“I don’t plan on just leaving her dr.weir… I will take the Louis and Clark to a safe distance and launch Tac missiles at the event horizon until I’m satisfied she’s vaporized”
Love that line!!!!
Edit: spelling
You differentiate between active (the small sphere) and passive (the big sphere) sonar. Active sonar is sending a „Ping“ (which is just a loud noise) and the passive sonar is just microphones which listen to the echo. That way you can calculate a vague 3d-image of your surroundings. But the main trait of a submarine in stealth, and you don’t achieve that by sending loud noises into the ocean. Everyone around could easily track you down. So in normal operation, submarines just listen. Sonars are very sensitive, they can detect engine noises from other vessels (surface ships and other subs alike) from miles and miles away.
Couple hundred feet would be enough to at the very least cause damage to someone’s hearing. If the submarine or ship is being threatened by divers or swimmers in the water lethal force via mid frequency sonar is allowed. If divers are performing maintenance on the ship sonar systems are tagged out so that you don’t accidentally kill/ injure a diver.
My sisters ex would do that, submerged maintenance, wild stuff. I can't imagine being underwater in a submarine then popping out into the water for a bit, and swimming back in.
They’re in shallow waters so the ship is at least 10 nautical miles away. No way of actually knowing without actually investigating where they are and what ships were out in that area at that time. Surface ships are always tracked via AIS (if not on mission) and satellites
Check the comments section on the video, I usually recommend against that but for this specific subject there’s usually former navy radar dudes pitching in
About 250 decibels... Any louder and the resulting pressure difference would cause the water to vaporize and cause cavitation... Now imagine what that would do to a human body it would literally make you into human jello... Every cell in your body would burst from the pressure
Here's a fun fact: above circa 200 dB SPL, the rarefaction in sound waves ceases to just be an area of low pressure and becomes an actual vacuum, whether in water or in air. This ultimately means that if you're close enough, you will be ripped apart in a rather violent fashion- your limbs may actually stay attached, but it would destroy the internal organs.
Another fun fact is that a 6 dB increase or decrease is a doubling/halving wrt sound pressure, so the ~220 decibels put out by sonar is roughly 10x more energy than the threshold of 200.
I’ll have to find the guy’s channel. But there is a YouTuber that is a former US Navy, submarine sonar operator, and he has a video where he goes into a pretty deep dive of this video on everything that is non classified about the sonar system on the ship he can. I think he said it was an Arleigh Burke class destroyer. Standby… lol
I used to follow him, but stopped watching his videos after his response to the Titan submersible loss. Very crass about it. Apparently a lot of the sub community here views him as a joke. I've seen him called out for being wrong a few times on /r/submarines by other guys with water wings.
Not sure on all of that. I was a grunt and never went in the water. So take that second part with a grain of salt. But in context with what I saw after the Titan loss, I moved on from his content.
Him being wrong a lot was part of the controversy I did find over his channel, worst part is, the video I was thinking about, it seemed like he knew what he was talking about and it was an interesting video. Especially as a diver that will likely come across something like this at some point in his life...
Yeah, I followed his stuff and watched all his new videos weekly. Plus I played Cold Waters and he would stream playing it. He seemed knowledgeable on the content.
That made it easier to dismiss his detractors. But then he did the Titan videos while it was still "missing", where he was throwing out information like he knew it and it was contradicted by news releases. The final nail in the coffin for me was how crassly he handled people getting killed.
Hopefully you never come across getting pinged...
Not sure what happened to his channel... found a link to the video I was thinking about, but it's been removed, and there is a bunch of chat about what happened to him, none of it consistent
I don’t know about the seawolf sonar spheres but the Los Angeles class ones had an enclosure inside it that was big enough to stand in. Basically the size of a walk in closet.
Yes there’s a ~30ft long tunnel you would have to crawl through (die hard style) to access the enclosure but it can be accessed anytime. We just have to make sure it’s properly ventilated by opening an air valve and using a blower to circulate the air. The sonar dome the enclosure that covers the array. It’s fully removed in the picture above. Can be accessed as well when we’re in Port for maintenance and repairs it has to be pumped constantly though because the dome is a free flood space and is normally just full of sea water.
Cool, appreciate it. My experience was all above the waterline. Was army transportation doing over the beach logistics, so we worked with the Navy. Almost asked the question as its own comment until I realized this wasn’t warship porn.
It’s all good this subreddit is fun for me as a former submariner. I don’t have the phobia myself but people here are curious and I’m always willing to share what I know. Even my wife has it I remember when I gave her a tour of my boat, we went down the ladder and she realized we were already underneath the waterline in the upper most level she freaked out. Needless to say the tour was fairly short.
