Anti – submarine warfare is about to get a little more-high tech. Satellite based laser surveillance systems could soon help track and kill stealth submarines submerged as deep as five hundred meters. China is one country researching such systems, along with other groundbreaking tech, says Sebastian Roblin of The National Interest.
According to some evaluations, today’s cutting-edge submarines like the Virginia- and Sea Wolf-class attack submarines have been evaluated to run only five decibels louder than average oceanic background noises. Even less-expensive Swedish air independent propulsion submarines have successfully passed undetected to sink U.S. carriers during exercises.
Yet some naval analysts are decidedly bearish on the prospects of submarine stealth in the twenty-first century, looking ahead to highly sensitive low-frequency sonars, advanced satellite-based optical sensors that may bypass acoustic-stealth entirely, and powerful computer processors that can churn through vast quantities of data to discriminate faint contacts from background noise. China is even developing a satellite-based laser surveillance system aimed at detecting vessels submerged as deep as five hundred meters.
[…] China is even developing a satellite-based laser surveillance system aimed at detecting vessels submerged as deep as five hundred meters.
Recently, the field of quantum mechanics has increasingly shown its potential to disrupt established paradigms in multiple domains of warfare—particularly due to the concept of quantum entanglement, the uncanny phenomenon by which bonded particles continue to uncannily reflect each other’s behavior even across long distances.
Though still facing by range coherence limitations, quantum sensors and communicators could potentially bypass many of the limitations and vulnerabilities of traditional radio-frequency sensors, remaining effective despite jamming or stealthy-aircraft profiles. As detailed in this article, China appears to have taken an early lead in ‘quantum radar’, though how soon the technology can be developed into an operationally viable system remains to be seen.
Read more here.
