New Weapon Designed to Zap Scuba Divers

[Sharkbaithawaii]

Ships don't all go "active" on sonar just because of a report of a diver in the water. If "diver in the water" is called all ships man extra watches, and station lookouts to see if they can spot the diver. Then EOD is called into start searching vessels near where the call was made to determine if anything was attached to a ship.
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You must take this with a grain of salt. If you are in a home port/naval base. Nope. If you are in a oversea port its on. Been there done that would own the t-shirt if I could remember it.

 

[Sharkbaithawaii]

"One thing that stood out to me in the Raytheon article was the implication that this system 'automatically' triggers when a diver is detected. That just ain't going to happen. They will not / can not 'fire' any deterrent without identifying and warning the diver."

Yes they can. It in the rulebook. In the very fine print that unless you work for the gov. you don't get to see it.

 

[Don Burke]

Yes they can. It in the rulebook. In the very fine print that unless you work for the gov. you don't get to see it.

I never saw that despite 20 years, most of it on ships and nearly all of that on submarines.

I did, however, find the rules for use of deadly force. Automatic lethal systems would seem to be quite a departure from that.

 

[Sharkbaithawaii]

Welcome to the new navy. Alot of thing have change since 9/11. And I still do subs.

 

[O2BBubbleFree]

One thing that stood out to me in the Raytheon article was the implication that this system 'automatically' triggers when a diver is detected. That just ain't going to happen. They will not / can not 'fire' any deterrent without identifying and warning the diver.

Yes they can. It in the rulebook. In the very fine print that unless you work for the gov. you don't get to see it.

Current swimmer detection systems being delivered to the Coast Guard and Navy for port/asset security consist of:

1. Deployable land-based SONAR that automatically detects, classifies, and alerts on swimmers or divers in the area. The GPS data is sent to (2).

2. Response boat that uses the GPS data to locate swimmer or diver. If the perpetrator is underwater, they use a high-resolution sonar to further identify the diver. I’ve seen the images from this sonar, and it’s impressive. It looks like a high quality 4-D ultrasound image. It would be very hard to mistake a diver for something else, like a marine mammal.

3. Response boat uses a an underwater 'loudhailer,' similar to a diver recall transducer, to call the diver to the surface. Warning messages are pre-recorded and broadcast in several languages.

4. If the diver does not respond, one option under the current SOP is to drop explosives on the diver (concussion grenades).

Means of non-lethal deterrence are currently being evaluated. My favorite is a plasma source that creates an underwater implosion, much like a concussion grenade, but more controllable. However, as you can imagine, devices that work for the police on land are quite likely lethal to a diver. Low-frequency sound systems have been studied by people as disparate as the US Navy and Mythbusters. There is no solid evidence that sound (in the air or in the water) can cause anything more than mild discomfort.

Back to the original Raytheon system, my suspicion is that the article was based on a press release timed to Raytheon’s proposal of a new system to compete with the current system I described above. In other words, this is Raytheon’s attempt at getting ink.

 

[RiverRatdiver]

"So, indeed! My last off-island vacation included a fair amount of diving in close proximity to a couple USCG vessels which were parked in Colombian waters."

I spent 13 years active duty in the CG,(just got out last week and took a civilian job with Homeland Secuirty) trust me we won't be getting those anytime soon, the Coast Guard has been and always will be the "red headed step child" of the military, hell lots of times we aren't even acknowledged as one of the 5 branches of the armed forces...although after Katrina alot more people see what we are capable of!

You'd have more worries about the 1st class Boatswains Mate standing on the focsle peeing on you than getting zapped by this on a CG Cutter! By the time we get them they'll have been passed around to every other branch that wants to play with them first!

 

[Ishie]

The terrorists have abandoned their underwater explosives training (the PADI classes were getting too expensive) and I believe are back to getting the sharks with the frikking laser beams on their heads.

 

[Sideband]

Dittos on staying away from naval vessels. Leave them alone and they'll leave you alone.

The Naval vessles are just as afraid of you as you are of them.

Joe

 

[Doc]

I'm sure that purchase and application of this system will be tightly regulated, just like other lethal devices.

The plans are in the February Popular Mechanics magazine.

The terrorists have abandoned their underwater explosives training (the PADI classes were getting too expensive)

Yeah, that was in the last Training Bulletin. Anybody want the chevron? I'm selling them on eBay.

 

[Don Burke]

Welcome to the new navy. Alot of thing have change since 9/11. And I still do subs.

Based on what I am seeing in Norfolk, we are a long way from fully automated deadly force.

As someone said above, Raytheon wanted some ink. I doubt they have even built a full-up prototype.

If the Navy wants a diver killer, all they need to do is pull an SQS-23 out of the scrap pile and mount it on a barge. For detection, a 500kHz CTFM SONAR with some digital processing would be hard to beat.

The Raytheon system appears to be a solution in search of a problem.