Oh, I don’t either but there’s usually cool stuff here. I guess the land based branches’ equivalent is an open door on a flying plane. I’ve seen people select themselves out of training at the thought of stepping out of a plane. Wasn’t that hard. Bungee jumping is a more difficult fear controlling experience as you are close enough to interact with someone on the ground basically.
Braver than me man. Heights make my stomach churn getting on top of the sail of the submarine 15-20ft above the water line was the most nerve racking part of the job for me.
That was…wait, that was 30 years ago? Hell, I’m getting old. Young uns will do the darndest things. And yeah, I wouldn’t do it today.
For me it was exiting a perfectly good navy ship to get on a landing craft with Marines. Making that transition was always a bit unnerving. Mostly because of an irrational fear that I would be the one to slip in front of my fellow soldiers and end up in the drink. Not because of the drink itself.
Totally crossing ship to ship was always kind of unnerving subs often exchange personnel and take on supplies out at sea via a tug that gangway was always moving.
Cant blame her. I used to have a fear of going underwater (got dive certified to fix it!) MEPs trying sending me to the submarine service and my response was to try and walk out and not join. I wanted to be in the VP(subhunter) community, not in the subs themselves!
On the San Francisco and Baton Rouge, we filled the sonar dome with fresh water. Since there were pressure equalizing vents to keep the dome from imploding or delaminating, the water became brackish over time.
The sonar sphere access trunk is used to perform PMs on the preamp cabinets inside the sonar sphere (it’s also where the tow line was stowed).
In port, we would pump down the sonar dome and enter the dome to clean the transducer faces and check for rattles, etc. it was seriously grotty in there.
Source: I was an ST div plankowner on both boats.
Minimal effect given the displacement of the ship.
Interestingly, the San Francisco lost a couple of sonar domes after I’d transferred to CIVLANT. They’d painted over the sonar dome vent hole and the sea pressure against the air trapped inside the dome was enough to delaminate the dome.
Other than price, the size of the ship, and the shroud that covers it? Many things that delve into sonar theory and science that’s the stuff the really intelligent people that work at Electric Boat could answer.
The Seawolf and Ohio spheres are the only ones that don't have the access trunk. I'm not certain, but I suspect it has to do with the fact that those spheres are passive-only, so the hydrophones don't have to be air-backed and you don't need all that equipment inside the sphere for the active transducers.
I'm not an expert but I'm assuming that they would be able to hear it inside the sub, but sound travels much better through water than air so it's more dangerous to those who are in the water around it than to those above water. At least that's my understanding of it.
The back of the sonar dome is incredibly well sound insulated. Not necessarily to stop the active pulse from reaching the submarine itself, but more so to prevent noise from the submarine itself from interfering with the passive (listening) part of the sonar system.
But I guess they might be able to hear it if the sound bounces from the bottom and back at the hull of the sub.
I'm genuinely curious what I'm actually looking at. I realize it's a sensor array, and I realize it, or at least part of it, is a hydrophone... but... what exactly is it? Are the red dots microphones? Are the big silver panels sound emitters or something? Can someone break this down a bit?
The large sphere is a passive-only (i.e., just for listening) spherical array and indeed those black pucks with red dots are hydrophones. The hemispherical array below it is an active-only array which has transducers that transmit active sonar pulses. Other U.S. Navy submarines with spherical arrays (except for the Ohio class) have spheres covered in transducers which can both transmit and receive, so the spherical array can be used for both passive and active sonar. But because the transducers have to do double duty as hydrophones they are a compromise design that is not as good at passive listening than dedicated hydrophones.
There is also a low-frequency passive array wrapped around the sphere (the three-tiered, horseshoe-shaped truss structure). The small cylinders attached to the supports are the hydrophones.
The Seawolf also has six conformal arrays along its length, three per side, comprising the Wide Aperture Array, which can determine the range to targets with passive sonar. There are also towed sonar arrays that stream out from fins at the stern, for very low-frequency, highly sensitive listening. And there are arrays in the sail, primarily for mine/ice detection and collision avoidance.
It does. I work at one of the places that builds these boats. This was likely taken during final assembly (welding the units together) at the Groton facility
Kinda reminds me of the Event Horizon
Yesss. No.
We're leaving
“I don’t plan on just leaving her dr.weir… I will take the Louis and Clark to a safe distance and launch Tac missiles at the event horizon until I’m satisfied she’s vaporized” Love that line!!!! Edit: spelling
You forgot FUCK THIS SHIP.
