SOSUS, an acronym for SOund SUrveillance System, is a chain of underwater listening posts located across the northern Atlantic Ocean near Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom—the so-called GIUK gap. It was originally operated by the U.S. Navy for tracking Soviet submarines, which had to pass through the gap to attack shipping in the Atlantic. Other locations in the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean also had SOSUS stations installed. The GIUK gap is an area in the northern Atlantic Ocean. ... The United States Navy, also known as the USN or the U.S. Navy, is a branch of the United States armed forces responsible for conducting naval operations. ... The Soviet Navy (Russian: Военно-морской флот СССР, Voyenno-morskoy flot SSSR, literally Naval military forces of the USSR) was the naval arm of the Soviet armed forces. ... German UC-1 class World War I submarine A model of Günther Priens Unterseeboot 47 (U-47), German WWII Type VII diesel-electric hunter Typhoon class nuclear ballistic missile submarine USS Virginia, a Virginia-class nuclear attack (SSN) submarine A submarine is a watercraft that can operate underwater...

History

SOSUS development was started by the Committee for Undersea Warfare in 1949. This panel was formed by the Navy in order to further research into anti-submarine warfare. At the time the primary threat was snorkeling diesel submarines, and it was known that the Soviets were in the process of building a large fleet. The group quickly decided that the solution to detecting these submarines was to use sound detectors that would detect low-frequency engine sounds from hundreds of kilometers. Each listening site consisted of multiple detectors. This then allowed them to estimate the submarine's position by triangulation. They allocated $10 million annually to develop these systems. 1949 (MCMXLIX) was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1949 calendar). ... Anti-submarine warfare (ASW or in older forms A/S) is a branch of naval warfare that uses surface warships, aircraft or other submarines to find, track and then damage or destroy enemy submarines. ... Triangulation can be used to find the distance from the shore to the ship. ...

Project Hartwell

At MIT during 1950, the committee sponsored Project Hartwell, named for the director of the committee, Dr. G.P. Hartwell, professor at the University of Pennsylvania. In November, they selected Western Electric to build a demonstration system, and the first six element array was installed on the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas. Meanwhile Project Jezebel at Bell Labs and Project Michael at Columbia University focused on studying long range acoustics in the ocean. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private, coeducational research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... 1950 (MCML) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... This article is about the private university in Philadelphia. ... Western Electric (sometimes abbreviated WE and WECo) was a US electrical engineering company, the manufacturing arm of AT&T from 1881 to 1995 . ... New Providence Island and Eleuthera Island from space, April 1997 See also: Eleutherae Eleuthera is an island in the Bahamas, lying 50 miles (80 km) east of Nassau. ... Bell Laboratories (also known as Bell Labs and formerly known as AT&T Bell Laboratories and Bell Telephone Laboratories) was the main research and development arm of the United States Bell System. ... Columbia University is a private research university in the United States. ...

By 1952 such progress had been made that top secret plans were made to start deployment of six arrays in the North Atlantic basin, and the name SOSUS was first used. The number was increased to nine later in the year, and Royal Navy and USN ships, including USS Neptune and USS Peregrine, started laying the cabling under the cover of Project Caesar. In 1953 Jezebel's research had developed an additional high-frequency system for direct plotting of ships passing over the stations, intended to be installed in narrows and straits. 1952 (MCMLII) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... The Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the oldest of the British armed services (and is therefore the Senior Service). ... Four ships of the United States Navy have been named USS Neptune in honor of the Roman god of the sea. ... 1953 (MCMLIII) was a common year starting on Thursday. ...

SOSUS goes operational

In 1961 SOSUS tracked the USS George Washington from the United States all the way to the United Kingdom. The next year it tracked the first Soviet diesel submarine to be detected using the system. Later that year the SOSUS test system in the Bahamas was able to track a Soviet Foxtrot class submarine during the Cuban Missile Crisis. SOSUS underwent a number of upgrades over the years, as the quality of the opposing submarines increased. 1961 (MCMLXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1961 calendar). ... USS George Washington (SSBN-598), the lead ship of her class, was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named for George Washington, first President of the United States. ... The Foxtrot class was the NATO reporting name of a class of diesel-electric patrol submarines that were built in the Soviet Union. ... USAF reconnaissance photo of one of the suspected launch sites The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States regarding the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba. ...

SOSUS systems consisted of bottom mounted hydrophone arrays connected by underwater cables to facilities on shore. The individual arrays are installed primarily on continental slopes and seamounts at locations optimized for undistorted long range acoustic propagation. The combination of location within the ocean and the sensitivity of arrays allows the system to detect acoustic power of less than a watt at ranges of several hundred kilometers. SOSUS monitoring stations, known as NAVFACs, existed in the US west and east coasts, Keflavik (in Iceland), Antigua, Barbados, Brawdy (in Wales, UK), Puerto Rico, Argentia (in Newfoundland), and Grand Turks. A hydrophone is a sound-to-electricity transducer for use in water or other liquids, analogous to a microphone for air. ... The watt (symbol: W) is the SI derived unit of power, equal to one joule per second. ... The Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) is the Navys facilities engineering professionals committed to Navy and Marine Corps combat readiness. ...

Current status

SOSUS was gradually condensed into a smaller number of monitoring stations during the 70s and 80s. However, the SOSUS arrays themselves were based upon technology that could only be upgraded irregularly. With the ending of the Cold War in the 1980s, the immediate need for SOSUS decreased, and the focus of the US Navy also turned towards a system that was deployable on a theatre basis. The SOSUS components are now being used for various scientific projects, such as tracking the vocalizations of whales in various study projects, and as a data network for undersea instrumentation packages. The system was officially declassified in 1991, although by that time it had long been an open secret. For other uses, see Cold War (disambiguation). ... The 1980s refers to the years of 1980 to 1989. ... A Fin whale The term whale is ambiguous: it can refer to all cetaceans, to just the larger ones, or only to members of particular families within the order Cetacea. ... 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... This page is a candidate to be moved to Wiktionary. ...

External links

• SOSUS: The "Secret Weapon" of Undersea Surveillance", Undersea Warfare, Winter, 2005, Vol. 7, No. 2, article by Edward C. Whitman
• The Acoustic Monitoring Project
• The Third Battle: Innovation in the US Navy's Silent Cold War (MIT: March, 2000)
• Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS), GlobalSecurity.org