SOSUS, an acronym for
Sound Surveillance System, is a chain of underwater listening posts across the northern
Atlantic OceanThe Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
near
GreenlandGreenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...
,
IcelandIceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
and the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
— the
GIUK gapThe GIUK gap is an area in the northern Atlantic Ocean that forms a naval warfare chokepoint. Its name is an acronym for Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom, the gap being the open ocean between these three landmasses...
. It was originally operated by the
United States NavyThe United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
for tracking
SovietThe Soviet Navy was the naval arm of the Soviet Armed Forces. Often referred to as the Red Fleet, the Soviet Navy would have played an instrumental role in a Warsaw Pact war with NATO, where it would have attempted to prevent naval convoys from bringing reinforcements across the Atlantic Ocean...
submarines, which had to pass through the gap to attack targets further west. Other locations in the Atlantic and
Pacific OceanThe Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
also had SOSUS stations. It was later supplemented by mobile assets such as the Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS), and became part of the Integrated Undersea Surveillance System (IUSS). Many other listening posts are still in operation around the world.
History
SOSUS development was started in 1949 when the US Navy formed the Committee for Undersea Warfare to research
anti-submarine warfareAnti-submarine warfare is a branch of naval warfare that uses surface warships, aircraft, or other submarines to find, track and deter, damage or destroy enemy submarines....
. The panel allocated $10 million annually to develop systems to counter the Soviet submarine threat consisting primarily of a large fleet of diesel submarines. They decided on a system to monitor low-frequency sound in the
SOFAR channelThe SOFAR channel , or deep sound channel , is a horizontal layer of water in the ocean at which depth the speed of sound is minimal. The SOFAR channel acts as a waveguide for sound, and low frequency sound waves within the channel may travel thousands of miles before dissipating...
using multiple listening sites equipped with hydrophones and a processing facility that could detect submarine positions by
triangulationIn trigonometry and geometry, triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by measuring angles to it from known points at either end of a fixed baseline, rather than measuring distances to the point directly...
over hundreds of miles.
Research Phase
At
MITThe Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
in 1950, the committee sponsored
Project Hartwell, named for the Hartwell Farms restaurant in
Lexington, MALexington is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 31,399 at the 2010 census. This town is famous for being the site of the first shot of the American Revolution, in the Battle of Lexington on April 19, 1775.- History :...
, where some of the initial steps were planned. In November, they selected
Western ElectricWestern Electric Company was an American electrical engineering company, the manufacturing arm of AT&T from 1881 to 1995. It was the scene of a number of technological innovations and also some seminal developments in industrial management...
to build a demonstration system, and the first six element hydrophone array was installed on the island of
EleutheraEleuthera is an island in The Bahamas, lying 50 miles east of Nassau. It is very long and thin—110 miles long and in places little more than a mile wide. According to the 2000 Census, the population of Eleuthera is approximately 8,000...
in the Bahamas. Meanwhile
Project Jezebel at
Bell LabsBell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...
and
Project Michael at
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
focused on studying long range acoustics in the ocean.
By 1952, enough progress resulted in top secret plans to deploy six arrays in the North Atlantic basin, and the classified name SOSUS was used. The number of arrays was increased to nine later in the year, and
Royal NavyThe Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
and USN ships, including
USS NeptuneUSNS Neptune , was the lead ship in her class of cable repair ships in U.S. Naval service. The ship was built by Pusey & Jones Corp. of Wilmington, Delaware, Hull Number 1108, as the USACS William H. G. Bullard named for Rear Adm. William H. G. Bullard...
and
USS PeregrineUSS Peregrine was an built for the United States Navy for the dangerous task of removing mines from minefields laid in the water to prevent ships from passing. She was named after the peregrine, a swift and powerful falcon....
, started laying the cabling under the cover of
Project Caesar. In 1953, Jezebel's research had developed an additional high-frequency system for direct plotting of ships passing over the stations, intended to be installed in narrows and straits, called
Project Colossus.
