alt Hacker NewsReminds me of how the Navy heard the OceanGate submarine implode immediately when it lost contact en route to the Titanic, but waited several days before they admitted that because at the time noone even knew they had such a system of hydrophones in place. I wonder what else they have that we don't know about. The oceans are not just unexplored as a habitat, but also as an intelligence theater.
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I remember at the time it felt a little bit suspicious to me. Only after everyone already knew it had imploded, the navy came out to say their hyper advanced detection system for enemy submarines had of course also detected it.
I live near a sub listening station. Schools tour the base. Their hydrophones are built on site in long oil filled tubes. They can hang these from the listening barges or lay them on the bottom. Hydrophone arrays can be paired with anchors attached to a sound triggered buoy. The buoy sinks with the anchor and will be released when it gets the right signal. With this setup the Navy can lay down semi-permanent arrays without a surface buoy.
the systems are pretty public, for instance the UK tender for Atlantic Net is easy to read. And the russians have Bastion which we known well about as well.
That was not the first time such data was used to from and a wreck. They have released locations for things like downed airliners for years, decades. Everyone knows about SOSUS. The classified bits are its locations and exact capabilities.
Pretty sure a fair number of people knew the US Navy and others had hydrophones in place, they've always been coy about it though.
For interest:
* it's one reason we know so much about ocean tempretures and tangentially have great data on climate change being real, and
* they had some cool R&D vessels:
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP_FLIP