Oz’s Magnetic Sub-​​Hunter

Being a sub-​​hunter has got­ten tough, lately. The new diesel subs that Iran and China are buy­ing up are tiny, quiet, and can swim through the cran­nies that hug the coasts. That makes ‘em really hard to find. And it’s a major rea­son why the U.S. Navy is switch­ing from pas­sive sonars to Slayer–loud, active sonars that makes whales slam dance onto dry land.
Australian sci­en­tists may have found a bet­ter way to find these quiet subs, The Engineer reports — one that doesn’t drive whales psycho.

The Australian devel­op­ment, called MAGSAFE, uses the detec­tion of chang­ing mag­netic fields to iden­tify and mon­i­tor a mov­ing sub­ma­rine. The method, which is unique in that it cap­tures 12 mag­netic field-​​related data val­ues per read­ing as opposed to the sin­gle num­ber mea­sured by a con­ven­tional mag­netic anom­aly detec­tor (MAD) mag­ne­tome­ter, arises from research into new min­er­als explo­ration tech­nolo­gies that detect mag­netic fields…
The tech­nol­ogy is basi­cally a ‘ten­sor gra­diome­ter’, which is a device that can mea­sure minute changes in mag­netic field gra­di­ents. It uses three inde­pen­dent rotat­ing sen­sors, which use high-​​temperature super­con­duct­ing quan­tum inter­fer­ence devices (SQUIDs) to mon­i­tor the mag­netic field gra­di­ent.
In the­ory, the sys­tem means that pilots whose air­craft are fit­ted with MAGSAFE detec­tors will be able to mea­sure the range, depth and bear­ing of a sub­ma­rine, how fast it is going and if it is div­ing — all from one flyby. (Big ups: RC)

June 6th, 2005 | Ships and Subs | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.