The U.S. Navy is considering new technology that will allow land-based officers to communicate with submarines with minimal disruption to the sub's operations and reduced risk of detection. The military hopes that an emerging tactical paging technology dubbed Deep Siren will allow fleet commanders anywhere in the world to instantly communicate with subs despite the latters' depth or speed.

Currently, vessels can only be contacted if they are on or near the surface, which is not only inefficient but dangerous for subs furtively trolling hostile waters. Deep Siren is designed to deliver communications using acoustic, expendable buoys that, when contacted via a communications satellite in the National Security Agency's Global Information Grid, can send and receive messages to and from submerged subs as far as 175 miles (240 kilometers) away depending upon acoustic propagation conditions.

"This is about bringing real-time communications to the sub, without latency," says Bill Matzelevich, a former Navy captain who retired in 2000 and is now a senior manager in government contractor Raytheon Company's Network Centric Systems group. The Navy in July awarded Raytheon a $5.2 million development contract to deliver a Deep Siren tactical paging system. "If you need to get a message urgently to a sub, you might have to wait eight hours for it to come close enough to the surface. A strike group commander may need to change direction and can't get this info to the sub immediately."

Messages to submarines are typically broadcast from onshore naval communication centers for a fixed amount of time--eight hours or so. For a sub to receive these radio-frequency or satellite messages, it must stop what it is doing within that time period, extend an antenna and rise to "periscope depth"— approximately 60 feet (18 meters) below the surface, which is shallow enough to use a periscope. During this time the sub may become more vulnerable to detection and may be more restricted in its ability to perform its mission.

Once at periscope depth, submarines tow a floating long-distance antenna behind them, but the data rates are generally slow and the wire used to tether the antenna to the sub restricts the vessel's agility. "You can only go so fast and so deep with this wire attached," Matzelevich says. "This is Word War II–era technology."

To communicate with a submerged submarine safely, a gateway mechanism is required to deliver messages deeper than periscope depth. The Deep Siren Tactical Paging system is comprised of a disposable gateway buoy with an antenna that gathers radio-frequency signals and converts them to Deep Siren acoustic signals that penetrate the water and are received by the submarine's sonar system. These acoustic signals are then converted on board the submarine to text messages with the Deep Siren receiver. The Deep Siren system also includes a portable transmit station which can be located on shore or carried on board a ship or airplane. "You want to have this be a global capability, where the buoy can be called from anywhere in the world," Matzelevich says.

Working with RRK Technologies, Ltd., in Glasgow, Scotland, and Ultra Electronics Maritime Systems in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Raytheon is developing a Deep Siren system that includes expendable buoys that are five inches (12.7 centimeters) in diameter and about 3.5 feet (one meter) long with antennas that receive signals from a constellation of Iridium Satellite, LLC, communication satellites. The buoys—designed to stay afloat for up to three days—can be ejected out of the sub's trash disposal unit without major modifications to the vessel. In this way, subs can set up their own acoustic networks without the need to tow an antenna.

10 Comments

1. 1. dafydd 06:30 PM 1/18/08

   What happened to ELF radio? Admittedly, the data rate is horribly slow, but it is real-time, and no worse than marine signal flags.

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2. 2. Mike Olson 08:36 PM 1/18/08

   Pretty cool!!

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3. 3. msadesign 12:33 PM 1/19/08

   What is the characteristic of the acoustic signal? will it harm sea life?

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4. 4. sdfiddler 05:24 PM 1/19/08

   For those whom are interested ELF was decomed in 2004. Current communications are restricted to recieve only via a buoy, or transmit/recieve via a mast or the periscope. This article indicated using the Ship's TDU, more likely the countermeasures launcher would be more appropriate, as SSXBT, SSIXS, and emergency transponders are used. I think it's a unique idea in this context. The only issue would be data rate transmissions and range. Good luck to the developers! Kudos to you and my former shipmates in the sub world!

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5. 5. Dennis H 05:34 PM 1/19/08

   As an ex-submariner, this looks great. Coming to PD and running at 5 knots is not a great place to be. This will be especially useful for boats operating in the Med.
   The ELF system we used to use no longer exists. I believe the antenna, which if I remember correctly, was buried up in the UP of Michigan, was de-activated and dug up back in the late 90's.

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6. 6. Dennis H 05:41 PM 1/19/08

   The only problem with using the countermeasures launch tube is that it's not big enough in diameter. The article said the device is 6" in diameter, and I think the countermeasures tubes are only 3" or 4" I.D.

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7. 7. 60bunnies 06:55 PM 1/19/08

   i understand why the navy needs to run tests, but as a peta member, i think doing sonar testings close to where sea mammals live is destroying their lives, and without sealife, our lives as humans could be destroyed too...think about it

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8. 8. musicalspirit 06:13 PM 1/20/08

   Let's tell the world the rest of our military secrets! Although this is fantastic, I think that the media releases too much information on what the U.S. DOD is working on. However I will say,"Hats off to the developer!"

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9. 9. gunondeer 04:27 PM 1/22/08

   Here is my idea:the use of neutrinos(ve) to send messages under water and directionally through the earth to another sub or transmitter/receiver . For example: the neutrino signal never leaves the confinds of the ocean or earth mass and is captured at a far point with a receptor. Interception is impossible. The energy requirement is well within the capacity of most atomic sub reactors. High energy neutrinos doesn't mean high energy use especially since the nano sciences can make all this possible For Example: instead of using the power required by a cyclotron, you scale down he neutrino production to a nano scale that an atomic sub can handle. The signal is detectable regardless of its size and it is capable of traveling in a straight line witout angulation considerations.
   Think about it: a whole new math to logistically figure out where a receptor target is on the opposite side of the earth; or, say from Tampa to Guam under ground and ocean.

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10. 10. USN/USL 02:51 PM 2/23/09

    The submarine community had a covert system for 20 years, N7 turned it off in 1994. So he could retire and reinvent the same sytem under a new name as a contractor. How sad it is to see nothing new, just the same old fraud!

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