[HN Gopher] Veteran submariner on how sonar crews tirelessly hun...
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Veteran submariner on how sonar crews tirelessly hunt enemies they
can't see
Author : clouddrover
Score : 79 points
Date : 2020-08-12 15:53 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thedrive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thedrive.com)
| oakmad wrote:
| My father used to help design and build sonar of varying types
| for the Australian Navy (RANRL) when I was a kid. I used to love
| hanging with them all and even got to go on a submarine a few
| times. He had to be fully qualified for sea trials. I assume a
| lot of his work was adapted from other countries, but he still
| will not really get into details about what he did for them (70s
| and 80s). One little nugget he told me a few years ago: their
| entire UI/UX team were psychologists, engineers played almost
| zero role in that aspect.
| secondcoming wrote:
| This[0] youtube channel is quite good at explaining how subs work
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/c/JiveTurkeyCrew
| evil-olive wrote:
| The author of this article (Aaron Amick) is Jive Turkey, the
| same as the host of that YouTube channel [0].
|
| His other articles for The Drive [1] are all worth reading.
|
| 0: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24638/retired-
| submarin...
|
| 1: https://www.thedrive.com/author/aaron-amick
| [deleted]
| robotnikman wrote:
| I've heard the sonar ping from a submarine is so powerful that it
| will kill you if your a diver near the sonar dome.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| 235db! Apparently also kills wales and dolphins.
|
| https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/93222/could-subm...
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| The only saving grace is that they only use it as a last
| resort since sending out that kind of noise would let
| everyone in that hemisphere know exactly where you are.
| Anechoic wrote:
| Keep in mind that's likely not related to the dB sound
| pressure level in air that we're all familiar with. dB is a
| logarithmic ratio to pressure to a reference. In air, that
| reference is 20uPa, acoustic pressure in water typically uses
| a different reference (1uPa). There is also an adjustment of
| 36 dB to account for the higher impedance of water. So 235 dB
| in water is roughly 173 dB SPL -- still loud, but many orders
| of magnitude lower.
|
| [0] https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/acoustics.htm
| ggm wrote:
| Oil and Gas exploration in the sea routinely uses extremely
| loud sounds, because explosive geosensing. Its screwing up
| cetacean migration and mating. It travels miles and miles.
| canada_dry wrote:
| > The second step in classification requires analysis. It takes
| 30 to 45 seconds to get a look at a new detection and discover
| what kind of engine she's running, what kind of hydraulic pumps
| are online, and what screw blade configuration she is using.
|
| One can imagine ML making this job somewhat obsolete in the not-
| too-distant future.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Is it really something for ML? Shazam isn't ML, and it's the
| same basic thing. Take the current sound and then compare it to
| a huge database of known sounds. Report the result.
| nickff wrote:
| Agreed. ML and AI are (currently) useful in situations where
| there is a lot of data, of different types, usually from
| disparate sources, often sparse, with no known pattern or
| causal relationship. Shazam and sonar analysis don't really
| fall into any of those areas.
| [deleted]
| ghaff wrote:
| I was at a day of research presentations in January before
| everything shut down. One of the presentations was on using ML
| to identify individual dolphin speech signatures--with _some_
| degree of accuracy. One of my thoughts was that the more
| sophisticated navies probably already have this sort of thing
| pretty well developed.
| virtue3 wrote:
| If you ever watched the hunt for red october, they already had
| computers doing this (doubt it was ML'd tho).
| jwithington wrote:
| It is ML depending on what we're calling ML. Is gradient
| descent/MLE ML? If yes, then the Dallas (the US sub) in Red
| October was using ML.
| zentiggr wrote:
| Clancy did embellish a few things and speculated rather a bit
| to make an entertaining scenario.
|
| All told, a good solid read, and accurate in a bunch of not-
| quite critical details, but don't lean too hard on the edges
| of the story.
|
| Same with Red Storm Rising. Very well told, close to a solid
| "what if", but lots of little touches to make it entertaining
| as well.
| mhh__ wrote:
| That's if they aren't already.
