There is something with the sonar called "deep scan" where you can assign a tracker to a faint contact that you can't yet see on the screen. If you move the cursor in broadband sonar over to a bearing with a faint contact and click assign tracker it might assign a tracker to that contact event though you don't yet see anything on the screen. What the auto sonar crew does (and you can do this manually yourself) is that it "deep scans" by moving the cursor every 5 degrees and clicking assign tracker. Sometimes this will detect a faint contact thta you don't yet see on the screen.
One bit of advice that I read was that when you detect contacts on the towed array you should go to the spherical (or cylindrical) array and do a "deep scan" on the same bearings as the towed array contacts. If the spherical (or cylindrical) array does assign a tracker to a contact (it doesn't always) this can help you determine which towed array contacts are mirror image contacts and will also allow you to triangulate (merge) a contact in TMA to discover its range from your ship.
You can also use "deep scan" with active sonar. Sometimes when you ping you will hear a return echo at a certain range but won't see anything on the screen because the return echo or contact is too faint. If you move the cursor to the range where you heard the return echo and move the cursor along the bearings in that range and click on the Mark button you might get a contact ID assigned. This can be helpful where you have detected the target with passive sonar but only know its bearing but not its range. If you got to active sonar and only hear the return echo but don't see anything you can move the cursor to the range that you heard the echo at and then move the cursor to the bearing that you have detected the target on passive sonar at and click on the Mark button. If a contact ID is assigned you can merge this to the passive contact in TMA to discover its range from your ship.
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