NATO Designed Magnetic Noisemakers to Track Soviet Submarines. The Plan Failed.
NATO needed a new tool to track the hundreds of Soviet diesel-electric submarines during the Cold War. But these magnets proved too difficult to train with.
by War Is Boring
Here's What You Need to Know: The floppy-magnets worked exactly as intended, but they were simply too messy to train with to be practical on a large scale. It seems NATO deployed them only a few times.
At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union had so many hundreds of deadly submarines at sea that Western war planners willing to try almost any possible countermeasure, however goofy sounding.
Some seemingly crazy ideas proved actually worthwhile, such as the underwater Sound Surveillance System—a vast chain of seafloor microphones that patiently listened for Soviet subs … and remains in use today.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/nato-designed-magnetic-noisemakers-track-soviet-submarines-plan-failed-197518
