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Originally Posted by LuftWolf
How does a dipping sonar or sonobuoy overcome even more restrictive size limitations?
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They don't. Neither of them can see very far. They're short ranged sensors.
You can potentially search a large area with a dipper by physically moving the sensor, due to the high speed of the helo. Hence, helos with dippers have a relatively high search rate, in spite of relatively short ranged sensor.
Sonobuoys can't see very far at all either. You search large areas by dropping lots of them in a pattern, and counting on the relatively high speed of your aircraft to allow you cover the space quickly, hence you get a high search rate but a short sensor range.
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All I'm really hearing from this conversation is: it's possible but there hasn't been any serious investment.
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Actually there's been quite a lot, just that it's all as research and development. It's more like there's a lot of interest, but exactly what they want to do is very poorly defined. UUVs in the future will almost certainly hunt for mines, and gather oceanographic data. That much is basically a done deal. They've already proven their utility for that. As ASW weapons, though, it's not so clear exactly how they'd be used. They're very limited in a lot of ways. The ones that are least limited leave you wondering why they didn't just build another submarine, mine or torpedo. The rest, while more limited in their capabilities, have serious technical or operational difficulties that they're working on overcoming (hence lots of R&D), but it isn't clear whether they'll proove their usefulness in the end or not. These are the sorts that might be doing things like deploying sea bottom sensors or what not (like in the Sea Talon video). The more ambitious they claim a given protoype is, the less I believe they'll actually pull it off.