|
| Without having the data I can't try but I'd guess that Fourier
| analysis (or something a bit more clever to deal with noise
| e.g. Welch) would get you a lot of the way there even without
| invoking AI
| ghaff wrote:
| Even if you're also using ML, Fourier transforms can be
| pretty useful in this sort of analysis.
| zkms wrote:
| This is not based on any classified information and sonar
| signal processing is not something i know much about, but
| cyclostationarity (and other higher-order statistical signal
| processing) does tend to be useful when processing signals
| that are generated by processes where there's multiple
| periodicities at work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclosta
| tionary_process#Angle-...
| jwithington wrote:
| Can confirm that USN and sonar systems have been using "ML"
| techniques since the 90s. Y'all were late to the game!
| rootlocus wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1897/
| stickfigure wrote:
| Not sure why this was downvoted - it almost certainly is
| heavily automated already, and the article hints at it. Tom
| Clancy described a primitive version in The Hunt For Red
| October in the 80s. You'd expect the Navy to be very
| interested.
| forgotthepasswd wrote:
| This[0] is an interesting account of an accident with a submarine
| and how sonar played a role in the event.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehime_Maru_and_USS_Greeneville...
| bmitc wrote:
| Articles like this leave a bad taste in my mouth. They venerate
| the subject and participants involved and leave out the vast
| amount of detrimental effects they cause.
|
| Whales, other marine mammals, and other wildlife are affected by
| these systems, and they are never considered. The Navy is
| currently still trying to increase its weapons testing off the
| coast of the Pacific Northwest, bringing further harm to the
| already decimated and declining southern resident orcas.
|
| We have absolutely got to start understanding how our technology
| affects the world _and_ making changes.
| rotten wrote:
| The systems described in this article are "passive". They are
| simply listening to the sounds around them. This is much more
| common for submarines than "active" sonar - which ensonifies
| the water around you and then you listen for echos. It is those
| loud pings which can threaten or frighten wildlife. However
| they are also like holding up a big lit sign that says "there
| is a submarine here!" - and the whole point of submarines is
| stealth. They say that if you hear a ping from a submarine, it
| is too late - there is already a torpedo heading your way.
|
| source - used to be a sonar tech
| munificent wrote:
| Somewhat related. I went to the Oregon Museum of Science and
| Industry (OMSI) in Portland last fall and did a tour of their
| submarine, the USS Blueback. Our tour guide was a retired Cold
| War-era submariner and he was _fantastic_. He gave us tons and
| tons of details about what life and working on an active sub was
| actually like. It felt like being there, and you could tell he
| delighted in being able to share his past with people.
| adriancooney wrote:
| I'm not normally one to promote Hollywood but the film Greyhound
| (2020) with Tom Hanks does an _excellent_ portrayal of this
| technology (albeit slightly more primitive) in fighting German
| U-Boats in WW2. Well worth a watch if this interests you.
| microfen wrote:
| I personally haven't seen Greyhound, but if you found this
| article interesting, the 2019 French film Le Chant du Loup is
| entirely about sonar crews on modern submarines. It's
| definitely a fun movie that seems (to an uninitiated) pretty
| technically accurate.
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7458762/
| gregoriol wrote:
| That movie is indeed very good to watch, intense, and
| portraying what is described in the article: war on a
| submarine through the eyes (or ears) of a sonar man.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I was just going to say exactly this.
|
| It's amazing to see them doing this with such incredibly basic
| technology.
|
| - Having to draw their ship and the submarine and constantly
| update its movement.
|
| - sonar guy is just looking at a screen that blips every now
| and then.
|
| - all communication by morse code - must be horrendously slow
| in the heat of battle
|
| - even communication within the ship is passed between multiple
| people so big chance of Chinese whisper type errors.
|
| I don't know how realistic it is to real life but it gives you
| an appreciation for how smart and situationally aware the
| captain of the ship needs to be.
| extrapickles wrote:
| The military has a partial solution to the "chinese whisper"
| type error where the person receiving the command will repeat
| it back so the other person can make sure it was understood
| correctly. This has the downside of slightly slowing down
| communication.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| What you are seeing is the very evolved version, the later-
| war version of this battle. Early in the war it was much more
| primitive. There were incidents of ships literally hunting
| their own propellers. Only once procedures and training
| evolved did the real cat-and-mouse game become even possible.
