It’s reasonable that the US Navy wants to protect its warships from incoming torpedoes. According to the New Scientist, the Navy is looking at a system that will destroy torpedoes by firing massive underwater shock waves at them. The Navy hopes that by lining its ships with gigantic flat-panel loudspeakers, the resulting acoustic shock wave will be so intense that a torpedo either detonates prematurely or is disabled by the pulse's crushing force.
Of course, marine biologists are flipping out from this proposal. As previously reported on Divester, biologists are concerned that whales and dolphins blasted by submarine or ship sonar appear to develop symptoms of decompression sickness and die. I guess it goes without saying that scuba divers blasted by mega-sized acoustic shock waves also face danger.
[Thanks, McCand!]
1. The Navy seems really insistent on using strong soundwaves underwater. The NRDC has been after them for LFA which is a form is sonar which has an impact on large mammals like whales.
More info: http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/marine/nlfa.asp
Posted at 7:03PM on Oct 11th 2005 by Eric Brodeur