Navy

No More 'Stealth' Submarines: Could Quantum 'Radar' Make Submarines Easy to Track (And Kill)?

According to some evaluations, today’s cutting-edge submarines like the Virginia- and Sea Wolf-class attack submarines have been evaluated to run only five decibels louder than average oceanic background noises. Even less-expensive Swedish air independent propulsion submarines have successfully passed undetected to sink U.S. carriers during exercises.

Yet some naval analysts are decidedly bearish on the prospects of submarine stealth in the twenty-first century, looking ahead to highly sensitive low-frequency sonars, advanced satellite-based optical sensors that may bypass acoustic-stealth entirely, and powerful computer processors that can churn through vast quantities of data to discriminate faint contacts from background noise. China is even developing a satellite-based laser surveillance system aimed at detecting vessels submerged as deep as five hundred meters.

Recently, the field of quantum mechanics has increasingly shown its potential to disrupt established paradigms in multiple domains of warfare—particularly due to the concept of quantum entanglement, the uncanny phenomenon by which bonded particles continue to uncannily reflect each other’s behavior even across long distances.