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Comment by ashtonkem | Hacker News Reader

Detecting echoes requires that they’re running active sonar, which announces their presence to everyone and somewhat ruins the raison d’être for submarines. Running passive they can detect surface ships, but not mountains per se.

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I know it's not very economical, but perhaps someone could start a submarine cruise? You get some vacationers, use a relatively large submarine so they have some measure of comfort, then sonar your way around a pre-planned public route. Then you have navigational data and sonar scans you can release to the world. Or, even better than releasing (the bankers say to themselves), selling the data.

Why bother even going anywhere? It's a sealed box without windows—who'd know the difference?

can we have some port holes?

Sure. You can see plenty of black water all day long.

Submarines are notoriously bad places to be. The navy actually sets very long enlistment terms for its submarine crews, because the re-enlistment rate is extremely low. Even with nuclear reactors submarines are cramped, noisy, and unpleasant. Removing the weaponry might make it suck less, but it’s not gonna be “luxury”.

Surface soundings or a towed array are vastly more economical.

For uncontested waters, yes. The problems start when one military starts trying to make charts in waters claimed by another country. That tends to become a bit of a problem.

Sure, but if you're conducting the survey from a submarine you're 1) very nearly as detectable (the sonar is pinging like mad, China likely have hydrophones throughout the region) and 2) as noted, your consts, complications, and vulnerabilties have gone up markedly.

Given circumstances, something like a drone ship might be a better option. Slightly less detectable, cheap, and can be deployed in quantity if desired.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=9XoTAvcKgOE

Toward the end of the video (beginning about 4:30) the VP of ocean mapping talks about bathymetry as a major future mission. I note that whilst the surveyor craft has an international-orange sail as the other droneships, the body is battleship grey. I suspect there may be alternatively-liveried mission sails as well.

More on that here: https://www.saildrone.com/tag/bathymetry

Connan seems to be USN Ret.:

https://www.crunchbase.com/person/brian-connon

In fact, I'd put reasonable money on that being a chief mission consideration for the technology. Drop a bunch of these in bad weather --- they'll make good coverage, and it's going to be difficult as heck to get out, spot them, and take countermeasures.

Give it a grey paint-job and maybe drop some radar-absorbing material on it, and they'll be fairly stealthy.

There's no other way than sonar to detect things like mountains underwater?

That's interesting. Seems by now we might have something else that does that. A way to use sonar that obfuscates the source of a ping, underwater lidar, submarine drones, something?

What signal would you send that isn't detectable by anyone but you?

An array of tactile antennae/feelers?

now you’re thinking like a catfish! i like it

Entertaining the idea of a probe sticking out the front led to a realization. The problem is you're never going to stop in time if you're at speed. You need to know well in advance that something's there.

Perhaps a sound signal that's a copy of something naturally occurring, e.g. by sea animals.

That came to mind for me too.

Fleet of small scale autonomous drones? Bonus points if they're water soluble.

The generally accepted way to detect large geological features underwater, if you're not a survey ship (moving slowly, running multiple loud sonars, etc.) is to have and use accurate navigation charts.

Wretched shortcomings in that regard seem well-accepted as the cause of the USS San Francisco's mishap.

To further clarify, unlike the ships of WW II, today US subs mostly exist for a nuclear second strike capability. The strategy assumes the enemy doesn’t know where all the submarine nukes are, so they’re guaranteed to face nuclear retribution if they initiate an attack.

This isn’t true, and, as the article states, this submarine is specifically a fast attack sub. It attacks other submarines and ships. That’s still related to nuclear deterrence, but not in the way you’re saying.

> today US subs mostly exist for a nuclear second strike capability.

I understand that you say “mostly”, but it is not quite true. There are many other mission types US submarines serve.

There are US submarines which provide nuclear second strike capability yes.

There are US submarines which carry land attack cruise missiles. These are mostly used to surpess enemy air defences.

There are US submarines clearly optimised for “special missions” such as insertion of special force units or taping underwater cables.

Then there are US submarines designed to hunt other submarines.

For example the USS Connecticut is a Seawolf-class nuclear powered fast attack submarine. Nuclear powered means that the energy used to propel it forward and power its systems come from a nuclear reactor, it doesn’t necessarily means that it has nuclear armed weapons. ( Some might think that I am stating the obvious here but it is surpisingly common to confuse the terms “nuclear armed” and “nuclear powered”. ) In any case she does not carry the kind of nuclear armed ballistic missiles one would associate with a second strike role.

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