Stupid question, perhaps: was/it possible for this sub to have any kind of beaconing or communication system that works at depth? It seems like one of this first things I'd investigate before deciding to build a sub.
I would expect to see some sort of emergency button (internally) that you could press, that would release some sort of buoy, that would float to the surface and start transmitting with gps etc. I think that would help narrow down the search.
The buoy would be in an external container (to prevent pressure problems), with explosive bolts or something to release.
I don't think the former system would have worked here anyway, since the sub is supposed to get very close to the bottom.
Naval subs in trouble?
They go "forever on patrol." A naval sub is an espionage watercraft; signaling an emergency isn't exactly in the playbook for most of their mission cycle. ;)
I would expect some e2e encryption satellite communication, however that might be still traceable to the enemy listening posts.
Man, I now need to watch "Hunt for Red October" again [0]. lol
There's so many, it's hard to pick!
I'm quite fond of the Bond film where he was disguised as a Japanese man, and all the actors pretended to be fooled. 6'2", with chest hair poking out of his kimono, an obvious wig, and speaking broken Japanese with his typical Scottish brogue. "Arigatoo gozzzimash"
Is your phone waterproof? Stick it a sink full of water. Watch it lose all network connectivity.
That should work if it's floating I would think?
They already know about where the sub should be, somewhere around the Titanic wreck. If an untethered buoy pops up a few miles away, does it really do much to help clue you into where they are? And if its not much to put a tether on the buoy, why not just have the craft be tethered from the start?
A buoy ascends at 2.8 m/s. 3000m would yield, meaning about 18 minutes of rise time.
If we assume that water is at max speed the whole way through, we'd be talking about 1-2 miles.
Realistically, because most of its rise is in deep sea conditions, I imagine it'd be less than 1 mile.
But, if it made contact as soon as it reached surface with a GPS location, I'm sure some scientist could calculate about how far it drifted from the water conditions. I'd imagine they could get it down to a few hundred foot radius?
”The submarine's emergency rescue buoy had been intentionally disabled during an earlier mission and it took more than 16 hours to locate the sunken boat, which rested on the ocean floor at a depth of 108 m (354 ft).”
https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/sound01/backgrou...
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2005/02/secrets-whales-long...
The sub should have had an acoustic transponder that broadcast telemetry which could also be used to locate it.
So perhaps the best you could do here are something like emergency buoys that either one can record data on or perhaps automated recording some stats/location/whatever that can be released in an emergency and send a broadcast once topside?
According to my back-of-the-envelope math, using the density and tensile strength of typical glass, it would have a breaking load capacity of around 10 newtons (roughly 2 pounds of force). Even a steel cable with the same weight would only be about 20 times stronger.
They obviously didn't do this. They previously lost the sub for five hours. Why this doesn't have an emergency buoy, or an locator beacon that works when the ship surfaces, I don't know.