Battleland

And Speaking of Stealth

  • Share
  • Read Later

Artist's rendering of Pearl Harbor's sub demagnetizing site / Watts Constructors

It’s not only airplanes that try to hide. So do submarines. You’ve just spent $85 million building a Submarine Drive-In Magnetic Silencing Facility at Pearl Harbor. As any metal-hulled vessel sails the world, it picks up a magnetic signature from the Earth’s magnetic field that mines and other sensors can use to target the vessel. This facility is designed to reset a sub’s magnetic signature — “deperming” in Navy parlance — by pulsing electrical currents through copper cables enveloping the vessel, thereby making it tougher to detect. Equal parts Thomas Edison, Jules Verne and James Bond.