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SMS Subs: Bandwidth-Boosting Buoys Enable Undersea Texts

by Matthew Zuras on July 13, 2010 at 05:45 PM

submarine surfacingHere's a scenario: you're cruising along in your submarine at a depth of 1,200 feet, and one of the fresh-faced midshipmen does a spit-take all over your commanding officer's face after he asks the young cadet to wipe the leaking stopcocks in the engine room. You grab your cell phone to send a text to your buddies ashore: "LOLZ!!1 Swabbie spits on CO, hilarity/the brig ensues." You hit 'send.' No signal! Damn.

It's a scene of tragic consequences for both the poor sailor and your cell phone (and one that we just entirely made up, having absolutely no experience below depths of 15 feet in a backyard swimming pool). But we can imagine that text-message capability is something direly needed among these subaquatic guardians of our shores, and for more important reasons than spreading the news of an underling's follies. Crews may actually need to get in touch with central command without surfacing and exposing themselves to potential threats -- so a text-boosting buoy may be in order.

In development by Lockheed Martin, the buoys can either be jettisoned up to the surface through the sub's trash chute, or dropped into the water from an aircraft. The 40-inch-long trash-chute buoys remain connected to the ship via long underwater cables, while the aerially deposited ones use an acoustic messaging system akin to sonar in order to wirelessly transmit data.

This is great news for the Red October, since she won't have to go up to near-periscope depth to send an MMS, or, for that matter, an SOS. She and her U.S. "friends" have been woefully disconnected from the armed services' communications networks, relying on meager ELF bandwidth that has essentially remained unimproved since the height of the Cold War. If the Navy ultimately implements the buoys, we demand videos of servicemen getting down deep below the sea. [From: Discover Magazine and Livescience]

Tags: ArmedServices, buoy, communication, LockheedMartin, military, navy, sms, submarine, Texting, TextMessaging, top

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