Что на самом деле говорят американские подводники об обнаружении так называемых неопознанных затопленных объектов

Former anti-subarmine, active and passive sonar operator here. I worked on anti-sub frigates specifically designed for underwater warfare. I was also a surface/air radar operator.

Active sonar is like radar, sound goes out, hits something and sound comes back. It is typically used when the risk is «low», as it gives away the position of the vessel- it’s accurate and at least in my experience, reliable enough that you don’t often get spurious tracks. You can’t hear anything other than the ping going out, at least not in the same way you hear things on passive sonar (there may be other active sonar out there

Passive sonar is effectively a microphone and in lots of ways, is far more powerful (in my opinion — this was my area of expertise). It returns the frequency of sound (and the sound itself) and you can hear this through headphones.

The sound is displayed on a monitor in such a way that you can identify things like number of propeller shafts, number of blades, speed etc of whatever vessel you’re listening to.

With passive sonar, you can even hear things like shrimps cracking.

My point is that underwater tracking is easier than you may think and you get an incredible amount of information, especially from passive sonar.

I’ve even heard music and voices from a submarine, tracked by a surface ship.

There is a huge book in the ops room which has almost every known allied and foreign vessel and the frequencies they emit (such as gearboxes, propeller shafts etc), this makes it very easy to identify a vessel, even down to a specific class.

The only strange thing I’ve experienced (and not directly) was while we had the passive sonar deployed just off the Irish coast in the Atlantic.

I wasn’t on watch at the time, but there was much discussion the next day — apparently we had found «something» on sonar and got a solid track, but we’re unable to classify it using the book in the ops room. The skipper was notified for some reason, came down to the ops room and ordered the guys on watch to pack everything up and stop tracking.

The theory from everyone at the time was that we had accidentally found one of the new astute class submarines, which was supposed to have been incredibly difficult and effectively «impossible».

I can also add something to radar, since that was my primary role (sonar was an additional skill I trained in, and during anti submarine ops, that was my primary role).

But I can say that on both surface and air radar, it is common to get spurious tracks (more so on surface radar as it can sometimes return from waves and whatnot).

In the event that an operator sees either a spurious «track» or a spurious «contact», they will ask the bridge to look visually and try to determine what it is.

It is far less common (but it still happens) to get spurious air contacts or tracks and I can’t recall a single time where it’s happened — however I can say with confidence that it would be very clear to even a junior radar operator, whether a radar contact was spurious or genuine.

Additionally, every aircraft (at least civilian) broadcasts it’s IFF code, so you know instantly whether it’s an airline or something else. If you see something with no IFF code, you investigate immediately regardless of where you are in the world.

Russian submariners talk about «croakers» that move fast underwater.

Mr. Paul Stonehill 
Russia’s USO Secrets: Unidentified Submersible Objects in Russian and International Waters

Just a debunker piece. Probably written for the author’s peace of mind. You know how badly this subject upsets people who have already decided that they know the total boundaries of reality.

Squakers!

I was under the impression that the sonar equipment and displays were heavily guarded secrets that the Navy might not want them to fall into the hands of video game makers.