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Acoustic "Superlens" Could Make Subs Invisible
Al writes "Nicholas Fang and colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have created the first acoustic superlens, which could be used to create high-resolution ultrasound images, and perhaps ultimately make subs and ships invisible to sonar. Researchers have previously developed materials that bend light in ways that appear to violate the laws of physics, creating so-called optical superlenses. The acoustic superlens consists of an aluminum array of narrow-necked resonant cavities filed with water — the dimensions of the cavities are tuned to interact with ultrasound waves. When ultrasound waves move through the array, the cavities resonate and the sound is refocused."
The same techniques that are used in radar will be used in sonar;
- Frequency agility will become the norm.
- The cavities will be tuned at first mechanically. It wasn't so long ago that radar was tuned with physical cavities. I haven't kept up on very high powered sets, but I suspect they do it all electronically now. Magnetrons are pretty much declassé.
- I would be surprised that pulse shaping and various AGC techniques are not already in use.
- Backscatter sonar will be developed. This is just an exercise in computing power, and we got that nailed.
- More useful than stealth or masking would be using superlenses for decoys. Nothing makes your sub commander's day like having 6 or 7 targets and KNOWING that only 1 or 2 are genuine. Torps are largely ineffective against decoys, and expose your position. In a robust countermeasures environment, whoever shoots first usually loses. They are dead from the bogey they didn't see, or prioritized wrong, shooting the decoy first. Whatever they shot at may or may not be real.
I wonder if we have many lone attack subs out there. Teamwork solves a lot of problems. Using another sub's pings is the simplest of tactics. Backscattering off of your teammate is somewhat more interesting. Using an array to listen to your teammate's pings and map the hole is even more fun.
Crap, I miss countermeasures. Wonder if the Air force is still hiring...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Which will not matter at all.
Search sonar uses low to medium frequencies not ultrasonic ones.
Also a large amount of the searching involves using passive sonar. Going active is kind of like using a spot light. Yea you can see but everybody can see you from an even greater distance.
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"Ultrasound" (generally understood as meaning sound of a frequency too high to hear... i.e. more than 20khz) is pretty well useless in submarine detection, as high frequency sound has a very, very short propagation range in water. If they get to the point where they can do this with some frequency range that can go more than a few meters without being attenuated, then color me interested. But I'm guessing that would require an apparatus so huge that you wouldn't be able to deploy it anyway - the resonant cavities have to have a size of the same order of magnitude (maybe 1/4 wavelength?) of the sound wavelength... and for frequencies with any hope of propagating far (you're typically talking from 60 Hz to a few Khz), the wavelengths are HUGE - around 25 meters for 60 Hz. Bear in mind that you apparently need an array of these cavities, so you're talking about a rather enormous system.