After the U.S. Navy revealed it has a sound system that picked up the implosion of the OceanGate Expeditions' Titan sub, questions abound that will likely go unanswered due to classified military information.
"Anything involving the nuclear triad is supersecret," RAND's Brynn Tannehill told The Wall Street Journal, referencing land, sea, and air nuclear defense systems. "Anything involving U.S. sensor capabilities is supersecret."
After the Titan was reported missing, the Navy went back and analyzed its acoustic data and found an "anomaly" Sunday that was consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the vessel was operating when communications were lost, according to a senior U.S. Navy official to The Associated Press.
The Navy passed on the information to the Coast Guard, which continued its search because the data was not considered definitive, according to the official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive acoustic detection system.
"As soon as you start talking about anti-submarine warfare systems and boats in the North Atlantic, you immediately hit top-secret clearance," Tannehill told the Journal.
"So if the Navy doesn't seem particularly forthcoming, it can't be particularly forthcoming without presidential authority to declassify anything they say."
The U.S. was working on a Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) during the Cold War to detect Soviet nuclear submarines, which was kept classified until the Soviet Union collapsed, the Journal reported.
The SOSUS uses hydrophones on the sea floor to pick up sounds, like the implosion of the Titan might have caused. It might have been the system that picked up the sound "anomaly," Tannehill told the Journal.
There could be newer technology in place, too, but we would be a long time from hearing about what that technology might be, due to the nuclear secrets.
"The danger of nuclear war became a central fact of modern life and a furious arms race began," the Navy's SOSUS history website reads.
"On the seas the admitted goal of Soviet admirals was to achieve naval supremacy, to use the navy as a key element of Soviet global strategy. Great emphasis was placed on completely modernizing naval armaments, especially the submarine force, which became the largest in the world. Our military leaders and analysts viewed the threat posed to the free world with alarm."
SOSUS was used to find the USS Thresher, a nuclear-powered submarine that sank in 1963 off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, killing all 129 people on board, according to the report.
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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