Top secret U.S. Navy system heard titan implosion days ago
wsj.com
wsj.com
How that book hasn't been made into a mini-series is beyond me. The stories and characters are incredible.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mans-Bluff-Submarine-Espionage/...
I've been trying to find a less breathless, more academic treatment of the subject but haven't had any success.
During a rescue operation in the Arctic ocean, several submariners were tossed into the sea. Some of them were killed by their experimental life preservers, until then untested under real world conditions.
The life preservers were floating devices sewn into foul weather gear and boots. The boots were attached to the rest of the suit and could only be removed using a special tool. When hitting the frigid water, a number of the floating devices sewn into jackets burst, leaving the boots as the only buoyant part of the suit.
While the men's boots pulled their feet upwards, the weight of the rest of the suit pulled them under water. Quickly tiring in the churning sear, several drowned, feet pointing upwards.
Lesson still not learned: Equipment untested in the intended domain of application has not been tested.
With that being the case it could be operational inertia. Sonar tech hears something weird, reports it to his boss. His boss puts in a morning update the next day, he sees about the sub on the news, but he can't just go sending this info off, he runs it up the chain, eventually a person with authority hands it off to the USCG who then passes it back down, and eventually someone in media gets ahold of it, or someone in an official capacity makes an announcement.
OOPS! nevermind.
I remember reading a series of newspapers articles about the Somalia battle that was later the subject of the "Black Hawk Down" movie. I haven't seen the movie so don't know if it covered the communication issue I'm about to mention.
The army had a convoy on the ground trying to reach the crashed Black Hawk helicopter. The navy had a surveillance plane watching. The plane would see that the convoy was heading toward and ambush but they could not talk directly to the convoy (I don't remember if it was because they didn't have radios with the frequency the convoy was on or if there was a rule against it) so had to relay the warning and recommended alternate routes back to their own base.
There that would go up through the chain of command until reaching someone who was able to talk to a counterpart in the army, then down the chain of command in the army and finally to the convoy. By then the alternate routes the plane had found were no longer applicable, and the convoy might have even already reached the ambush.
When they got past that it would just happen again farther along with another ambush.
I'd liken it to a space shuttle blowing up, the incident isn't compatible with life.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shtum
(English, from Yiddish)
Actually, they probably do like announcing to the world “we heard it”, to hype up their capabilities and spook their adversaries. That’s why you wait, you don’t want to say you heard it and be wrong.
> “While not definitive, this information was immediately shared with the Incident Commander to assist with the ongoing search and rescue mission.”
So:
* They knew about it and quickly aided in the search.
* They did not broadcast the details of the collection to the public.
That seems like the right call to me.
Maybe they would have continued to make the attempt. But unless it got snagged, the ballasts were designed to break off after 24 hours and rise to the surface.
Even a hopeless situation, people still want to see, and possibly recover, the surviving wreckage. The whole point of the original exploration was to view the Titanic wreckage. Various military spent enormous resources looking for MH370 for months/years.
And nobody with any shred of PR training would make a "heard a big boom, they're probably fucked" statement with all the world's media and the families listening. Nobody wants to tell the families that its over until they've got hard proof.
Don't quite know what was so great about this story. It was a textbook example of the catastrophic consequences of hubris meeting ignorance, and that was about it. The rest was just milking the drama as timed passed by with decreasing theoretical oxygen reserves.
> catastrophic consequences of hubris meeting ignorance
Icarus calling. People have been telling this story for thousands of years.
It seems like this story did that.
This counts as a maritime accident so the NTSB will likely be investigating. They'd want the Coast Guard to locate and try to recover any pieces it could for the investigation anyway.
Besides, the vast majority of that money is already spent. The variable cost is actually quite low - largely just overtime and fuel cost. Often the fuel comes out of reserves that have to be rotated out anyway.
The US military, Coast Guard included, is an exercise in readiness. Responding to something happening is probably as good an exercise as any.
hmmm
The media probably chose not to report it for the same reason the Coastguard didn't say "They're dead, let's go home" until they found confirmation.
Obviously, an Orca rave.
If I am ever in a situation like this or under a fallen building or whatever I hope the rescue team will continue until death is 100% sure like starving or what and not because of some events happened.
My other thought was that if they showed up alive then it almost definitely was was a cover but I suppose I was on wrong on that front. Still think the story gave them the opportunity to drop a lot more sonar buoys and increase patrols and ‘look’ for something.
> The Navy began listening for the Titan almost as soon as the sub lost communications, according to a U.S. defense official.
"Began listening" -- So OceanGate actually contacted the Coast Guard immediately?
> Shortly after its disappearance, the U.S. system detected what it suspected was the sound of an implosion near the debris site discovered Thursday and reported its findings to the commander on site, U.S. defense officials said.
The commander on site? Like the Coast Guard commander on site? That would imply the implosion happened many hours after the loss of communication.
> “The U.S. Navy conducted an analysis of acoustic data and detected an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost,” a senior U.S. Navy official told The Wall Street Journal in a statement. “While not definitive, this information was immediately shared with the Incident Commander to assist with the ongoing search and rescue mission.”
