Tom Clancy hypothesis on sonar performance...

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by Pisces

I'm not getting a clear picture. Does the distant chinese destroyer also reflect the (allready reflected) ping back to the american sub. (in other words a three-way trip ping) That sounds very unlikely because of range attenuation. Anechoic tiles certainly makes this worse for the us sub.

Or does the us sub emit a pulse at the exact same time the Chinese (destroyer) pulse is reflected on them to mask it. (would require supperb timing) That still doesn't help them, it would infact help detection by the distant chinese destroyer because it receives more intensity. But most likely make the closer chinese sub detect them first.

I'm no submariner, but sounds like boo-boo to me.

No, it goes like this (in this scenario there is only 1 ping and this ping gets reflected, no other active ping is sent in the water) :

1 - chinese destroyer emits a ping
2 - the ping arrives on the american sub
3 - the chinese destroyer being to far does not receive the echo from the ping that it sent moments before
4 - the american sub does not emit any active ping, it basically uses the reflected ping to paint any contacts in the neighboorhood including the chinese destroyer
5 - american sub now know the position of everyone and proceeds to attack and sinks all chinese opposisition (ok this part i made up )

It still find it very improbable and Clancy most assuredly just made up all this to make his story more interesting.
But I don't think that such things happen in real life.