[laglos]

This question has been bugging me for a while now. Why can't I detect sonobuoys and the like with my ESM? I mean, if I understand their operation correctly, they have a radio transmitter that floats in order to relay their data back to their deploying platform. It is trivial to detect the presence of a radio transmitter! That's why real subs have buoys which transmit on a time delay; by the time the thing starts xmitting, the sub is long gone. (caveat here: I'm not a bubblehead, a navy guy, or even really knowlegable about military stuff; I've just heard that that's how real subs do it). But the point is that the sub can't just blast radio waves into the air without someone detecting it. So why is a sonobuoy any different?

Now I realize that it's probably hopeless to extract any actual data from the transmission due to encryption (and other difficulties trying to follow any frequency hopping that's going on), but simply detecting that an active transmitter exists should be trivial.

Anyone care to hit me with a clue stick?

[MaHuJa]

Until Dangerous Waters, sonobuoys were simply 'detaching' sensors, meaning the sensor 'origin point' stayed at where the platform using it was. With DW, sonobuoys are their own objects, dropped and staying..

However, ESM still doesn't show anything but radar.

[fire-fox]

this would be a realy good Q to ask of the DW forume