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Originally Posted by swimsalot
Certainly no expert on modern surface tactics, but it does seem unwise for ships to be banging away with active sonar.
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Adding to the previous answer, the difference is a kind of offense vs defense thing. Part of the reason American surface ships use passive sonar so much is because they do a lot of Soviet sub tracking and the Soviet fleet includes many subs of the previous generation, which means that the normal relationship b/w surface ships and subs gets inversed for most cases. So American surface assets hunt subs.
The Soviet fleet faces the "normal" relationship (even against their own subs, let alone American ones), in which subs tend to have major advantages over surface ships. The sub can have a more flexible choice of depth, is deeper and thus is in waters better for its sonar, and tends to have better silencing. What do they do? They go active. No guarantee of course, but it gives them a much better chance of keeping the enemy out of a certain ring, so they would either be prevent from launching torps or at least they would be forced to launch further out and maximize chances of evasion - you will also notice that the Soviets built some weapons like the Udav-1 that's is supposed to actually try and intercept the torpedo with ASW mortars, while the Americans don't even try that. The offense vs defense affair is clear.