Chinese Drones Will Use Genetic Algorithms to Learn to Hunt For Submarines

Popular Mechanics ^ | 2/29/2012 | Clay Dillow

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China usually holds its military hand very close to the vest--that, or things “mysteriously” leak that it doesn’t (does) want the world to know about--so we’re left to wonder why the People’s Republic has decided to publish this in the journal Advanced Materials Research. Nonetheless, it’s pretty interesting. Chinese navy researchers have plans for a new submarine hunting scheme that uses ship-launched UAVs running genetic algorithms.

Genetic algorithms narrow down a range of possibilities to an optimal solution much the way evolution does (at least in a simplified sense)--by weeding out the weaker offspring and mating the best with the best to create stronger candidates. These algorithms would take into account things like fuel economy, potential air and sea threats, and oceanographic geography to zero in on the most likely places for submarines to be moving at a given time.

Working with dropped sonar buoys, the drones would then attempt to locate enemy subs in action. Just whose subs are Chinese hunting for, and in what waters do they expect to find them? Surely this revelation by the Chinese “underwater weaponry and chemical defense department” (yup, that’s a single department) at the naval academy at Dalian couldn’t have anything to do with Taiwan, the U.S., or the Pentagon’s renewed focus on the Pacific. More at New Scientist.

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They can if they have certain equipment on the satellite.Lasers, infrared and other detectors and synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Satellites might see subtle undersea disturbances caused by submarines, watch wave patterns on or beneath the sea surface, or detect subtle variations in ocean temperature.

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National Reconnaissance Office operator of the US spy satellite fleet - is planning multiple satellite launches, and China must assume that one or more of these new US surveillance satellites will help support US Navy efforts to locate and track PLAN submarines

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Don’t the nuclear reactors give off a heat signature that leaves a “heat wake” as the sub moves through the icey waters?

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Detecting thermal radiation directly from the submarine at a
depth greater than a few meters would be very difficult if not impossible and submarines usually travel at much greater depths.You could detect it on the surface

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2005-05/1115410201.Ph.r.html

[RC one]

maybe. I always remember how confident Rommel was that his communications with Germany were secure. Unfortunately for him, he put a little too much faith in his native technology and it cost him Africa. America puts too much faith in her technology and takes too much for granted with regards to enemy technology. We are notorious for underestimating enemy capabilitiers and over estimating our own and we never seem to learn. Do we know that out subs can’t be detected? Do we know that our communication is secure? Do we know that the F22 is truly stealthy?

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There is one way to test our communications are secure is to change frequencies.Set up special “war time” frequencies,monitor the frequencies,monitor the satellite codes,check time intervals or set up a cryptographic system.

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We have frequency hopping sincgars radios of course and we presume that they are secure. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. I think the system is old enough now that russian and/or Chinese intelligence agents have had time to thoroughly investigate the technology. Russia and China both have plenty of money and competent computer programmers these days.

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Fortune Favors the Prepared Mind.