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Submarines use sonar to detect other things in the water. Sonar is an acronym for sound navigation and ranging, but there is a bit more to this. Submarines use what is called active sonar and passive sonar. We need to look at it in a bit of detail to see what's up.

Contemporary submarines have a active sonar system aboard. This system emits "pings" into the water, and the pings are bursts of sound energy. The sound energy propagates through the water, bounces off things around the submarine, and then returns to the submarine to be picked up and listened to. By "pinging" on things, the submarine can develop a profile of sorts of things around it. The bottom is down there, and there's another submarine over there. Something like that. But active sonar means you can be heard a long way away. Farther away than you can effectively "see" other submarines with that active sonar. Other submarines can "hear you coming" because you are pinging, and can do this before you can hear then with the returned pings. That's bad for the submarine using active sonar.

Modern military submarines operate in water that is fairly deep. This means that the submarines don't generally have to worry about hitting anything under the water. As they on patrol, they are listening for other things in the water using their passive sonar array. This array uses the hydrophones to listen to the sounds in the water. These sounds are being made by other ships, other submarines, schools of fish, whales, or whatever else is making "noise" in the water. This is the primary method used by the current military submarines to locate and track other things in the water with them.

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