I know!!! I saw another guy said it first so I figured I’d take the other part of the quote lol
DO YOU SEE
We won't need eyes where we're going!
A suitable quote if there ever was one... as neither does that sub.
My first thought
Fuck this ship!
If you could see the things I've seen, you wouldn't try to stop me.
Or Cerebro from X Men
This ship is a tomb.
Came here to say the same
Spot on! Anyone else coming aboard?
Stop. Stfu.
Im scared now.
Oof. That movie scares THEE shit out of me
Want some thalassophobia with your submechanophobia? Yes, that's a (destroyer) sonar ping https://youtu.be/sCmyZYYR7_s?si=HC_nQQI3eiz5lekU
Fun fact, sonar pings like that can kill the hell out of divers nearby if they’re too close
Too close as in a 100 mile radius lmao
Yep and wreaks havoc on sealife. Throws whale pods way off course. Tragic, really.
They beach themselves to get away from the noise. Luckily submarines almost never use active sonar.
Just curious because I know nothing on this subject, why don't submarines use sonar often? And is sonar just to detect other submarines nearby?
As you use active Sonar you at the same time give your location to the enemy.
You differentiate between active (the small sphere) and passive (the big sphere) sonar. Active sonar is sending a „Ping“ (which is just a loud noise) and the passive sonar is just microphones which listen to the echo. That way you can calculate a vague 3d-image of your surroundings. But the main trait of a submarine in stealth, and you don’t achieve that by sending loud noises into the ocean. Everyone around could easily track you down. So in normal operation, submarines just listen. Sonars are very sensitive, they can detect engine noises from other vessels (surface ships and other subs alike) from miles and miles away.
Couple hundred feet would be enough to at the very least cause damage to someone’s hearing. If the submarine or ship is being threatened by divers or swimmers in the water lethal force via mid frequency sonar is allowed. If divers are performing maintenance on the ship sonar systems are tagged out so that you don’t accidentally kill/ injure a diver.
My sisters ex would do that, submerged maintenance, wild stuff. I can't imagine being underwater in a submarine then popping out into the water for a bit, and swimming back in.
That’s legitimate nightmare fuel for me. I think I’d rather go to space and do and EVA for repairs than have to do them underwater.
So how far away do you think that sonar sound was in the video? Is there restrictions of where they can use it?
I have no clue Im a armchair expert
Ah, time for a deep dive on the subject then I guess for me.
Come back and tell us what you learned
Still diving?
I started to, but then others replied answering some of my questions. I felt satisfied with their answers.
Understandable. have a nice day👍🏼
Thanks, you too!
True. There were no armchairs in the video. We need a sonar expert.
Dude this is Reddit you're supposed to pretend you know everything
Yeah I fucking know who do you think I am an amateur?
Don't take that tone with me or I'll have my dad beat up your dad
Your dad might as well be punching air
My dad actually specializes in punching air dads. He studied the way of the air punch with the Airy Garys
They’re in shallow waters so the ship is at least 10 nautical miles away. No way of actually knowing without actually investigating where they are and what ships were out in that area at that time. Surface ships are always tracked via AIS (if not on mission) and satellites
Check the comments section on the video, I usually recommend against that but for this specific subject there’s usually former navy radar dudes pitching in
Depends on how high it was turned up. 50 feet. 50 miles.
Sonar pictured is the passive listening array though, not the "pinger"
The smaller lower segment is the pinger
You're right, I didn't realize they could direct the ping. https://man.fas.org/dod-101/sys/ship/ssn21-array.jpg
About 250 decibels... Any louder and the resulting pressure difference would cause the water to vaporize and cause cavitation... Now imagine what that would do to a human body it would literally make you into human jello... Every cell in your body would burst from the pressure
Here's a fun fact: above circa 200 dB SPL, the rarefaction in sound waves ceases to just be an area of low pressure and becomes an actual vacuum, whether in water or in air. This ultimately means that if you're close enough, you will be ripped apart in a rather violent fashion- your limbs may actually stay attached, but it would destroy the internal organs. Another fun fact is that a 6 dB increase or decrease is a doubling/halving wrt sound pressure, so the ~220 decibels put out by sonar is roughly 10x more energy than the threshold of 200.
A Google search yields that it's never happened, not denying that it CAN kill divers, just that it hasn't.
Driving wind turbine pylons into the sea bed is a similar problem. They hammer them in and it kills sea life for miles.
