Submarines and mines truly undetectable to active sonar might become a reality soon

Re: Submarines and mines truly undetectable to active sonar might become a reality so

Phead128 said:

The US has trained dolphins and sea lions to scout for land mines.

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I can see the remote possibility off using sea lions to scout for land mines, but dolphins?!

Re: Submarines and mines truly undetectable to active sonar might become a reality so

Of course Land minds is a typo. I missed that. Let's move on shall we???

This is correct...I once had a neighbor in San Diego who's job it was to train dolphins to retrieve mines & torpedos. And of course scout for them.

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Truth^^^

Re: Submarines and mines truly undetectable to active sonar might become a reality so

Engineer said:

I can see the remote possibility off using sea lions to scout for land mines, but dolphins?!

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Dolphins are very smart creature, their brain capability is almost the same as a human. That means they can learn very quickly and adapt to new way of communication with humans.

Re: Submarines and mines truly undetectable to active sonar might become a reality so

Equation said:

Dolphins are very smart creature, their brain capability is almost the same as a human. That means they can learn very quickly and adapt to new way of communication with humans.

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And detect Land mines.

Re: Submarines and mines truly undetectable to active sonar might become a reality so

Bltizo said:

Lol come on guys, give the typo a break

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I was expecting you to join the fun. Where's the love yo?

Re: Submarines and mines truly undetectable to active sonar might become a reality so

bd popeye said:

This is correct...I once had a neighbor in San Diego who's job it was to train dolphins to retrieve mines & torpedos. And of course scout for them.

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Tell us more about it.

I believe that the USN also employed orcas and humpback whales for similar tasks. The whales, being larger, more intelligent (in the case of the orca) animals that could dive deeper than sea lions and dolphins, were presumably better suited for these tasks.

Re: Submarines and mines truly undetectable to active sonar might become a reality so

I also heard that the US had trained dolphins to seek out and attack enemy divers.

Re: Submarines and mines truly undetectable to active sonar might become a reality so

Minor OT:

What is the line between animal abuse, and "new assets" of whatever we just spend 2 pages to joke about?

Good people who spent more money on puppets than national education curses the whole family line of whom MIGHT endanger a cute looking puppet by those (maybe intentional, maybe unintentional) making danger acts...

And dolphins are cute looking too...

(It's just suddenly reminded me the ignorances of the real world, in a side way... sorry for the OT)

Re: Submarines and mines truly undetectable to active sonar might become a reality so

If it's the west doing it, it's animal welfare. They are rescuing dolphins out of tanks and putting them back into the wild where they are living longer, happier and more fulfilling lives.

If it's China doing it, it is animal cruelty. They are perverting the cute and innocent little dolphins to do their dirty work and risk getting them blown up into sushi while forcing the animals to go against their nature to attack people instead of helping them.

Simples.

Re: Submarines and mines truly undetectable to active sonar might become a reality so

plawolf said:

What is the effective range of LIDAR? Fighter borne IRST struggle to get near the 100km mark for detecting things, and visibility in water is far worse than in the air.

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Depends pretty much on the water conditions. Murky waters means practically useless detection ranges for LIDAR, crystal clear waters means really good detection ranges.

Also, LIDAR is usually used by aircraft looking down into the water and not so much by ships or subs looking for other subs. This means that LIDAR can cover an area quite fast and is pretty good at picking up subs in shallow depths. Not sure how much the technology has advanced though.

Also, regarding the article you posted, it talks about acoustic invisibility in the ultrasound frequencies against incoming soundwaves. That's fairly selective wording as it does not mention what frequencies it won't work against (non-ultrasonic frequencies?) and how it masks soundwaves that are not external in source (such as internal machinery noise, water-flow noise and propeller noise).

Nonetheless, this technology is quite ground-breaking as it will make a stationary object with no internal noise source (sub or mine) invisible to sonar. In the case of mines, it may be a double-edged sword though since it is also invisible to whoever planted it.