| stormdennis wrote:
| They wargamed live during North Atlantic convoy attacks on
| the floor of a building in Liverpool. Players received
| instructions through letterboxes around the room perimeter
| and each could only see a fraction of the the battle. They
| could not see the u-boats at all as those were same color as
| filters they looked through. Information was radioed in from
| convoy escorts and scenarios were played out. Battles could
| last a couple of days.
| finnh wrote:
| Game of Birds and Wolves! Great book
| gus_massa wrote:
| There is a nice video of Lindibeige about that, with some
| old photos of the setup
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVet82IUAqQ
| wcarey wrote:
| The book by C.S. Forester that the movie is based on is even
| more realistic, though the movie is pretty good.
|
| To really dig into it, Samuel Eliot Morison's magisterial
| History of Naval Operations in World War II does a good job
| talking through the development of both the technology and
| organization of naval operations.
|
| Not all communication was by morse code. We did use ship to
| ship voice radio, but it was a tradeoff. RDF allowed the
| enemy to triangular the position of the broadcasting ship,
| and (often) the enemy could overhear messages and infer some
| tactical details.
|
| Sensor systems changed wildly throughout the war. Sonar
| improved markedly, and radar went from non-existent to able
| to identify altitude and distance to individual planes. The
| weight of the additional sensor systems and controls systems
| made some ships unstable, so we removed weapon systems from
| them.
|
| Being a captain (or, heaven forbid) and admiral, was very
| demanding. Sleep was hard to come by, and the fog of war was
| intense. We had meaningful problems with friendly fire in
| night engagements even _with_ radar and radio communications.
| Goronmon wrote:
| _To really dig into it, Samuel Eliot Morison 's magisterial
| History of Naval Operations in World War II does a good job
| talking through the development of both the technology and
| organization of naval operations._
|
| Man, that looks like a hard series of books to actually get
| a hold of. Either spending multiple hundreds of dollars for
| a used set, or struggle to find individual copies for $15+
| each (a quick google search seems to show Vol 2 unavailable
| anywhere I looked).
| wcarey wrote:
| I think there's a new paperback printing under way.
| Happily, it's not the end of the world acquiring them
| piecemeal, as each volume tells a coherent story and
| takes some time to read through!
| khazhoux wrote:
| > Samuel Eliot Morison's magisterial History of Naval
| Operations in World War II
|
| Wow, you weren't kidding. Can you recommend any shorter
| tomes on history of naval technology?
|
| https://www.amazon.com/History-United-States-Naval-
| Operation...
| wcarey wrote:
| It's surprisingly readable. Good history is storytelling,
| and Morison was _there_ for much of the history he
| relates. You could get a great picture of the variety of
| modern naval warfare by picking up the volumes on Midway
| and the Struggle for Guadalcanal.
|
| C.S. Forester's novels, while historical fiction, are
| also excellent.
|
| I'd also recommend _Japanese Destroyer Captain_ by
| Tameichi Hara, another powerful first hand account.
| Reading Hara and Morison 's accounts of a battle in which
| both participated is really interesting.
| pjc50 wrote:
| For a detailed and in places dramatic book on the primitive
| technology of WW2 surface naval warfare, I can recommend
| "Neptune's Inferno": https://erenow.net/ww/neptunes-inferno-
| the-u-s-navy-at-guada...
|
| While radar existed, it had similar problems of manual plot,
| was only on a few ships, and the commanders had not updated
| their training and doctrine to match.
|
| Several of the key engagements around Guadalcanal were fought
| at night. Without radar, and without any reliable means of
| telling friend from foe other than eyeballing the shape. Total
| chaos.
| aksss wrote:
| Having read the book and then watched the movie, it's amazing
| how much technical detail you don't even get to approach in the
| film. This is just the nature of the medium, but the book is
| very focused on the captain's inner thoughts and technical
| descriptions, awareness of limitations, and homages to the
| mental math involved. Highly recommend the book if you at all
| appreciated the movie.
