Navy Develops Highly Persistent Undersea Hydrophone System Powered By Ocean Temperatures

[Forest Green]

https://www.twz.com/news-features/n...drophone-system-powered-by-ocean-temperatures

 

[Sferrin]

How's it compare to SOSUS?

 

[Forest Green]

How's it compare to SOSUS?

Only someone with classified clearance couldn't answer that.

 

[Sferrin]

I was just wondering if it was a full replacement, an addition, or unrelated. Looks like it's just a deluxe sonobuoy.

 

[TomS]

My impression, based on the name, is that this is not a search system. A profiler is used to collect information on how sound transmits through water, which is impacted by temperature, salinity, wind and weather, etc.) So these are intended to refine the data collected by wide-area sensors like SOSUS.

 

[Yellow Palace]

Some less hyperbolic reporting from PACOM here, from the USN press office here, and from the company behind the energy technology here. Definitely sounds like an oceanographic tool, rather than a tactical sensor.

 

[Josh_TN]

Even if it were a tactics sensor, it clearly is in a separate deployment class than SOSUS. It is a deployable system more along the lines of SURTAS. Though clearly operating times of only a couple ten minute intervals make it unsuitable for tracking, as well as the hours long delay between data dumps and retasking.

The deployable persistent tracking rough equivalent would be TRAPS, though it uses a completely different deployment scheme and is not mobile. It is however serviced by radio gateway gliders that perform the same communications functions via satellite.