I have a question about submarine camo.

Deepsea fish use bio-lumenescence and photo cells of some sort.
The fish that use photo cells use light to blend in to their surroundings, so from below looking up at the fish, they use a bluish light on their stomachs to match the sun filtering down from the surface and from above looking down on the fish its dorsal section turns dark to match the depths below them.
I know the US and UK miltary have researched this for aircraft.
Has any navy researched this for there subs???


[edit on 16-4-2006 by Kurokage]

Kurokage,

My understanding of deep ocean lifeforms is that they use BL as a lure and decoy mechanism: "Bite Here!" whether being sacrificial or enticing as the only real utility of active lightsourcing in that deep a black.

Now if you are referring to normal (shark etc.) fish with dark uppers and bright lowers, I agree but they tend to operate within a much shallower environment where surface diffusion is still powerful enough to provide considerable light.

And nuclear boats especially /hate/ operating in shallow water because there is no real easy thermoclinic definition of sound path and salinity to gauge detection ranges and their plant/cav noises tend to become a real problem as they cannot use high performance sprint and drift techniques to exploit the third-D in isolating their signature.

Inshore is therefore where I would expect optical camouflage to be most necessary.

That said, the Pacific units especially had a tendency up until the late 70's or early 80's to put a bluesh sail and turtleback on their boomers to help hide them against a far horizon as they sortied out and I suppose this goes back to the days when a surfaced ICBM/CM launch scenario was at least possible.

These days, my personal belief is that systems like April Showers have allowed us to penetrate at least the shallow littoral areas with overhead to the extent that we can pretty well sanitize them by wake tracking and thermal plume differentiation if not actual silouhettes on most boats. There may also be roboacoustics (fast lay SOSUS or mobile) involved too.

Could be wrong of course, but the inshore SSK threat is as real as ever and it doesn't make sense to continually chop out the area-search platforms (S-3 and P-3) when missile poles and super cav are taking the engagement out past the second and third convergence zones.

You might want to try here-

www.subcommittee.com...

As being a reference source more likely to point you in the right direction.

Originally posted by Kurokage
Deepsea fish use bio-lumenescence and photo cells of some sort.
The fish that use photo cells use light to blend in to their surroundings, so from below looking up at the fish, they use a bluish light on their stomachs to match the sun filtering down from the surface and from above looking down on the fish its dorsal section turns dark to match the depths below them.
I know the US and UK miltary have researched this for aircraft.
Has any navy researched this for there subs???

[edit on 16-4-2006 by Kurokage]

dude there arent any windows in submarines. the only camo a sub needs (apart from sound camo)is on top so they cant be seen from boats on the surface when the water is exceptionaly clear for a long way.

justin

[edit on 16-4-2006 by justin_barton3]

[edit on 16-4-2006 by justin_barton3]

I wasnt thinking about people looking out windows!!! lol

Hachetfish use photophores to match their surroundings.
my thought was that subs in shallow water are easily spotted, if you used some sort of tiny camera system along the top of the sub it would be harder to spot, as it would blend in with the water and surface colour better.

Im only asking this after watching a documentry on deepsea fish,I all so keep marine fish. I have an interest in aircraft and know that some research is being down on active and visual stealth and was curious if the same research could be used for ships and subs.

I think you still get light penertration down to about 3000 feet or so.

Just had a crazy image of a sub with a giant plasma screen on top with free willy playing lol


p.s. Thanks ch1466 for the info








[edit on 17-4-2006 by Kurokage]

The problem is, even from aircraft subs do not operate in shallow enough water to make active camo very worthwhile, as the bottom is typicly not visible. (If you're in water that shallow, your shadow will give you away anyhow.) Boats don't tend to be the best way to spot subs visually, because they can only see a very small part of the ocean around them, while aircraft can see a much wider area. The real trick is being able to see a larger area than the sub occupies, so you can tell it apart from it's surroundsings.

if we are tlaking about camo for operating very close inshores i would say the best bet is not to go that close.

Loads of tiny cameras would be cool, but it would be impractical, unreliable and hugely expensive. Although i did hear something about the americans develouping something like that for an abrahms as a test. bit like james bond's Aston Martin vanish.

Justin