SOSUS goes operational
In 1961, SOSUS tracked the
USS George Washington (SSBN-598)USS George Washington , the lead ship of her class of nuclear ballistic missile submarines, was the third United States Navy ship of the name, in honor of George Washington , first President of the United States, and the first of that name to be purpose-built as a warship.-Construction and...
from the United States to the United Kingdom. The next year SOSUS detected and tracked its first Soviet diesel submarine. Later that year the SOSUS test system in the Bahamas tracked a Soviet
Foxtrot class submarineThe Foxtrot class was the NATO reporting name of a class of diesel-electric patrol submarines that were built in the Soviet Union. The Soviet designation of this class was Project 641....
during the
Cuban Missile CrisisThe Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation among the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War...
. SOSUS was upgraded a number of times as submarines became quieter.
SOSUS systems consisted of bottom mounted
hydrophoneA hydrophone is a microphone designed to be used underwater for recording or listening to underwater sound. Most hydrophones are based on a piezoelectric transducer that generates electricity when subjected to a pressure change...
arrays connected by underwater cables to facilities ashore. The individual arrays were installed primarily on continental slopes and seamounts at locations optimized for undistorted long range acoustic propagation. The combination of location within the ocean and the sensitivity of arrays allowed the system to detect acoustic power of less than a
wattThe watt is a derived unit of power in the International System of Units , named after the Scottish engineer James Watt . The unit, defined as one joule per second, measures the rate of energy conversion.-Definition:...
at ranges of several hundred kilometres.
SOSUS monitoring stations were known as Naval Facilities (NAVFAC, not to be confused with the Naval Facilities Engineering Command that has the same acronym.) NAVFACs existed in the west at
Adak, AlaskaAdak , formerly Adak Station, is a city in the Aleutians West Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2010 census the population was 326. It is the westernmost municipality in the United States and the southernmost city in Alaska. The city is the former location of the Adak Army Base and Adak...
;
Pacific Beach, WashingtonPacific Beach is an unincorporated community in Grays Harbor County, Washington, United States, by the Pacific Ocean. There are many hotels there and a stretch of usable beach area is available to those who visit.-History:...
;
Coos Bay, OregonCoos Bay is a city located in Coos County, Oregon, United States, where the Coos River enters Coos Bay on the Pacific Ocean. The city borders the city of North Bend, and together they are often referred to as one entity called either Coos Bay-North Bend or the Bay Area...
; NAVFAC Centerville Beach near
Eel RiverThe Eel River is a major river system of the northern Pacific coast of the U.S. state of California. Approximately 200 miles long, it drains a rugged area in the California Coast Ranges between the Sacramento Valley and the ocean. For most of its course, the river flows northwest, parallel to the...
, California; NAVFAC Point Sur near
Monterey, CaliforniaThe City of Monterey in Monterey County is located on Monterey Bay along the Pacific coast in Central California. Monterey lies at an elevation of 26 feet above sea level. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 27,810. Monterey is of historical importance because it was the capital of...
;
San Nicolas IslandSan Nicolas Island is the most remote of California's Channel Islands. It is part of Ventura County. The 14,562 acre island is currently controlled by the United States Navy and is used as a weapons testing and training facility, served by Naval Outlying Field San Nicolas Island...
, California; and
Naval Air Station Whidbey IslandNaval Air Station Whidbey Island is a naval air station located in two sections around Oak Harbor, Washington, USA. It was commissioned as an active U.S. Navy installation on 21 September 1942....
, Washington (1987). In the east, they were deployed at
Tom Nevers Naval FacilityTom Nevers Naval Facility was a U.S. Navy submarine listening post active from 1955-1976. It later became home to the Nantucket Hunting Association.- History :...
Nantucket;
Lewes, DelawareLewes is an incorporated city in Sussex County, Delaware, USA, on the Delmarva Peninsula. According to the 2010 census, the population is 2,747, a decrease of 6.3% from 2000....
