[HN Gopher] Top Secret U.S. Navy System Heard Titan Implosion Da...
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Top Secret U.S. Navy System Heard Titan Implosion Days Ago
Author : whytai
Score : 63 points
Date : 2023-06-22 21:58 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| kevin_nisbet wrote:
| While I'm sure the details are top secret, I think the existence
| of the monitoring has be known for quite some time. As I recall,
| a submarine disappeared much further away than the titanic wreck,
| much closer to Spain, and the recordings were eventually used to
| prove it was a collision of submarines or something like that.
| And rule out that the submarine was attacked by a torpedo.
|
| So I haven't been following this story all that closely, but I
| would've been somewhat more surprised had there been an implosion
| or similar it wasn't sitting on a recording somewhere. How quick
| it is to extract, triangulate, etc are another story.
| BrianHenryIE wrote:
| There was an Argentinian one, 2017.
|
| > The information about the possible explosion was received on
| Thursday from the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty
| Organization, or CTBTO, an international body that runs a
| global network of listening posts designed to check for secret
| atomic blasts.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-argentina-submarine-fligh...
| cushychicken wrote:
| You're referring to the wreck of the USS Scorpion. The fact
| that SOSUS was used to detect its crush event wasn't disclosed
| until many, many years later.
|
| The recordings related to it haven't been released, nor has an
| official explanation.
| hrunt wrote:
| Those who are familiar with US submarine operations would assume
| this from the start. For an excellent account of the development
| of US submarine capabilities (including listening and detection),
| I wholeheartedly recommend the book "Blind Man's Bluff".[0]
|
| How that book hasn't been made into a mini-series is beyond me.
| The stories and characters are incredible.
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mans-Bluff-Submarine-
| Espionage/...
| m_0x wrote:
| Does this mean the passengers had an instantaneous death?
| MrFoof wrote:
| I believe James Cameron called it being turned into a, _" meat
| cloud."_
|
| Absolutely occurred in under 30ms (upper bound). Possibly as
| quick as 2ms, and in all likelihood well under 10ms.
| weaksauce wrote:
| blink of an eye is 100ms on average so it was faster than the
| blink of an eye.
| kneebonian wrote:
| Theres an avid discussion on the other thread about this, but
| the short answer is likely yes. They were probably crushed,
| incinerated and then bludgeoned to death in less than 3ms, and
| probably unconscious before they were aware of any of the rest
| of it.
| losvedir wrote:
| While the physical trauma would have been instantaneous, they
| might have known it was going to happen. James Cameron just
| said in an interview[0] that they had a sensor system inside
| which detects when the hull is starting to fail, and that
| they probably had warning because they had dropped their
| weights to ascend.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rThZLhNF_xg
| vanattab wrote:
| How do we know the weights where dropped before the
| immplosion
| irrational wrote:
| Incinerated? Where did the fire come from?
| c_o_n_v_e_x wrote:
| Heat of compression
| saltcured wrote:
| Like a diesel engine igniting just from pressurizing the
| cylinder...?
| TypesWillSaveUs wrote:
| When you compress all the gas in a volume quickly it gets
| very hot. This is how a Diesel engine works.
| calyth2018 wrote:
| Yes
| csilverman wrote:
| https://archive.is/pSpem
| yborg wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the Navy also knows what was causing the
| "banging" heard underwater during the search. I don't understand
| the point of leaking this information now, it just makes it look
| like the Coast Guard spent 3 days and considerable money
| pretending to look for a target it knew was probably destroyed.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Remember we now KNOW for sure that the sub imploded, given the
| debris field, which means a sound loud enough to be picked up
| was generated. The Navy staying schtum on this does no one any
| good. It's also possible that someone in the political
| leadership overrode the preferences of people concerned about
| intelligence, but in this case I suspect that it's just
| pointless to deny it, so why not leak it now when it's going to
| be swamped by the news cycle.
| neodymiumphish wrote:
| They informed the incident commander. The people who needed
| to know did, and the public remained in the dark. While it
| may dishearten some, it was probably the right call.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Plus in the dark or not, I think most people understood
| what must have happened there, and only a very few die-hard
| optimists expected a different result.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| Is schtum jidisch? The german word is stumm.
| nielsbot wrote:
| Wiktionary says it's an alternate spelling of "shtum"
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shtum
|
| (English, from Yiddish)
| SpecialistK wrote:
| Yes, it's been adopted in Cockney English from Yiddish
| influence.
| stochtastic wrote:
| I don't think they were pretending to look, they were just
| (rightly) remaining open to it being either rescue or recovery.
| From the article:
|
| > _"While not definitive, this information was immediately
| shared with the Incident Commander to assist with the ongoing
| search and rescue mission."_
|
| So:
|
| * They knew about it and quickly aided in the search.
|
| * They did not broadcast the details of the collection to the
| public.
|
| That seems like the right call to me.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| What's the point of keeping the public in the dark for 3
| days?
| dazilcher wrote:
| Certainty.
| tw04 wrote:
| Because they wanted to at least give a few days to find
| conclusive proof (wreckage) so they could inform the
| family's before all of us?
| awb wrote:
| Probably a mixture of declassification procedures, no
| imminent danger to the public and a desire to confirm the
| incident visually before giving up hope.
| danso wrote:
| Why is the Navy obligated to say something before the wreck
| is found? Coast Guard was still going to do a search
| anyway, and it's not as if tiktokers were sailing out to
| help with the search.