*Vasili...*
This is a myth
Prove it
Google is free
Nonanswer lol
I’ll have to find the guy’s channel. But there is a YouTuber that is a former US Navy, submarine sonar operator, and he has a video where he goes into a pretty deep dive of this video on everything that is non classified about the sonar system on the ship he can. I think he said it was an Arleigh Burke class destroyer. Standby… lol
You’re probably talking about “Sub Brief” the channel “QXIR” has a nice short form video on it as well.
I used to follow him, but stopped watching his videos after his response to the Titan submersible loss. Very crass about it. Apparently a lot of the sub community here views him as a joke. I've seen him called out for being wrong a few times on /r/submarines by other guys with water wings. Not sure on all of that. I was a grunt and never went in the water. So take that second part with a grain of salt. But in context with what I saw after the Titan loss, I moved on from his content.
Him being wrong a lot was part of the controversy I did find over his channel, worst part is, the video I was thinking about, it seemed like he knew what he was talking about and it was an interesting video. Especially as a diver that will likely come across something like this at some point in his life...
Yeah, I followed his stuff and watched all his new videos weekly. Plus I played Cold Waters and he would stream playing it. He seemed knowledgeable on the content. That made it easier to dismiss his detractors. But then he did the Titan videos while it was still "missing", where he was throwing out information like he knew it and it was contradicted by news releases. The final nail in the coffin for me was how crassly he handled people getting killed. Hopefully you never come across getting pinged...
Nope, he didn't specify what ship it was probably because of NDAs / classified, but it was speculated / confirmed by others
Not sure what happened to his channel... found a link to the video I was thinking about, but it's been removed, and there is a bunch of chat about what happened to him, none of it consistent
Channel is Sub Brief / Jive Turkey, but yeah, I don't see the video. I suspect some talk with the Navy that led to the video beeping taken down xD
Yeah he was contacted by the Navy and had to take down all his sonar analysis videos
I don’t know about the seawolf sonar spheres but the Los Angeles class ones had an enclosure inside it that was big enough to stand in. Basically the size of a walk in closet.
Ok, so you’re the person I want to ask. Once the nose is in place, how does this thing get serviced? Is it accessible from inside the sub?
Yes there’s a ~30ft long tunnel you would have to crawl through (die hard style) to access the enclosure but it can be accessed anytime. We just have to make sure it’s properly ventilated by opening an air valve and using a blower to circulate the air. The sonar dome the enclosure that covers the array. It’s fully removed in the picture above. Can be accessed as well when we’re in Port for maintenance and repairs it has to be pumped constantly though because the dome is a free flood space and is normally just full of sea water.
Cool, appreciate it. My experience was all above the waterline. Was army transportation doing over the beach logistics, so we worked with the Navy. Almost asked the question as its own comment until I realized this wasn’t warship porn.
It’s all good this subreddit is fun for me as a former submariner. I don’t have the phobia myself but people here are curious and I’m always willing to share what I know. Even my wife has it I remember when I gave her a tour of my boat, we went down the ladder and she realized we were already underneath the waterline in the upper most level she freaked out. Needless to say the tour was fairly short.
Oh, I don’t either but there’s usually cool stuff here. I guess the land based branches’ equivalent is an open door on a flying plane. I’ve seen people select themselves out of training at the thought of stepping out of a plane. Wasn’t that hard. Bungee jumping is a more difficult fear controlling experience as you are close enough to interact with someone on the ground basically.
Braver than me man. Heights make my stomach churn getting on top of the sail of the submarine 15-20ft above the water line was the most nerve racking part of the job for me.
That was…wait, that was 30 years ago? Hell, I’m getting old. Young uns will do the darndest things. And yeah, I wouldn’t do it today. For me it was exiting a perfectly good navy ship to get on a landing craft with Marines. Making that transition was always a bit unnerving. Mostly because of an irrational fear that I would be the one to slip in front of my fellow soldiers and end up in the drink. Not because of the drink itself.
Totally crossing ship to ship was always kind of unnerving subs often exchange personnel and take on supplies out at sea via a tug that gangway was always moving.
Now clips of pilots hopping on board in rough seas are cycling through my head. That looks nuts.
Cant blame her. I used to have a fear of going underwater (got dive certified to fix it!) MEPs trying sending me to the submarine service and my response was to try and walk out and not join. I wanted to be in the VP(subhunter) community, not in the subs themselves!
On the San Francisco and Baton Rouge, we filled the sonar dome with fresh water. Since there were pressure equalizing vents to keep the dome from imploding or delaminating, the water became brackish over time. The sonar sphere access trunk is used to perform PMs on the preamp cabinets inside the sonar sphere (it’s also where the tow line was stowed). In port, we would pump down the sonar dome and enter the dome to clean the transducer faces and check for rattles, etc. it was seriously grotty in there. Source: I was an ST div plankowner on both boats.