;
Cape HatterasCape Hatteras is a cape on the coast of North Carolina. It is the point that protrudes the farthest to the southeast along the northeast-to-southwest line of the Atlantic coast of North America...
; and
Naval Facility Punta BorinquenRamey Air Force Base is a former United States Air Force base in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. In addition to a small on-site Air Force detachment, and occasional operations by the Puerto Rico Air National Guard, a portion of the former Air Force Base is operated by the United States Coast Guard as Coast...
, Puerto Rico.
Other NAVFACs were located in the Pacific at
Barber's PointKalaeloa Airport , also called John Rodgers Field and formerly Naval Air Station Barbers Point, is a joint civil-military regional airport of the State of Hawaii established on July 1, 1999 to replace the Ford Island NALF facilities which closed on June 30 of the same year...
, Hawaii,
Midway IslandMidway Atoll is a atoll in the North Pacific Ocean, near the northwestern end of the Hawaiian archipelago, about one-third of the way between Honolulu, Hawaii, and Tokyo, Japan. Unique among the Hawaiian islands, Midway observes UTC-11 , eleven hours behind Coordinated Universal Time and one hour...
; and Naval Base Guam. Also, they were located in the Atlantic at
Keflavik, IcelandUnited States Naval Air Station Keflavik is a former NATO facility at Keflavík International Airport, Iceland. It is located on the Reykjanes peninsula on the south-west portion of the island...
;
CFS ShelburneCanadian Forces Station Shelburne, also known as CFS Shelburne, is a former Canadian Forces Station located in Shelburne County, Nova Scotia.The facility operated from two locations within the Municipality of the District of Shelburne:...
, Nova Scotia and
Naval Station ArgentiaNaval Station Argentia is a former base of the United States Navy that operated from 1941-1994. It was established in the community of Argentia in what was then the Dominion of Newfoundland, which later became the tenth Canadian province .-Construction:Established under the British-U.S...
, Newfoundland (both later remoted to
CFB HalifaxCanadian Forces Base Halifax is Canada's east coast navy base and home port to the Atlantic fleet, known as Maritime Forces Atlantic....
, Nova Scotia);
BrawdyBrawdy is a village and parish in Pembrokeshire, South West Wales.- Location :Brawdy is situated at the northeast corner of St Brides Bay. The southern half of the parish is in the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park...
, Wales;
AntiguaAntigua , also known as Waladli, is an island in the West Indies, in the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean region, the main island of the country of Antigua and Barbuda. Antigua means "ancient" in Spanish and was named by Christopher Columbus after an icon in Seville Cathedral, Santa Maria de la...
;
BarbadosThe Naval Facility Barbados, TWI was a naval base which was commissioned on 1 October 1957, with a complement of about 12 officers and about 88 enlisted personnel. It was located at site of Harrison's Point, in the Parish of Saint Lucy in the British colonial territory of Barbados of the West...
; Eluthera, Bermuda;
Grand TurksGrand Turk Island is an island in the Turks and Caicos Islands. It is the largest island in the Turks Islands with . It contains the territory's capital, Cockburn Town and the JAGS McCartney International Airport...
; and
San SalvadorSan Salvador Island, also known as Watlings Island, is an island and district of the Bahamas. Until 1986, when the National Geographic Society suggested Samana Cay, it was widely believed that during his first expedition to the New World, San Salvador Island was the first land sighted and visited...
. Data Evaluation Centers were set up at Whidbey Island, Washington and
Dam NeckNaval Air Station Oceana or NAS Oceana is a military airport located in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and is a United States Navy Master Jet Base. It is also known as Apollo Soucek Field, named after Lieutenant Apollo Soucek, a Navy Test Pilot who set the global altitude record in 1930 by flying a...
, Virginia in the early 1980s.
