Strange Submarine News and Quote of the Week (14 JUN 16)

- 1 -

Recall Sweden's 2014 Russian submarine hunt:  BBC's 60 second video Review

Molten Eagle speculation had remained:  It is more likely, in our experience, that a much needed Swedish Military training excercise, a PR recruiting effort, or a combination of both, have been conducted with renewed world attention.      and now we learn...

Today's [June 13, 2016] NEWS UPDATE indicates we appear to have been correct all along:
"A sonar signature, which Swedish military claimed to be crucial evidence of a foreign submarine’s presence near Stockholm during the 2014 hunt, came from a 'Swedish object,' the country’s defense minister has admitted.

Peter Hultqvist would not go into details about the source of the signal, but said the military reconsidered their assessment of its nature in September 2015, he told Sveriges Radio."  {The Sveriges Radio AB Swedish Language article is consistent}

- 2 -

Sub-Ocean Geophysical Catastrophe (Pick the more likely story)   

February 13, 2016 - CNN  | The quake-maker you've never heard of: Cascadia

• The Cascadia is capable of delivering a 9.0-magnitude quake. The fault can deliver a quake with 30 times more energy than the more famous San Andreas 

• The Cascadia runs from British Columbia's Vancouver Island California's Cape Mendocino

• "...and then it generates a tsunami at the same time, which the side-by-side motion of the San Andreas can't do." - Prof. Chris Goldfinger, Oregon State University.

June 13, 2016 - PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) | Robot submarine streams live from ocean off Oregon coast
A robot submarine is roaming around the ocean floor off the Oregon Coast in an effort to detect any geological activity underground, and researchers are offering a live stream of the underwater view.  The mission off the Pacific Northwest is intended to find “methane seeps,” where the natural greenhouse gas is released from the ocean floor along the Cascadia subduction.
 
Another Russian exploration to locate ideal detonation sites to trigger earthquakes, or innocent scientific curiosity? Hint: See research efforts (Dr. Robert Ballard and the Corps of Exploration)   

- 3 - 

June 2016 | theatlantic.com  GPS Doesn't Work Underwater
So the U.S. Navy is developing a new kind of system—built specifically for drone submarines.

POSYDON wants to install acoustic speakers in buoys throughout the ocean, where they will broadcast the time like GPS satellites. “They will be heard across very, very wide swaths of ocean,” he told me. “And now our underwater vehicles will be able to listen to those acoustic signals and measure the time difference of arrivals of each one of them.”

There’s one big problem. GPS radio signals are electromagnetic waves, so they move at the speed of light—always, through any atmospheric medium. This makes it extremely straightforward to back-compute the location of a beacon from its signal.  

M.E. Comment: Would not laser emissions from orbiting satellites provide faster, broader coverage?  

- 4 -

May 18, 2016 - Military Times | CHEYENNE, Wyo. Tribute to a Navy vet served on captured German WWII sub

Toward the war's end, one of these U-boats, U-858, was sent to wreak havoc along the east coast of the United States. But two weeks after Hitler's suicide, on May 14, 1945, U-858 became the first Nazi submarine to surrender to U.S. forces.

It's a boat that Chuck Kline remembers well. That's because, for nine months after its surrender, Kline served aboard U-858.

Kline, now 93, is one of a dwindling number of American sailors who served aboard submarines during World War II, and the last to come from Wyoming. (more)

Submarines are always silent and strange.