Experts explain why the search for Indonesian submarines is so difficult

Why is finding submarines always difficult? Hear an explanation from a former US Navy submarine officer.

The Indonesian navy KRI Nanggala-402 went missing on Wednesday. Alex Widojo / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images The search for a missing Indonesian Navy submarine has been going on for days, and time is running out, hopes seem to have faded. “The submarines are designed to be hard to detect, this is a problem that can happen when one sinks,” said Bryan Clark, a former US Navy submarine officer. Submarines are built to penetrate enemy waters, engage and engage enemy navies, shoot at ground targets with cruise and ballistic missiles, and even deliver force. amount secretly entering enemy territory / territorial waters. Not all submarines can perform every task, but regardless of the mission and the ship’s capabilities, stealth is considered to be of primary importance. The KRI Nanggala-402 is a German-made diesel-electric attack submarine that is more than 40 years old. Due to the age of the submarine, it may lack the coating and stealth features of newer ships, even after being refurbished in 2012, giving search and rescue teams a bit of an edge. as they try to look for it, but other challenges will overwhelm any potential advantage. In the event of an emergency, the submarine can either trigger a “ping” device on the ship or send a buoy to monitor (if the Indonesian submarine has these systems and the systems are in operation as well. the submarine crew knew how to use them and did not lose their ability to act). A “ping” signaling device is extremely valuable because it allows search and rescue teams to use passive sonar to scan a larger ocean area with other tools. There is no indication that KRI Nanggala-402 is making a sound that would aid with the search. Mr. Clark, a defense expert at the US Hudson Institute, speculates that if the ship makes a sound, it may have been located. “If it makes a sound no matter what form it is, it will be much easier to find,” he said. Without a ping or other type of noise, search and rescue teams are limited to using active sonar, narrowing the scanning range and prolonging the time it takes to search for a site. field. While passive sonar involves listening to sounds coming from objects in the ocean, sonar actively emit pings and then listens for echoes from objects in the ocean. The Indonesian navy identified the submarine disappeared in the waters north of Bali island. Search teams soon noticed oil slicks in their search area, narrowing the scope of interest. In this common area, search units found an object with “strong magnetic resonance” that could be emitted from the missing submarine. While these developments have significantly reduced the overall size of the search area, there is still a lot to consider. Indonesia has dozens of ships and aircraft, supported by international forces participating in the search. The Indonesian navy said the ship may have sunk at a depth of more than 600 meters, which would certainly complicate the search. Not only does that depth exceed the maximum depth of the ship, potentially putting the hull in danger of rupture, but it could also leave it out of the reach of existing recovery options. Finding things on the ocean floor is also quite difficult, Mr. Clark said. “Like we’ve seen with so many airline crashes, it’s hard to find something, even big, when it falls to the sea floor, because it’s mixed up in the mess down there,” he said. The ARA San Juan submarine of the Argentine navy went missing in 2017. It wasn’t until a year later that search teams found the ship, 44 crew members killed, on the ocean floor at a depth of about 1,000m. “If a diesel submarine as small as an Indonesian submarine sinks more than 600 meters, it is unlikely to survive,” Clark said.