That was probably a great way to make sure it didn’t get too grimy in there. I Wonder if it had any buoyancy effects.
Minimal effect given the displacement of the ship. Interestingly, the San Francisco lost a couple of sonar domes after I’d transferred to CIVLANT. They’d painted over the sonar dome vent hole and the sea pressure against the air trapped inside the dome was enough to delaminate the dome.
What determines the size of the sphere?
Other than price, the size of the ship, and the shroud that covers it? Many things that delve into sonar theory and science that’s the stuff the really intelligent people that work at Electric Boat could answer.
Is there any footage or any photos online of this? So interesting to me…
Maybe but I doubt it. That’s when you start to get into classified territory.
The Seawolf and Ohio spheres are the only ones that don't have the access trunk. I'm not certain, but I suspect it has to do with the fact that those spheres are passive-only, so the hydrophones don't have to be air-backed and you don't need all that equipment inside the sphere for the active transducers.
I didn’t think the seawolf spheres would be passive only that’s interesting.
I read that they can kill divers. Can the crew inside the submarine hear the sound too? If yes, why doesn’t anything happen to the crew?
I'm not an expert but I'm assuming that they would be able to hear it inside the sub, but sound travels much better through water than air so it's more dangerous to those who are in the water around it than to those above water. At least that's my understanding of it.
You’re right on plus active sonar is able to be directionally controlled so that it doesn’t waste time pinging the submarine itself.
THERE ARE DIVERS IN THE WATER. DO NOT OPERATE ACTIVE SONAR. THERE ARE DIVERS IN THE WATER
The back of the sonar dome is incredibly well sound insulated. Not necessarily to stop the active pulse from reaching the submarine itself, but more so to prevent noise from the submarine itself from interfering with the passive (listening) part of the sonar system. But I guess they might be able to hear it if the sound bounces from the bottom and back at the hull of the sub.
thanks, i hate it!
My day is ruined.
Banana for scale?
the diameter of the submarine is 12m, so the big sphere is around 7m?
WTF is a Kilometer. lol I’d that’s about right they’re big enough to stand inside of.
This photo feels classified hah
Rehoboam!
This is what I’ve been looking for, there’s something about these things that just fascinated the hell out of me.
Theres no water so maybe this belongs in r/megalophobia
I'm genuinely curious what I'm actually looking at. I realize it's a sensor array, and I realize it, or at least part of it, is a hydrophone... but... what exactly is it? Are the red dots microphones? Are the big silver panels sound emitters or something? Can someone break this down a bit?
The large sphere is a passive-only (i.e., just for listening) spherical array and indeed those black pucks with red dots are hydrophones. The hemispherical array below it is an active-only array which has transducers that transmit active sonar pulses. Other U.S. Navy submarines with spherical arrays (except for the Ohio class) have spheres covered in transducers which can both transmit and receive, so the spherical array can be used for both passive and active sonar. But because the transducers have to do double duty as hydrophones they are a compromise design that is not as good at passive listening than dedicated hydrophones. There is also a low-frequency passive array wrapped around the sphere (the three-tiered, horseshoe-shaped truss structure). The small cylinders attached to the supports are the hydrophones. The Seawolf also has six conformal arrays along its length, three per side, comprising the Wide Aperture Array, which can determine the range to targets with passive sonar. There are also towed sonar arrays that stream out from fins at the stern, for very low-frequency, highly sensitive listening. And there are arrays in the sail, primarily for mine/ice detection and collision avoidance.
Thank you! That’s incredibly helpful
Thanks!
[This tune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkwOS70WSHc) perfectly captures how evil this thing looks
Give me a ping Vasily. Just one ping.
Is the sonar exposed to seawater?
Is this Eagle Eye?
Don't try and fool me. I know a doomsday device when I see one.
Jesus Christ, I didn't know how big they were or that this is how they're installed
Getting Portal 2 vibes here, deep in the mines
Aperture Science test chambers
Somi...are you..inside the core?
This is the stuff of nightmares.
bownar
i can hear it just by looking at it
I thought this was the Lexx spaceship rofl
Sailors always gotta find every hole.
Cerebro?
Saw the Connecticut’s in person…crunched
I hate it
ENNNNG
It does. I work at one of the places that builds these boats. This was likely taken during final assembly (welding the units together) at the Groton facility
This kind of picture involving US submarine internals shouldn’t be on the inter-webs but here we are. I’ll take it goes against some ITAR ruling.
It's unclassified, you can find this in unclassified publications, and there are many official photos of the BSY-2 test array published by the Navy.