| criddell wrote:
| Which book did you read?
|
| I just looked and it looks like there are two books by
| Forester. One is _The Good Shepherd_ which is the original
| book and the other is _Greyhound_ which is also by Forester
| and is sold as the movie tie-in. They have different number
| of pages, so I assume they are different.
|
| Edit: I ended up buying _The Good Shepherd_ because it was
| only $0.99 for the ebook.
| wcarey wrote:
| If you enjoy The Good Shepherd, _The Ship_ is a similar
| book about surface combat in the Med.
| briandear wrote:
| Tom Hanks wrote the film as well. He has done a lot of good in
| terms of WWII history. Greyhound was one of those movies that
| really brought to life just what combat looks like on the
| water. To an outsider, naval combat seems rather benign and
| "far away" compared to Infantry, but the reality is that naval
| combat is terrifying and up close. It was an incredible film in
| capturing the horrors of naval warfare. Just seeing how hard it
| was to be a captain (or even a sonar man,) gives me redoubled
| respect for those that serve on the seas.
| wcarey wrote:
| And Greyhound depicts a relatively calm series of
| engagements, compared to what actually happened. Consider the
| U.S.S. Borie:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Borie_(DD-215)
|
| which rammed (!) a U-Boat in high seas, was repeatedly picked
| up by waves and dropped on top of the surfaced U-boat,
| whereupon a small arms engagement broke out (!) until the
| U-boat attempted to disengage and was damaged by the Borie's
| main guns. Both ships sinking, the Borie attempted to rescue
| the German submariners until a torpedo from another nearby
| submarine caused them to reconsider. The Borie then promptly
| sank from seams opened by being repeatedly bounced off the
| top of a submarine and most of the crew were rescued.
| justanotheranon wrote:
| the British cracked Enigma in 1941, and from then they were
| able to completely destroy the 300-400 German u-boats, because
| they were intercepting and decrypting u-boat radio traffic, so
| they always knew where the u-boats were going. The only reason
| the Allies allowed the u-boats to continue winning small
| victories was to preserve the illusion that Enigma was still
| secure to prevent the Germans from switching to another cipher
| system. So when you see depictions of exciting historical
| battles against u-boats, keep in mind that it was not a level
| playing field due to the strategic advantage of superior SIGINT
| by the Allies.
| valuearb wrote:
| IIRC 75% of U-Boat crew members were killed in action during
| WW2.
| pchristensen wrote:
| That movie and Master and Commander are two movies that helped
| a digital nerd like me understand how an incredibly complex
| system can be managed by lots and lots of humans playing very
| specific roles.
| jonsen wrote:
| Your comment made me remember the book _Cognition in the
| Wild_ :
|
| https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/cognition-wild
| dylan604 wrote:
| A film set is the same way. Also, sounds like a lot of
| "machine learning" shops. Hire a squad of humans to do the
| work until the ML/AI graduates from schooling.
| noir_lord wrote:
| Massive history nerd and I _really_ enjoyed Greyhound because
| they didn 't over dramatise it (much) and the attention to
| detail in the roles, speech etc was all very well done.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ThinkingGuy wrote:
| Obviously, being a skilled sonarman would seem require a good
| physical sense of hearing (frequency range, etc.), but as as the
| article mentions, the ability to recognize patterns is also
| important.
|
| Have there been any studies or analyses to see if there's also a
| correlation between skill at, say, music (relative pitch, etc.)
| or language (detecting subtle differences in accents, etc.) and
| sonar skill?
| rotten wrote:
| The best sonar operators have perfect pitch, except instead of
| saying "that is an A-flat but there is a ghost harmonic because
| the slot in the bridge for that string is too wide" they would
| say "that is a 415 Hz sound with up doppler. sounds like a 3
| bladed prop with a notch on the second blade". It was pretty
| amazing to watch the really good ones in action.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Blades are numbered? I would think each blade would be
| indistinguishable from the next, so any of them could be the
| 2nd one depending on where you started counting.
| rotten wrote:
| They would go to a bar and comment that the ceiling fan was
| spinning at 23 rpm, and the compressor motor on the cooler
| had a bad bearing.
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