Abstract

With sonar development historically being driven almost exclusively by military interests and the number of investment dollars sunk into underwater acoustics during half a century of war (both hot and cold) reaching into the billions, now (two decades later) one might be forgiven for expecting the pace of underwater acoustics technology advance to have slackened. Not a bit of it. While traditional funding sources have shifted focus, the diversity of applications and new discoveries continue to expand apace. In this commentary we explore some recent innovations and trends in interest, from vector sensors to distributed systems, from remote focusing to communications, long-range reverberation to Megahertz imaging. While the ocean still remains the last great unexplored region on Earth (the seabed being less well-mapped than both the dark side of our moon and Mars) acoustic tools are becoming more sophisticated, smaller, lighter, and more widely applied to beating back the curtains of darkness that shroud the unknown deep (and shallow) waters of our planet. Just 40 years ago, "Computers were in glass rooms tended to by a core of monks that knew how to do the proper incantations. "(Gordon Moore, co-founder of INTEL)