Being close to the floor messes with your sensors a lot more than whoever is listening to you. If you're going slow enough to be quiet then your towed array will end up dragging. I also don't believe active sonar will return off of the floor but it will definitely still return off you. With both active and passive if you're on the other side of an island or something like that then you are masked but just being close to the sea floor doesn't help you.
For aviation terrain masking and NOE flight make a lot more sense. Aircraft are actually quite bad at spotting threats on the ground; the aircraft is always much more conspicuous than whoever is looking up at them. In a submarine though, you are the least conspicuous thing in the area. You're well camouflaged. Your best defense is to be quiet in wide open water so you can hear everything going on around you.
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