Unmanned sea vehicle with sonar jammer?

Why don’t we have unmanned sea vehicle with sonar jammer

  • USV endurance are limited

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Sonar can’t be jammed like radar

    Votes: 3 100.0%
  • Sonar jammer need too much energy

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • USV control is harder due to radar horizon limit

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    3

Ronny

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Given that submarine are extremely dangerous threat to surface fleet, they can detect surface fleet with sonar from extended range while stay undetected even at point blank. So why don’t surface ship carry around small unmanned boat with sonar jammer? (The principle is similar to MALD-J). If we can’t detect submarine, isn’t it better to make them equally blind as surface ship?
 
There's a few faulty assumptions going on here.

First is that we cannot detect the submarine. Who says this is the case? A constant noisemaker would interfere with our own operations.

Acoustic decoys are a thing. Nixie being probably the most famous example but there have been devices such as Foxer and Fanfare from back around WWII. Additionally, there have been a number of noisemakers either ejected from tubes in a Submarine or shot by rocket launchers or mortars from that era that fulfill a similar purpose as Foxer and Fanfare. I will get into further developments later.

You need to understand how sonar works. Each ship has a unique accoustic signature, somewhat like a fingerprint. The propeller blades, the machinery, constant vibrations in the hull each leave a unique blend of frequencies. This can be obscured through a variety of methods but it's still a factor. Increasing the entire background noise to cover for that is an exceedingly ineffient way of doing things. Foxer is a good example of this. Since it was a broadband noisemaker it's use created too much background noise for sonars to function well so it was only deployed when torpedoes were detected. It should be said that against a moving surface ship a torpedo launch is probably far from a subtle thing given its need to close the distance quickly in light of the high speed of said surface ships.

The effectiveness of such broadband noisemakers in light of better tuned hydrophones has significantly decreased. Put in filters on the frequencies you don't want to hear and isolating the frequencies you're looking for is a lot easier.

Newer noisemakers and decoys are more narrow-band so as to avoid interference in ASW operations and to more effciently allocate power. Some are meant to confuse active sonar pulses but most mounted on surface vessels are meant to emulate a ship. Active sonar is significantly less effective against surface ships since it reflects off the surface. It isn't useless but it is degraded, hence the emphasis on decoying.

In many ways these decoys are similar to their WWII era equivalents. You have towed sets like Nixie, taking the place of Foxer. You have a wide number of rocket and mortar launched noisemakers, and you have a few kind of like mini torpedoes that when deployed travel off in a different direction generating noise to sound like a ship.

You do not have any broadband decoys that are supposed to constantly run. This is for good reason.

Assuming you can somehow create a powerful enough system, by running your "jamming" system you are ringing the dinnerbell for everyone with a hydrophone in the vicinity. There are torpedo guidance methods like wake-homing that don't rely on accoustics and the submarine can always get a ye-olde periscope look at your ship. Besides they could just radio their friends in shore-based aircraft to come sink your formation with ASMs. You render yourself blind and mark your position, a profoundly dangerous move to make.

As to some of the other elements in your poll.

USV endurance is fine. They're around what normal surface ships have though this probably depends on speed.

If you squint RF EW is like acoustic deception but the details significantly diverge on the nature of common threats and common counters.

Power is definitely an issue. If you want a high background noise for your ships to operate in then it's going to cost you. And by cost I mean you probably need something on the nuclear scale to do the job. One of the major concerns with nuclear ASW weapons was the sonar blackout they caused after detonation, especially for systems like SOSUS when they reflect around basins. Unintential and intentional use of them in this way was a concern.

The radar horizon is not an issue since SATCOMS exist and on the lower tech scale HF and VHF propagate around the horizon.
 
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Picture a room full of people at a big restaurant, talking and eating dinner. That's the underwater sound environment.

Sonar is trying to sort out all that noise to identify one single person.

So yes, you can increase the background noise, but that means that the person you are trying to identify now has a noisemaker on them. So instead of listening for that one person, you listen for that noisemaker and shoot based on it.
 

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