airliner?

As someone who knows nothing about submariners, I wonder if they could have "reprogrammed" a torpedo to explode at a safe distance shortly after launch, that is without a target, in order to produce enough noise and attract attention in their area. Could seismograph networks or satellites pinpoint such an event?

The biggest issue I see with this: they presumably suffered a loss of all electric, and in that case they're going to have limited pressure in their hydraulic systems. Hydraulics are probably responsible for both steering and torpedo launches, and you're going to give priority to maneuvering in this situation.

This reminds me of Kursk, the Russian sub.

Specifically the third-world government fumbling the response to the missing submarine.

Considering the USN had two deadly above-surface collisions recently it is either a miracle or speaks to the professionalism of the submariners in avoiding these deadly accidents. (Unfortunately not in this case)

Surface collisons happen more often than one might think.

A couple US Navy ships have recently had them IIRC.

I'd think surface collisions would happen a lot more than underwater collisions with the same level of professionalism/carelessness due to

1. There are way more surface craft than submarines

2. For a surface crash two boats need to be in the same point in 2D space. For an underwater crash two subs also need to be at the same depth in the water column.

During the Cold War there were multiple underwater collisions with Soviet submarines.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/25/nuclear-subm...

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/1992-russian-nucle...

Usually because the Western submarine was tailing them at the time, a fundamentally risky business.

There was a collision between UK and French SSBNs on patrol a few years back, and indication as to how quiet they can be - and SSBNs warrant the absolutely best ASW technology and techniques. An SSK, like the one missing, that has lost power isn't going to be making any sound at all unless the crew are doing it. If it is on the bottom you're essentially going to have to do a sea bed survey. The UK's Holland 1 submarine was lost under tow in 1913 only 1.5 miles outside Plymouth breakwater and remained undetected until 1981.

There were amazing cold war submarine battles during the cold war. Not full fighting, but skirmishing.

There was a story of a UK submarine which stole the communications turret off a USSR submarine. It was classified for years - but this sort of thing is slowly being declassified

Not a collision but I always find the "Whiskey on the Rocks" grounding amusing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_S-363

Specifically the third-world government fumbling the response to the missing submarine.

Nitpick: I know the connotations it's picked up since then, but the term "third world" still should not be used to describe Russia. As coined, the "first world" was NATO + NATO-aligned nations (so, US and US allies/sphere of influence); the "second world" was the Warsaw Pact + aligned nations (so, USSR and USSR allies/sphere of influence); and the "third world" was the nations not included in the first two classifications, and in which the US/USSR tended to try to cultivate ties or fight proxy wars with each other.

My total knowledge regarding submarines is practically 0. I have a (somewhat) technical question that I hope my better qualified fellow readers can answer.

Are there any "distress call devices" which are/could be used in such situations? If not, what would the technical difficulties be, for creating and vertically launching a torpedo equipped with a beacon? If the sub is unable to move and/or broadcast, the beacon would begin transmitting when reaching the surface. I would imagine that launching such a beacon (visual & GPS & ...) would reduce the search area.

There is a device called an EPIRB that is often carried on sailboats. It is a floating radio transmitter that contacts a global satellite network in case of emergencies. It transmits a distress signal as well as its location.

It can be manually activated. It also activates automatically on contact with water.

I would imagine it would be possible to create an EPIRB-like device for submarines.

Submarines do have the EPIRB. This submarine was also confirmed to be equipped with one. One of the reasons that this disappearance was weird was that there wasn't even a trace of the EPIRB activating on this sub so we're not even sure if it "sank"

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/us-na...

(some) Submarines have one or more emergency beacons which automatically detach if they reach crush depth, rising to the surface and starting to transmit.

In a very shallow area the sub might be sitting on the bed but not below crush depth, so the buoy would not automatically detach. Of course it can also be operated by the crew, but it's really an absolute last resort thing.

Whatever happened I hope for the submariners' sake it was quick.

For those of you who feel sad for strangers that you never knew existed until now, why not direct your feelings to something productive like looking through local obituaries and contacting their survivors to show some support and kindness? There are real human beings dying all around us but they don't have dramatic movie-style deaths so we don't care. Even better, don't wait till they're dead. Go and seek out old, sick, and lonely people and make them feel better.

I think news-cycle internet sadness drains our capacity to care about others while also doing nothing for those who died or who're genuinely sad about it. The sinking submarine is interesting, the people on it aren't.

That sounds like a false dilemma.

Not false - we have limited capacity to care about people so we have to make tradeoffs. If anything, just because of the time it takes up. More people die each day than we could even name if that was our full time job. That's not even counting the possible emotional limits on people.

So why not spend your limited caring on someone who's ignored by the world and didn't even put themselves in danger, even better if it's someone who's not a professional killer like these victims were.

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