How complicated things can get in our world

The following is just the beginning of the article that may be of interest.

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The Navy Is Tracking Some Strange Sounds Coming from the Ocean
By Matthew Braga
August 18, 2014
In a retired shore station for transpacific communications cables on the western coast of Vancouver Island sits a military computer in a padlocked cage.

It's the sort of cage you might otherwise use to lock up automatic rifles or expensive electronics at a big box store, but this cage is protecting data—classified signals intelligence gathered from underwater microphones called hydrophones that sit on the ocean floor. These hydrophones are part of an undersea Internet-connected scientific research network of sensors and video cameras called NEPTUNE, operated by the nonprofit group Ocean Networks Canada. Much to the delight of researchers world-round, the hydrophones record the distinct sounds of whale songs, earthquakes, and volcanic activity. But to the chagrin of the United States and Canadian militaries, they detect the passing movements of military submarines through the Juan de Fuca Strait, too.

And so, on occasion, someone in a nearby Canadian military base, sometimes by U.S. request, will push what I like to imagine is a big red button, and the hydrophones deep off the coast of Vancouver Island effectively go dark—hydrophone data is re-routed from NEPTUNE's scientists and researchers to the computer in the locked cage...............
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Rick

Rick:

One has to wonder what happens to it after it goes into the locked cage.

Ideally, someone competent should look at it to assess its validity and exploit it to determine what, if any, new "vulnerabilities" may be evident. The System has always been a significantly better source of such info than "canned" noise trials, i.e., it was more realistic and far more extensive.

Just before George Miller and I retired from ONI in 1992, we co-authored the most comprehensive assessments ever written - to that date and probably since - of the acoustic characteristics of 688 and TRIDENT Class submarines.

George did most of the analysis and selected the data to be shown as the figures in the pubs. He was a technical resource for the Naval Ships Research and Development Center at Carderock (the Model Basin), the activity that conducted all US submarine noise trials. If they had an "issue" they could not resolve, they came to George.

Bruce

Bruce,

What happens after the data ends up in the computer in the locked cage is something I'm not familiar with. Based on the article it sounds like someone reviews it and then 95% is released back into the public venue after the fact.

Rick

Dick:

Thank you for the additional info.

I should have previously noted that since most of the data in those two US nuc pubs ONI produced circa 1991 came from the System, and included significant info the Model Basin was not aware of, the data under discussion should be reviewed for the same purpose as was done so extensively by ONI from the 1960s through at least the early 2000s to the great benefit of our noise reduction programs.

Let's hope that if "someone" is still performing that function, these data will be exploited. For many years, it was a synergistic relationship with information recovered also being very usefully applied to the System's primary mission.

The US data provided what might be called a "controlled" (known) condition and defined what might be expected under such specific conditions.

It would be very sad if such potentially useful data - often a Rosetta Stone - was not still being fully exploited.

Bruce