This makes it more like they retroactively looked at the data and noted that the implosion happened and then informed the commander.
So I haven't been following this story all that closely, but I would've been somewhat more surprised had there been an implosion or similar it wasn't sitting on a recording somewhere. How quick it is to extract, triangulate, etc are another story.
> The information about the possible explosion was received on Thursday from the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization, or CTBTO, an international body that runs a global network of listening posts designed to check for secret atomic blasts.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-argentina-submarine-fligh...
The recordings related to it haven't been released, nor has an official explanation.
Because of that being able to detect anything in the ocean anywhere within a reasonable distance of your coastal regions is a matter of life and death for a strong nuclear power, so the USN definitly new about this. Heck the USN probably knows the location of every single whale in 50% of the Earth's oceans.
I used to think this. But land-based missiles are essential for MAD, as a nuclear sponge and by being cheap. They also protect against a technological horizon over which subs are unmasked. (There is a great scene in The Expanse which contemplates such a horizon.)
What I can’t get my head around are nuclear bombers, which largely seem to be for posturing [1].
[1] https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/SSQ/documents/Vo...
Posturing is super important, strategically, though. Also, nuclear-capable bombers double as conventional bombers, so there’s that.
I’ve read speculation that Russia boomers are followed at all times by at least one fast attack, and they can listen for sounds like missile bay doors opening. I have no sources, but given the state of Russia navy it seems plausible.
I guess we were both wrong.
Wasn't disclosed until many, many years later. SOSUS was highly classified until very recently.
If it was meant to be a secret it wasn’t well-kept.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/12/books/author-of-red-octob...
The exact way they do it now, where they do it, etc. is the secret. The mere existence of a sensitive listening system is not a secret that endangers national security if known; the opposite is true, we want people to know/think they can't move a tennis ball underwater without us hearing it. Knowing enough about it to get past it is such a secret.
> I guess we were both wrong.
Optimistic.
I take everything any country says about stuff like this with massive grains of salt - if they're not providing the information in real-time and then it later turns out to be true then coming back later and saying "oh we knew that all along" is kinda hard to take seriously.
Similarly they claim the implosion was detected and triangulated but the banging went undetected until sonar buoys were deployed.
I think the journalist may have assumed the wrong sequence of events. This makes it look as though the Navy wasn't recording until after the sub lost comms. That would mean that the implosion actually occurred some time after loss of contact.
>> The U.S. Navy conducted an analysis of acoustic data and detected an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost,
If this is the statement issued (that the journalist then "dumbed down" wrongly), then after comms was lost they started analyzing recorded data that was being recorded circa when contact was lost, which would make more sense.
Don't they have different sound signatures and so they're able to determine whether it's the former or the latter?
In other words, it's widely known that the Navy has a system for listening. The internal designation, capabilities and limits of operation are not widely known and that information should be kept secret.
> The Navy asked that the specific system used not be named, citing national security concerns.
And why is it "widely known" that the military has this listening system? If it's really "top secret" then no, the public shouldn't know about it. Seems like everything is "top secret" until someone wants to show off all the cool toys.
The secret bits would include what this can detect, but I guess the presumption here is that an imploding civilian sub is easier to hear than a Russian military sub. So not really giving anything away.
(The same thing happened with the snowden leaks, BTW: it was suspected for a long time that the NSA or FBI had a survellance system similar to PRISM, because it's the kind of thing that they would want to do and have the means to do, even absent any concrete evidence of its existance. The leaks just confirmed the existance undeniably and also showed how extensive it was)
As to the other points, when some top secret info does get revealed, legally or not, and the public reaction is pretty much, ehh, we already assumed that -- that seems like a pretty big failing of the whole concept of "secret." And on the other hand, I'll grant you a few exceptions, like the names of spies, position of gear or troops, perhaps the detailed weapons specs like you mentioned -- but when the name of this system is "top secret" and seemingly well over 90% of what is marked "classified" lacks any informational value whatsoever, that's a failing in the other direction, people stop caring about "secret" because so little of it is actually important.
The 1st amendment still protects the reporter. They are legally in the clear. The person who told them is not.
I'm aware this practice has been going on for decades, people leaking private and/or classified information, often illegally. But it's like money laundering, just "info" laundering through an "unnamed source," and it feels pretty sleazy.
When leaked classified documents show something highly troubling, like the Snowden leaks or Wikileaks, the government doubles down and does everything it can to punish those leakers to the maximum extent, which is not what a "healthy system" would do to a whistleblower exposing illegal or corrupt activity.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._United...
A government official privy to classified information is subject to secrecy rules that supersede the 1st. The question at issue is whether a journalist who becomes privy to the the same classified information is subject to the same rules. "The question before the court was whether the constitutional freedom of the press, guaranteed by the First Amendment, was subordinate to a claimed need of the executive branch of government to maintain the secrecy of information." i.e. which takes priority, the 1st, or rules about secrecy (the Espionage Act, in this case).
