Sonobuoy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A sonobuoy (a portmanteau of sonar and buoy) is a relatively small (typically 4⅞ inches, or 124 mm, in diameter and 36 inches, or 910 mm, long) expendable sonar system that is dropped/ejected from aircraft or ships conducting anti-submarine warfare or underwater acoustic research.
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[edit] Theory of operation
The buoys are ejected from aircraft in canisters and deploy upon water impact. An inflatable surface float with a radio transmitter remains on the surface, for communication with the aircraft, while one or more hydrophone sensors and stabilizing equipment descend below the surface to a depth that is (preset) variable depending on environmental conditions and the search pattern. The buoy relays acoustic information from its hydrophone(s) via UHF/VHF radio to operators onboard the aircraft.
[edit] History: searching the seas
With the technological improvement of the submarine in modern warfare, the need for an effective tracking system was born. Sound Navigation And Ranging (SONAR) was originally developed by the British—who called it ASDIC—in the waning days of World War I. At the time the only way to detect submarines was by chance when they were on the surface recharging their battery banks or by massive air patrols with lumbering airships and biplanes. Sonar saw extremely limited use and was mostly tested in the Atlantic Ocean with few naval officers seeing any merit in the system. With the end of WWI came the end to serious development of sonar, a fact that was to be fatal in the early days of World War II.
The ravaging wolf-packs of U-boats in WWII made the need for sonar a wartime priority. With thousands of tons of shipping being sunk in the Atlantic, something needed to be done to the locate the submarines so that they could be sunk or prevented from attacking. Sonar was installed on a number of ships along with Radio Detection and Ranging (RADAR) to help detect surfaced submarines. While sonar was still a primitive system, it was constantly improved upon.
Modern naval anti-submarine warfare grew from the WWII convoy and battle group movement through hostile waters. It was imperative that submarines be detected and neutralized long before the task group came within range of an attack. With the leaps in naval aviation it became possible to dedicate entire classes of aircraft (such as the P-2 Neptune, S-2 Tracker, S-3B Viking and P-3 Orion) to the task of anti-submarine warfare. What was now needed was a compact, portable and powerful sonar system that could be deployed by aircraft. The sonobuoy was born.
Early sonobuoys had limited range, limited battery life and were overwhelmed by the noise of the ocean. They were also limited by the use of human ears to discriminate man-made noises from the oceanic background. However they demonstrated that the technology was viable. With the development of better microphones, of the transistor and miniaturization, and the realisation that very low frequency sound was important, more powerful acoustic sensors could be developed. The sonobuoy went from being an imposing six foot tall, two foot diameter sensor to the compact suite of electronics it is today.
[edit] Concept of operation
Sonobuoys are classified into three categories: active, passive and special purpose.
- Active sonobuoys emit sound waves into the water and listen for the returning echo before transmitting—usually range and bearing—information via UHF/VHF radio to a receiving ship or aircraft.
- Passive sonobuoys emit nothing into the water but rather listen, waiting for mechanically generated sound waves (for instance, power-plant, propeller or door-closing and other noises) from ships or submarines to reach the hydrophone that are then transmitted via UHF/VHF radio back to a receiving ship or aircraft.
- Special purpose sonobuoys relay various oceanographic data—such as bathythermographic or salinity readings, or both, at various depths—back to the ship or aircraft.
- UQC, or "gertrude", and other types of special purpose buoys allow underwater communication between aircraft and submarines or between submarines and ships.
This information is analysed by computers, operators and taccos to interpret the sonobuoy information. Any noise that a submarine makes is a potential death-knell so few submariners are communicative.
Passive buoys are deployed on the surface in patterns to allow precise location by triangulation. Multiple aircraft or ships monitor the pattern either passively listening or actively transmitting in order to drive the submarine into the sonar net. Sometimes the pattern takes the shape of a grid or other array formation and complex beamforming signal processing is used to transcend the capabilities of single, or limited numbers of, hydrophones.