LOFAR (frequency analysis) was carried out on the signals from the arrays and paper outputs called
lofargrams were produced which were used to help detect and classify contacts. When the sank in 1963, SOSUS helped determine its location. In 1968 the first detections of
VictorThe Victor class is the NATO reporting name for a type of nuclear-powered submarine that was originally put into service by the Soviet Union around 1967. In the USSR, they were produced as Project 671. Victor-class subs featured a teardrop shape, which allowed them to travel at high speed...
and
CharlieThe Charlie class submarine is a nuclear powered cruise missile submarine built for the Soviet Navy and later operated by the Russian Navy.-Background:...
class Soviet submarines were made, while in 1974 the first
Delta class submarineThe Delta class is a class of submarines which formed the backbone of the Soviet and Russian strategic submarine fleet since its introduction in 1973...
was observed.
In 1985, the Fixed Distributed System (FDS) test array became operational and the first SURTASS patrol began. The name for the overall system became Integrated Undersea Surveillance System (IUSS). In 1991, the system mission was declassified and the next year it began reporting whale detections and SOSUS work stations began replacing paper lofargrams. The Advanced Deployable System became operational as part of IUSS in 1996.
Current status
SOSUS was gradually condensed into a smaller number of monitoring stations during the 1970s and 80s. However, the SOSUS arrays themselves were based upon technology that could only be upgraded irregularly. With the ending of the
Cold WarThe Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
in the 1990s, the immediate need for SOSUS decreased, and the focus of the US Navy also turned toward a system that was deployable on a theatre basis. The SOSUS components are now used for scientific projects, such as tracking the vocalisations of whales and other ocean mammals in various study projects, as a data network for undersea instrumentation packages, and for acoustic thermometry. The SOSUS system was declassified in 1991, although by that time it had long been an
open secretAn open secret is a concept or idea that is "officially" secret or restricted in knowledge, but is actually widely known; or refers to something which is widely known to be true, but which none of the people most intimately concerned are willing to categorically acknowledge in public.Examples of...
.
Commander Undersea Surveillance (CUS), head of the IUSS, was elevated to an echelon IV command 28 February 2007. CUS at NAS Oceana Dam Neck Annex operates under the operational guidance of
COMPACFLTThe United States Pacific Fleet is a Pacific Ocean theater-level component command of the United States Navy that provides naval resources under the operational control of the United States Pacific Command. Its home port is at Pearl Harbor Naval Base, Hawaii. It is commanded by Admiral Patrick M...
. Naval Ocean Processing Facilities in Oak Harbor, Washington, and Virginia Beach, Virginia, still monitor SOSUS and FDS, and they provide SURTASS connectivity around the world.
See also
- Communication with submarines
Communication with submarines is difficult because radio waves do not travel well through thick electrical conductors like salt water.The obvious solution is to surface and raise an antenna above the water, then use ordinary radio transmissions. Early submarines had to frequently surface anyway for...
- Integrated Undersea Surveillance System insignia
- SOFAR channel
The SOFAR channel , or deep sound channel , is a horizontal layer of water in the ocean at which depth the speed of sound is minimal. The SOFAR channel acts as a waveguide for sound, and low frequency sound waves within the channel may travel thousands of miles before dissipating...
- Project ARTEMIS
Project ARTEMIS was a project undertaken by the United States Navy in the 1960s, which produced a Low Frequency Active Sonar system that could detect submarines at long range. Robert A. Frosch, in his capacity as Technical Director of Hudson Laboratories , was Technical Director of the project. Dr....
External links
- History of IUSS: Timeline
- SOSUS: The "Secret Weapon" of Undersea Surveillance", Undersea Warfare, Winter, 2005, Vol. 7, No. 2, article by Edward C. Whitman
- The Acoustic Monitoring Project
- The Third Battle: Innovation in the US Navy's Silent Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
(MIT: March, 2000)
- Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS), GlobalSecurity.org
GlobalSecurity.org, launched in 2000, is a public policy organization focusing on the fields of defense, space exploration, intelligence, weapons of mass destruction and homeland security...
- A Letter from Joe Worzel to Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory regarding the establishment of Palisades Geophysical Institute, its work, and support of the education and research community
- The SOund SUrveillance System, Federation of American Scientists, Intelligence Resource Program