So am I missing something fundamental? Silent or stealth supercavitation propulsion seems extremely difficult just by its nature of creating constant explosions lol, but I am a complete layperson. I did read the take that it could be considered stealth by virtue of simply moving fast enough to use its own propulsion signature as a mask? Genuinely curious, the project sounds really cool
Isn't the point that this is removing all moving parts of the submarine? No mechanical pieces, no engine (it's nuclear), no propellor, no jet. Replaced with laser.
It won't be completely soundless, you're always going to make some sort of sound based on displacing water. But any reduction on existing methods is going to make objects that are already incredibly hard to detect even harder.
That's what I thought as well, I just wasn't sure if it balanced out against a cavitation based propulsion system - maybe it does(!), but idk lol. I just assumed it would be relatively easy to detect via sonar but with a very different profile obv.
Edit*: then again, we are comparing the volume of cavitation vs a conventional submarine drive system. Could very well be that the conventional engine with more moving components is just straight up louder than bubble explosions >.>
So am I missing something fundamental? Silent or stealth supercavitation propulsion seems extremely difficult just by its nature of creating constant explosions lol, but I am a complete layperson. I did read the take that it could be considered stealth by virtue of simply moving fast enough to use its own propulsion signature as a mask? Genuinely curious, the project sounds really cool
Isn't the point that this is removing all moving parts of the submarine? No mechanical pieces, no engine (it's nuclear), no propellor, no jet. Replaced with laser.
It won't be completely soundless, you're always going to make some sort of sound based on displacing water. But any reduction on existing methods is going to make objects that are already incredibly hard to detect even harder.
That's what I thought as well, I just wasn't sure if it balanced out against a cavitation based propulsion system - maybe it does(!), but idk lol. I just assumed it would be relatively easy to detect via sonar but with a very different profile obv.
Edit*: then again, we are comparing the volume of cavitation vs a conventional submarine drive system. Could very well be that the conventional engine with more moving components is just straight up louder than bubble explosions >.>