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Top secret U.S. Navy system heard titan implosion days ago

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Re: Top secret U.S. Navy system heard titan implosion days ago

#161

Post by aredox »

ALittleLight wrote: post #77
afavour wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d flip it: what’s the point in informing the public about something you’re not definitive about? Particularly when lives are at stake.

They heard the implosion at the same time they lost contact with the sub. Why not say that? There is neither added nor diminished risk to life by revealing or concealing that. As for what the point of informing the public is - the government serves the public and the public was interested. Without a compelling reason to keep information secret the government should share. As

Your voyeurism is annoying and very off-putting.

Find yourself saner hobbies.

Re: Top secret U.S. Navy system heard titan implosion days ago

#162

Post by rcxdude »

listenallyall wrote: post #120
rich_sasha wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think existence of automatic surveillance isn't a secret. The secret bits would include what this can detect, but I guess the presumption here is that an imploding civilian sub is easier to hear than a Russian military sub. So not really giving anything away.

That's ridiculous though, either it is "top secret" or it isn't. There shouldn't be some arbitrary sliding scale of what's ok to reveal and what's not.

There kinda is though, this is true for almost all military gear: it's quite hard to hide the existance of a new tank once you're actually making it in large quantities, for example, but the detailed drawings of it, and the test results showing the strengths and weaknesses of it will be varying levels of secret. In the case of a listening system, it's the kind of thing which is pretty obvious to do, but the exact nature and means of it being secret makes sense (cageyness about the name of the system is odder: but it may be a concern about revealing exactly which system this came from, assuming there's multiple, for correlation with other information which may be less public).

(The same thing happened with the snowden leaks, BTW: it was suspected for a long time that the NSA or FBI had a survellance system similar to PRISM, because it's the kind of thing that they would want to do and have the means to do, even absent any concrete evidence of its existance. The leaks just confirmed the existance undeniably and also showed how extensive it was)

Re: Top secret U.S. Navy system heard titan implosion days ago

#163

Post by redeeman »

Ratiofarmings wrote: post #135
ALittleLight wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hey, we're pretty sure your family is dead, because we heard them die, but we're going to give you a few days of thinking they're suffocating to death in a cold dark can because..." This is just reasoning after the fact. It doesn't make sense to conceal evidence. If this used some secret technology, okay, why say it publicly now? If it's okay to be public, why not a few days ago?

Because dealing with it internally and informing the public are two entirely different things. They may well have told the families some things, but not the public. Afterall this is a privately funded venture and the rescue effort isn't going to be paid for by the public either. They owe us nothing.

> They owe us nothing.

Are you referring to the actual "government" ? because in that case, it definitely seems like they owe their own citizens something?

Re: Top secret U.S. Navy system heard titan implosion days ago

#164

Post by TheHumanist »

fransje26 wrote: post #140
xienze wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cynical part of me thinks everyone involved knew what had happened on Sunday. There was ample evidence that the submersible imploded (repeated stress on a carbon fiber frame, zero regard for safety, the fact that all communication was lost permanently). Then there was the fact that the logistics involved in a rescue were basically insurmountable. The Navy/Coast Guard saw this as a good live training exercise and…

> the media got a great story. Don't quite know what was so great about this story. It was a textbook example of the catastrophic consequences of hubris meeting ignorance, and that was about it. The rest was just milking the drama as timed passed by with decreasing theoretical oxygen reserves.

I think they mean from the perspective of the heartless suits at news companies and/or their parent conglomerates, this was a 'great' story. Lots of eyes. People checking back in for updates. ie. Lots of clicks and clickthroughs

Re: Top secret U.S. Navy system heard titan implosion days ago

#165

Post by twoodfin »

cushychicken wrote: post #158
garbagecoder wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SOSUS may have been classified but you could read about it 40+ years ago.

But not it's true purpose: tracking Soviet submarines.

It wasn’t quite 40 years ago, but there’s a line in the film The Hunt for Red October (1990) that explicitly describes SOSUS as a submarine “warning net”. Knowing Tom Clancy, I’d guess there are similar references in the book (1984).

If it was meant to be a secret it wasn’t well-kept.

Re: Top secret U.S. Navy system heard titan implosion days ago

#166

Post by [deleted] »

ALittleLight wrote: post #28
stochtastic wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they were pretending to look, they were just (rightly) remaining open to it being either rescue or recovery. From the article: > “While not definitive, this information was immediately shared with the Incident Commander to assist with the ongoing search and rescue mission.” So: * They knew about it and quickly aided in the search. * They did not broadcast the details of the collection to the public. Tha…

[flagged]

[deleted]

Re: Top secret U.S. Navy system heard titan implosion days ago

#167

Post by EdwardDiego »

phpisthebest wrote: post #64
yborg wrote: post #6

I'm pretty sure the Navy also knows what was causing the "banging" heard underwater during the search. I don't understand the point of leaking this information now, it just makes it look like the Coast Guard spent 3 days and considerable money pretending to look for a target it knew was probably destroyed.

It is almost like they needed the news to be distracted for some reason.... hmmm

If you genuinely believe that, then I've got a Jewish space laser to sell you.

Re: Top secret U.S. Navy system heard titan implosion days ago

#168

Post by listenallyall »

rcxdude wrote: post #162
listenallyall wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's ridiculous though, either it is "top secret" or it isn't. There shouldn't be some arbitrary sliding scale of what's ok to reveal and what's not.

There kinda is though, this is true for almost all military gear: it's quite hard to hide the existance of a new tank once you're actually making it in large quantities, for example, but the detailed drawings of it, and the test results showing the strengths and weaknesses of it will be varying levels of secret. In the case of a listening system, it's the kind of thing which is pretty obvious to do, but the exact nat…

I'll note that Snowden, whatever you think of him, had the balls to come forward and put his name on all his disclosures. He got help from journalists as far as summarizing and prioritizing and coordinating with major newspapers but he never was "an anonymous source" or "a person with knowledge of the meeting."

As to the other points, when some top secret info does get revealed, legally or not, and the public reaction is pretty much, ehh, we already assumed that -- that seems like a pretty big failing of the whole concept of "secret." And on the other hand, I'll grant you a few exceptions, like the names of spies, position of gear or troops, perhaps the detailed weapons specs like you mentioned -- but when the name of this system is "top secret" and seemingly well over 90% of what is marked "classified" lacks any informational value whatsoever, that's a failing in the other direction, people stop caring about "secret" because so little of it is actually important.

Re: Top secret U.S. Navy system heard titan implosion days ago

#169

Post by EdwardDiego »

phpisthebest wrote: post #151
kccoder wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes, on a planet with 8 billion people, more than one newsworthy event happen concurrently without coordination or conspiracy.

While true, it is also true the person that controls if information can be released or not from military channels, aka the commander in chief, is also the one that has several high profile news stories cooking

Because no-one ever leaks info in large bureaucracies?

Re: Top secret U.S. Navy system heard titan implosion days ago

#170

Post by EdwardDiego »

chmod775 wrote: post #154

If someone with a background in such things could explain how far such a sound could realistically travel in water before becoming indistinguishable from background noise, I'd be grateful.

"It really depends" is as good as you're likely going to get.

Read up on underwater acoustic propagation to see why. Lots of interacting variables that can reflect, scatter, focus, alter affect absorption etc.

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