USS Tennessee Completes Historic Dry Dock Phase

[Mr Quatro]

Only in America can you get such a detailed analyzes of a bulge on a nuclear submarine that just came out of refit

As a admiral in the arm chair category on the outside looking in I always wondered what the bulge was on the Virginia class SSN boats. Then one day it dawned on me that it had something to do with sonar, but I never could understand why it was just one one side. Something to do with determining range of contact, but now this new sonar bulge on the Tennessee will be the future for the Virginia class also ... something to do with the contacts in the baffles.

All hush hush except in American press circles lol

USS Tennessee Completes Historic Dry Dock Phase: USS Tennessee (SSBN 734) –
undergoing the longest and most extensive work package in TRF-KB history –
completed its dry dock maintenance period July 1

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...pMpIc_Z8fHJNuU

If you look closely at the images, you will notice there is now a bulge that wraps vertically around each side of Tenessee's hull, midway down the boat's length. The bulges appear to end when they reach near the bottom of the hull and do not connect together. There is even a cutout in the upper fairing that sits flush with the launch tube doors for where the bulge begins before dropping below the waterline.

The photos show a bulge near the midpoint of the missile compartment of USS Tennessee. The bulge is symmetrical on both port and starboard sides covered topside by the missile battery fairing suggesting that is one complete piece crossing the top of the submarine. While it is not clear what function this addition provides the submarine, its appearance is similar to synthetic aperture sonar arrays used on other submarines.

The location is ideal for near 360-degree sonar coverage reducing the sonar ‘blind spot’ in the baffles, the region aft of the submarine. If this is a sonar array, it can provide two major benefits to the USS Tennessee. Based on the size of the array, this is most likely a Medium to High-Frequency passive sonar array. This gives the sonar operators another set of data to examine increasing their situational awareness across the broadband and narrowband sonar spectrums. This means USS Tennessee has increased detection capability.

The second benefit of the array position is the data can be digitally merged in the advanced beamformer processors with the bow-mounted sonar and towed array, increasing the directivity of the sonar system. This gives sonar more accurate bearings at very low frequency.

The potential combination of near-360 sonar coverage and increased VLF bearing accuracy gives USS Tennessee a tactical advantage we’ve not enjoyed since the Cold War.