Sonobuoy

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India and the United States announced cooperation on co-production of U.S. sonobuoys for undersea domain awareness (UDA) for the Indian Navy, a high-end technology that allows tracking submarines in the deep seas and oceans.

Overview
Sonobuoy
Sonobuoy
First Used: Second World-War

Type: Small and Expendable Devices

Uses: Underwater detection

About Sonobuoy

  • These are small, expendable devices used in underwater acoustics and sonar systems to detect and track submarines and other underwater objects.
  • First used during the Second World War to detect German U-boats.
  • Core-technology and dropped from aircraft or ships for anti-submarine warfare or underwater acoustic research.
  • When floating on the water, it has both a radio transmitter above the surface and hydrophone sensors underwater.
  • A typical sonobuoy consists of a cylindrical or spherical buoyanthousing, sensors for detecting acoustic signals, a battery or power source, and a radio transmitter or other communication system to relay data to the host platform (e.g., aircraft or ship).
  • The advancement in sonobuoy technology aided the development of aircraft such as the P-2 Neptune, S-2 Tracker, S-3B Viking and P-3 Orion for anti-submarine warfare.
Image Credit – Military Aerospace

Key Features

  1. Helps to track potentially hostile submarines operating in the open ocean and in coastal areas.
  2. Information from these systems can help enable precision attacks with air-launched torpedoes.
  3. Used for scientific research and environmental studies, including studying the behavior of whales and other marine creatures.

Types

  1. Passive – It silently emits sound energy (pings) into the water and listen for the returning echo before transmitting any information, usually range and bearing via UHF/VHF radio to a receiving ship or aircraft. It uses a hydrophone to listen for sound energy from a target.
  2. Active – It emit a sound pulse and analyze the return signals (echoes) to detect and locate targets. It rather listen, waiting for sound waves (for instance, power plant, propeller or door-closing and other noises) from ships or submarines, or other acoustic signals of interest such as a crashed aircraft’s black box Pinger, to reach the hydrophone. It uses a transducer to send an acoustic signal.
  3. Special Purpose – It provide information about the environment, such as water temperature, ambient noise level, etc. It relay various types of oceanographic data to a ship, aircraft, or satellite. There are three types of special-purpose sonobuoys in use today that are Bathythermobuoy (BT), Search and rescue (SAR) and Air transportable communication (ATAC) and down-link communication (DLC).

Sources

  1. News
  2. Wikipedia