Posted on 06/30/2003 11:41:58 AM PDT by budanski
Edited on 06/29/2004 7:09:55 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
For more than a year, the U.S. Navy and environmentalists have been in close combat over sonar and its effect on marine mammals. On Monday, their fighting will culminate in court.
The Navy says it needs a wide berth to test its controversial, ultra-loud, low-frequency sonar system. The Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, and other green groups counter that the military has to be more mindful of whales and other marine mammals when it runs the tests. Whales depend on their ears to make their way around the oceans, after all. The sonar in question can be as deafening to marine mammals as a Saturn V moon rocket.
(Excerpt) Read more at wired.com ...
You're the one saying SURTASS LFA is out, YOU have the obligation to propose a workable alternative.
I just know that when humans, and particularly Americans, set their minds to finding a solution to a problem, they just about always do.
Fine. You're an American. Set your mind to the problem. Find a solution.
Satellites, maybe?
You mind telling me what method will allow something at least 100 miles up to see through 100 meters of seawater?
It seems to me for quite a while. You do know that our lives are already worth less than a dog's, right? Cop shoots you to death in a botched raid (wrong address, etc) and gets 2 weeks off with pay. You shoot police dog that's ripping your arm off in similiar raid and provided you live through it, you'll go to prison for killing an 'officer'.
Beyond measure. They are after every aspect of our current way of life.....EVERY ASPECT.
I know that satellites can now see things that they couldn't see just a few years ago. I expect that if the sort of brilliant researchers who made that possible set their minds to it, they'll find a way to see Dear Leader's subs, from somewhere, without blowing whales' inner ears to smithereens.
Yeah. They can see it if it's out in the open air.
This is qualitatively different.
One more time: what technology will allow a satellite that's at least 100 miles up to see through 100 meters of seawater?
Anything is easy to accomplish, if you're not the guy trying to do the work.
First, my bona fides: I have ten years-and-counting as a sonar operator (what we call an Acoustic AW) on board P-3 ORION ASW aircraft, and something like 2,500 hors in type. I've tracked numerous friendly AND unfriendly submarines, nuclear and diesel, using both passive AND active SONAR systems, and have, on occaision, used cuing from SURTASS ships. Oh, and I also like whales...they're pretty nice people, really. I have whiled many hours onstation away listening to their calls when the subs failed to turn up.
Okay, that out of the way, I have to say that I have a pretty low overall opinion of SURTASS, indeed, of most large-scale active systems. In an entire North Atlantic deployment, SURTASS was never able to put us onto a target with ANY degree of accuracy. We could have gotten the same results using tried-and-true passive searches, possibly even better.
Dear Leader's boats? The ChiComs? Please. They are well known to be like underwater freight trains when operating. No exotic systems are needed to find THEM, trust me, just good operators and a few (relatively inexpensive) sonobouys.
My own opinion of why these large-scale active systems were developed (and ALL of them are still "in development", that is, not perfected) to counter what was expected to be the next generation of stealthy Soviet submarines, which were feared to be too quiet for passive sensors to detect, and CERTAINLY too silent for us Enlisted puke operators to deal with.
Rubbish. Not only was that false, as a properly-trained and experienced operator can be, along with his similarly-trained crew, perfectly capable of finding anything worth finding in the Deep Blue, but the Soviet Union collapsed, and with it all plans for any "Red Octobers" there might have been (and that IS how old some of these systems are, BTW.). The systems were kept in development because a LOT of senior officers were enamored with them. I assure you, the operators were not.
Bottom line? In my professional opinion, for the current threat(diesel-electric submarines operated by third-world navies in littoral environments), LFA-type systems simply do not provide the accuracy and certainty that older, more proven passive systems(SOSUS, anyone? Hello?), like (ahem) Marittime Patrol Aviation do, and cost a whole LOT of money which would be better spent on maintaining aircraft and training operators. Therefore, considering the fact that some whale species ARE endangered, and the fact that the deaths that result are brutally painful to the point of cruelty, the LFA systems simply aren't worth it.
I'm Certainly no PETA pansy, but I have watched whales through observation windows for hours, and heard them over vast distances. I cannot in good conscience support dragging them into our conflicts, especially when the benefits are so weak.
SONAR operators and crews can do this, and we DON'T kill some of the most magnificent species on Earth to do it. The ONLY people I want to kill are the Bad Guys. Give US the money being spent on LFA, let us use it to train our people well, and let us have at it. Between us and the bubbleheads, your sub threat will cease to exist in short order. Of THAT, at least, I can assure you.
I guess it'll always be up to noncoms and Chiefs to provide the PEOPLE to be there when the hi-tech (inevitably) fails to perform as advertised.
I'll take a UYS-1 or 78-A, a decent 2nd operator, and a few DIFARs over all the "blasters" they can put out any day of the week.
P.S.- I got to take a tour of the USS TENNESSEE a few years ago. Sweet ears you guys got.
Since a lot of the infrastructure still exists, perhaps that system would be of greater value.
Don't forget, active systems have one HUGE disadvantage...they CANNOT positively identify a contact.
Only passive sensors, together with their operators, can do that. They also don't let the contact know they're there, which active DOES, every time.
"So it's assumed that the loud sounds are even worse for them."
This article doesn't provide any evidence of a whale death in the piece. Restricting defense testing of prototype weapon/defense systems on "ASSUMPTIONS" is foolish, IMHO.
Mr. Long Cut, I understand how the brass in the military and all industry too, have a tendacy to promote "pet" projects that us worker bee's hate because it's ineffective or not user friendly. However, sometimes these prototypes that might seem worthless in the begining evolve into a valuable tool after R & D. Hysterical "Chicken Little" types have no business affecting the development of defense systems or anything else for that matter on the strength of assumptions.
Your post tells me the military has the best watchdogs in the world in the enlisted class. I trust their imput and if this system is truly a killer, it will die in R & D at the hands of the experts.
Don't get me wrong...I FULLY agree that the environMENTALists should have absolutely zero say in how the U.S. military is run. They've not got the brains of a Yugo full of anvils. They are utterly ignorant of the purpose of a military; and have no idea what a trained warrior is FOR.
That said, a stopped clock IS right twice a day. The fact that they are correct in this particular case (and they are, trust me...the sounds produced by SURTASS has indeed been resposible for several beachings and deaths) doesn't prove that their entire philosophy is right, or even worth listening to.
As for evidence...well, when whales swim onto a beach and die, with their eardrums blown out, and an LFA system was tested nearby, well...what's two plus two again? The decibel level of those things is brutal to even mechanical listening devices. Common sense tells us that an organic ear, on a creature which lives by it, is particularly vulnerable, especially in an environment like water in which sounds can be transmitted over wide ranges.
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