|
| The US government _did_ reject the OceanGate's and
| Explorer's Group request for military airlifts, so it's
| possible the Navy intel played a part in saving those
| resources from being pointlessly expended
|
| https://twitter.com/NewsNation/status/1670998331663994882?s
| =...
|
| edit: added "not" to the tiktokers doing a search
| afavour wrote:
| I'd flip it: what's the point in informing the public about
| something you're not definitive about? Particularly when
| lives are at stake.
| jzymbaluk wrote:
| Top secret info is shared on a need-to-know basis. The
| coast guard needed the information, the public didn't
| xienze wrote:
| The cynical part of me thinks everyone involved knew what had
| happened on Sunday. There was ample evidence that the
| submersible imploded (repeated stress on a carbon fiber frame,
| zero regard for safety, the fact that all communication was
| lost permanently). Then there was the fact that the logistics
| involved in a rescue were basically insurmountable. The
| Navy/Coast Guard saw this as a good live training exercise and
| the media got a great story. No one was gonna ruin things by
| admitting that the whole thing was hopeless and not really
| worth pursuing.
| civilitty wrote:
| _> it just makes it look like the Coast Guard spent 3 days and
| considerable money pretending to look for a target it knew was
| probably destroyed._
|
| This counts as a maritime accident so the NTSB will likely be
| investigating. They'd want the Coast Guard to locate and try to
| recover any pieces it could for the investigation anyway.
|
| Besides, the vast majority of that money is already spent. The
| variable cost is actually quite low - largely just overtime and
| fuel cost. Often the fuel comes out of reserves that have to be
| rotated out anyway.
| kneebonian wrote:
| For starters the USCG != USN. They are 2 completely seperate
| branches of the military, even if the Navy likes to pretend the
| USCG doesn't exist and the USCG likes to pretend it's just as
| important as the Navy.
|
| With that being the case it could be operational inertia. Sonar
| tech hears something weird, reports it to his boss. His boss
| puts in a morning update the next day, he sees about the sub on
| the news, but he can't just go sending this info off, he runs
| it up the chain, eventually a person with authority hands it
| off to the USCG who then passes it back down, and eventually
| someone in media gets ahold of it, or someone in an official
| capacity makes an announcement.
| bnt wrote:
| Would be easier if they had shared Slack channels
| andrewstuart2 wrote:
| Best I can do is a flat file message transfer that runs
| weekly (with 18% success rate) between branch mainframes.
| RoyGBivCap wrote:
| Implemented by IBM using Oracle, for some reason.
| anyoneamous wrote:
| So, Teams?
| bell-cot wrote:
| Or maybe a Discord server, where they could share all their
| Top Secret...
|
| OOPS! nevermind.
| tedunangst wrote:
| Well, they can't prove what they heard wasn't a different sub
| imploding.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| You don't think they should have looked for it regardless...?
| EA-3167 wrote:
| If they heard an implosion at the time the sub lost contact?
| No. There would be a search and recovery operation, not
| search and rescue.
|
| I'd liken it to a space shuttle blowing up, the incident
| isn't compatible with life.
| aflag wrote:
| Hearing the implosion is very different from seeing it. I
| don't think it's as certain.
| s5300 wrote:
| [dead]
| kbos87 wrote:
| They probably heard something and now know it was an
| implosion.
| Vecr wrote:
| Where did the comment about SOSUS go? That's the passive
| hydrophone system used 50 years ago.
| kneebonian wrote:
| For those who doubted this... one of the main components of a
| strategic nuclear arm is submarines, even more than ICBMs to an
| extant, a nuclear strike might be able to wipe out all your
| launch facilities, but it isn't going to take out your subs,
| which are going to be around for a 2nd strike.
|
| Because of that being able to detect anything in the ocean
| anywhere within a reasonable distance of your coastal regions is
| a matter of life and death for a strong nuclear power, so the USN
| definitly new about this. Heck the USN probably knows the
| location of every single whale in 50% of the Earth's oceans.
| dekhn wrote:
| One might say that subs are the _only_ truly strategic
| component of nuclear arms.
| psychphysic wrote:
| Well heck I just argued with a bunch of people, who said the USN
| knew but would never tell anyone and me saying it's a baseless
| claim.
|
| I guess we were both wrong.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| Ouch, things were getting heated.
|
| > I guess we were both wrong.
|
| Optimistic.
| edgineer wrote:
| Well, we've had US intelligence, and specifically SOSUS, make
| its way to the public before, like with [0]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_incident
| cushychicken wrote:
| They used SOSUS to detect what happened to the USS Scorpion
| when it disappeared.
|
| Wasn't disclosed until many, many years later. SOSUS was
| highly classified until very recently.
| vaidhy wrote:
| So, we spent all the time and money confirming what USN already
| knew?
| cjensen wrote:
| You can't "know" with 100% certainty from a sound, and
| generally searchers don't give up until they must.
| noah_buddy wrote:
| This reminds me of a thorough and depressing write up of the
| lost hikers in a south western desert. An experienced search
| and rescue guy spent years finding where they perished,
| navigating bureaucracy and the arid landscape even though the
| victims were certainly deceased.
| kneebonian wrote:
| USN != USCG. See my other comment in this thread that can
| explain it well.
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2023-06-22 23:02 UTC)