AviationBanter - View Single Post - Boeing Reveals Sub-Tracking ScanEagle Study

**Bill Kambic** · June 15th 08, 03:46 AM posted to sci.military.naval,rec.aviation.military.naval

On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:02:17 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

sinpped for brevity

BTW, the article in the original post says the ScanEagle
is supposed to follow a submarine around for up to 24 hrs.
Is that possible with just a MAD?

In theory, yes. In practice, why would you want to? The idea of the
MAD system was two fold: first, you up the probability of a sub
contact (although that's not a "for sure"; the wreck of the "Andrea
Doria" was once tracked for two days :-) ); second, you develop VERY
accurate position data for weapons release. If all you want do do is
confirm a contact then a couple of passes will do.

It's possible that you might want to engage in a "hold down" action to
prevent the sub from doing something else. But in that case you WANT
the sub to know you're there and tracking it. So stealth would not be
desired.

I thought MAD was usually used to confirm sonar contacts,
and pin down the Sub's locations for a more accurate
torpedo drop.

Generally, yes.