Re: In 1968, SOSUS was Looking at the Ocean With One Eye Closed and Probably is Still Doing So
Bruce, even among the best analysts I was ever associated with there was a tendency of some to have “analytical bias”; influence by the availability of a known candidate or known event. The very best usually didn’t need a candidate but would still be hard pressed real time to recognize events such as those associated with the Golf and other similar disasters, without prior knowledge it had occurred. Prior knowledge and perhaps recognizing an event as something one has seen before go a long way towards acoustic assessments. I was always impressed with some of the data generated by STIC/NISC but it tended to fall into the after-the-fact category, of course. More heroic were the very best Navy analysts making superb calls on a real time basis, in my opinion. They couldn’t tell you anything in milli-second values but could sure put a plane on top of a bad guy nobody knew about.
Re: In 1968, SOSUS was Looking at the Ocean With One Eye Closed and Probably is Still Doing So
Randy:
I agree with you 100 percent; however, PACSOSUS was told when and generally where to look. Further, the
Bonin Islands signal had been around since the first PAC arrays went operational years earlier. The signal
sometimes went on for weeks.
Re: In 1968, SOSUS was Looking at the Ocean With One Eye Closed and Probably is Still Doing So
Randy:
One of the reasons George Miller requested Adak - where he was OPS - was to get a
cut-off bearing for the Bonin Island source.
All the West Coast sensor bearings were close to parallel: trans-Pacific
Like the famous Mar 1991 source at 54.1S, 140.5W, the Bonin Island ramping signals
were (are) produced by changing relative water/gas volumes in black-smoker tubes:
giant pipe-organ/coke-bottle effects.
Assume the Bonin Islands are still - acoustically - a going concern. There was a ship
report of boiling water and mud in the area in 1907. Undersea volcanic activity can be
a very long-term business.
Curious if anyone of this site can provide a recent report of continuing activity.
Re: In 1968, SOSUS was Looking at the Ocean With One Eye Closed and Probably is Still Doing So
Certainly agree that parallel bearings were an issue. Not related to that, one of my best memories of CVB was getting to talk virtually real time with a P3. There was a dynamic and quickly changing event taking place and as I recall our secure
voice got connected to the ASWOC, who were on a secure system with the plane. We would share what was taking place and they immediately passed it on the P3. It was actually pretty effective. (I guess it helped that we had plenty of experience having new Ensigns talking to to planes and submarines through the DAC center, lol).
