>moves out of range of the hydrophones in January–February
I would have thought the entire ocean is covered by now?
I would have thought the entire ocean is covered by now?
1 - https://breakingdefense.com/2018/07/china-russia-in-the-arct... 2 - https://www.newsmax.com/philipguthrie/china-pacific-taiwan-u...
China has 7 active ballistic missile submarines. The US has 35 active nuclear attack submarines.
It's probably cheaper to run a less thorough net and then task subs to shadow any contacts made.
It was in the past. Today such things can be used for all sorts of intel tasks. Sosus is real time info about positions/speeds of all ships, surface or not. Satellites cannot do that. I imagine that the US is also using sound to monitor Chinese building activities in the south china sea. There is also, probably, some economic intel to be gained by monitoring shipping/fishing fleets, again, in a way not easily replicated from space.
You're only going to be shadowing ballistic missile submarines with attack subs, which means (total nuclear boats) - (18 Ohio class).
Based on the individual class pages (LA, Seawolf, Virginia) there are 53 active SSNs.