From your wikipedia article: "New York Times v. United States ... did not void the Espionage Act or give the press unlimited freedom to publish classified documents." The Court did not say that journalists have free reign, they simply refused to grant an injunction against publication. While this, and subsequent cases, certainly signal wide breadth of press freedom, it's not absolute and not a guarantee against a future prosecution.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/22/521009791...
FBI Director James Comey demurred. "That's a harder question, as to whether a reporter incurs criminal liability by publishing classified information," Comey said.
freedom of the press is not absolute, even in the U.S. According to a recent paper from the Congressional Research Service, the question is far from settled
The justices didn't block the government from exercising what's called "prior restraint" — that is, preventing a news organization from publishing or broadcasting news.
In a sizable volume of gas the air molecules have a lot of room to bounce around. Moving molecules and them hitting things is heat. So suddenly having a lot less room results in much more frequent impacts. Frequency of impacts is heat, so it becomes hotter. We'd sort of normally consider it the overall average velocity of the molecules, but if they never hit anything they never transfer energy, and aren't measured (or measurable). But when they hit things they transfer some of that energy and it's measured as heat as an aggregate.
So biggish volume of gas, suddenly in a tiny volume: huge spike in heat because all the molecules now slamming into each other and the people inside.
I'd say it would be very unpleasant, but it's so fast and so violent that exceeds the speed of human thought, so they felt nothing and just sort of stopped existing as corporeal beings faster than they could possibly comprehend the change in circumstances. They were. And then they weren't.
Video showing a Mantis Shrimp punching a shell incredibly quickly it creates a vacuum which generates intense heat and a flame .. under water!
Absolutely occurred in under 30ms (upper bound). Possibly as quick as 2ms, and in all likelihood well under 10ms.
The depth of the Titanic wreck is 3800m; down there the vessel would be subjected to 380 times that pressure. So...probably.
Mythbusters did an episode showing what happens to a human body under deep sea implosion
> https://youtu.be/LEY3fN4N3D8
It's ugly.
At their depth, where presumably the carbon fibre let go, it's probably a lot faster too. At least they won't be able to even register what's going on.
Watch how quickly those glass objects imploded as much lower pressures than they would have been at, it would have happened faster than their brains could have comprehended it, so there's some mercy in that at least.
As materials engineers you should strive to intimately know the materials you are working with.
It's in our DNA to gauge and get a feel for materials, like a cat balancing on a thin branch, or a dog finding good spots to crunch a bone.
How does a carbon fibre tube behave when slightly overloaded with external pressure?
When it is "leaked" I assume they heard nothing and don't want to disclose the (in)accuracy of their kit.
Read up on underwater acoustic propagation to see why. Lots of interacting variables that can reflect, scatter, focus, alter affect absorption etc.
I'm the last person to deny the massive frustrating bureaucracy that is the US military, but in this kind of thing, that's not an issue.
Former O-4 17 alpha. I was even less connected to the Coast Guard than the Navy is, but since they do port security, including cyber, if there was an issue there they were involved.
One of the first things I imagine an incident commander would do would be to ask if anyone has anything like that. Any ships in the area, military or civilian or foreign hear/see anything that they know of. Sounds like he got that information soon. Does that mean the whole thing was a waste of time?
Without knowing more about exactly what they did or didn't do, I can't say. And whether they should have done all of this is besides the point. They decided to do a search. And until they could connect that sound with the vessel, they needed to keep looking.
This is why stupid people doing stupid shit isn't just a Darwin Award situation. Search and rescue types don't want to stop until they succeed and you're putting them at risk too. They leave bodies on Everest, I would hope this was only ever just to confirm they were dead and no one was going down there but who knows.
An epic and gripping tale for sure. It made quite an impression on me as I was joining my local SAR team.
https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hu...
If you've more to tell or share I'd be much obliged
Though have to edit to say, I can't goddamn believe they didn't save the cell data. Good lord. So many kinds of frustration reading over this stuff while I'm waitin here today.
A sobering realization how dangerous a simple walk can be.
my thinking is there's a lot of learning to be had from people who are doing this kind of thing. How much faster could we find people if we act like they've got good reasons to them that got them lost? Like with bad maps. Or even being better able to find people while they're alive if things like those maps and other things are looked over and you try to mentally figure out what they think might make sense? Walk a mile in someone's shoes. I ain't no expert on this but I keep reading police reports or park reports on missing people and a lot of times it seems like searchers mistake their idea of the fact with the lost persons idea of the fact. am I crazy or does that seem like a really big mistake? I'd like to know more just don't know where to go learning more about this sorta thing
It’s also why the “tell people where you’re planning on going, don’t leave the trail, stick to the plan, make it easy to find you” are important survival techniques.
Even just learning how to make markings on the ground that can be seen from low-flying aircraft may save you someday (contact a local civil air patrol and ask to go along on a training flight to see how hard it can be to identify even something as large as a plane from the air).
I'm sorry I don't know any of the terms for search and rescue or anything so I have no idea how to make what I am saying make sense.