Michael Hoskins,

Thank you for your answer. It’s my understanding that modern diesel-electric submarines (particularly the German ones) are very difficult to detect because they’re so quiet. Supposably nuclear submarines always produce a certain amount of noise in order to keep their reactor cores cool. I understand the importance of nuclear power for a blue water navy that can respond to crisis anywhere in the world and for submarines to be able to remain submerged indefinitely. However it seems that most near term future crisis will be regional, e.g. Persian Gulf, where diesel-electric submarines might be a better technology. However the United States Navy seems committed to remaining exclusively nuclear with its submaries. What do Belmont Club members think about this?

Also, when active sonar is used, is it possible to present the data as an actual clear image, i.e. the sonar presents a 3-D image of the ocean bottom and tucked away in some under water canyon is a hiding enemy submarine? When one see’s Hollywood movies of antisubmarine warfare, the sonar data is usually portrayed as very abstract, e.g. some guy is listening to pings on a set of headphones or the data is presented as a single trace on an oscilliscope.