The Briefing Room
General Category => Science, Technology and Knowledge => History => Topic started by: rangerrebew on February 26, 2017, 03:44:31 pm
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NATO's Crazy Plan to Find Russian Submarines Was a Total 'Flop'
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The submarine-fouling floppy-magnet turned out to be, well, a flop (literally).
WarIsBoring [2]
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.
Other less elegant anti-submarine tools survive only as anecdotes. In his book Hunter Killers [3], naval writer Iain Ballantyne [4] recalls one of the zanier ideas—air-dropped “floppy-magnets” meant to foul up Soviet undersea boats, making them noisier and easier to detect.
Source URL (retrieved on February 26, 2017): http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/natos-crazy-plan-find-russian-submarines-was-total-flop-19593