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A comment on Almost 25% of world’s seafloor now mapped. Parent comment

Re:Almost 25% of world’s seafloor now mapped by Arainach on Monday October 17, 2022 @06:45PM (#33240479)
The threat model isn't a torpedo, it's knowing where the enemy's subs are (and aren't). "There's a sub within half a mile of this point" is likely 90% as bad as "there's a sub exactly here" for most missions.

While water motors are not exactly my area of expertise, I would also expect that drone/torpedo motors are significantly louder than submarine engines and that launching or recovering a drone is itself a fairly noisy event that exposes the sub to traditional acoustic tracking.

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Re:Almost 25% of world’s seafloor now mapped by throwaway09223 on Monday October 17, 2022 @06:55PM (#33240578)
Sure, all valid issues. It for sure would expose the general vicinity.

In terms of noise, keep in mind that submarines have all sorts of concessions already. A diesel-electric sub is quieter than a nuclear sub, but it has to surface every two days or so to get air to run its very noisy diesel generators.

I think a battery powered electric drone should be far quieter than any sub technology we have (steam/nuke is loud, diesel is louder). The quiet systems we have are all electric and therefore have limited energy capacity.

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