What U.S. Submariners Actually Say About Detection Of So-Called Unidentified Submerged Objects

Updated Dec 1, 2019 6:38 AM EST

There has been a spate of high-profile claims regarding U.S. Navy nuclear submarines detecting and even interacting with the underwater equivalent of Unidentified Flying Objects, referred to in UFO circles as USOs, or Unidentified Submerged Objects. Yet when it comes to the covert world of naval warfare below the waves, it is easy for laymen to misinterpret things that may seem very much alien to them, but are actually quite commonplace. The War Zone reached out some of its submariner contacts, all of which have many years of experience aboard U.S. Navy nuclear submarines, to see if detection of unidentified objects actually happens and what their thoughts were on the topic in general.

We were surprised by what we heard.

Eyewitness reports of USOs are nothing new. Reports of them go back many years and some from credible sources, but being detected by nuclear submarines packed with most sensitive listening equipment on the planet, which today is comprised of sonar arrays and computer systems costing hundreds of millions of dollars, is another story.

On December 29th, 2018, our friend Danny Silva of the Thesilvarecord.com brought the following to our attention. Tom DeLonge , once the lead man for the rock group Blink 182 turned front man for To The Stars Academy , a flashy new hybrid entertainment-technology-research group that focuses on disclosure of information regarding UFOs, made the Instagram post below. In it he claims, without any evidence, that “a few years ago an unidentified craft was underwater and pinned against the North Atlantic coast by multiple nuclear attack submarines for over a week.”

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Tom DeLonge (@tomdelonge)

A post shared by Tom DeLonge (@tomdelonge)

Then a story that first made its rounds in 2017 hit social media again just last week. The supposed first-hand account of Astronomer and UFO researcher Marc D’Antonio describes a ride aboard a nuclear fast attack submarine in the North Atlantic and the sudden appearance of a very high-performance object on sonar.

One version of the account reads:

“Marc, who runs a special effects company called FX Models that undertakes Naval contracts, said: “As a thank you for doing some work for them Navy asked me if I wanted to go for a ride in a submarine so I said yes. “Once we got under I was sitting in the sonar station and the sonar operator was sitting right next to me. “Submarines are loud – people think they are very quiet and it’s true they are on the outside because the sound doesn’t get out. But inside you hear fans, noise – it’s a constant din on a sub. “I was sitting there zoning out a little because I was sea sick and all of a sudden the sonar kid shouts ‘fast mover, fast mover’ and I’m jolted awake – thinking ‘What’s happening? Is it a torpedo?’ “The executive officer comes out and the operator shows him the path of the object and the officer says ‘How fast is that going?’ “And the kid said ‘several hundred knots’. I start to lean forward to listen in – and the officer said ‘Can you confirm it?’ “So he goes to another sonar machine and confirmed it wasn’t a machine anomaly – it was real. I thought ‘Wow that is incredible’. “When the sonar guy said ‘What do I do with this?’ the officer said ‘log it and dog it’ – in other words log it and bury it.” Four years later Marc said he was doing some more contract work for the Navy when he spoke to a senior naval figure about what he saw. “I asked him ‘Can you tell me about the Fast Mover Programme?'” Marc explained. “He looked at me and said ‘Sorry Marc I can’t talk about that programme’. “So he basically confirmed to me that the programme exists – he said everything without seeing anything. “What that told me was that USOs are common – we even have a programme in place to classify and log and determine the speed of them and it goes into a vault.” Marc made the claims at the Devil’s Tower UFO Rendezvous in Hulett, Wyoming – where UFO enthusiasts from around America met at the site of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind rock to discuss alien-related findings.

“Marc, who runs a special effects company called FX Models that undertakes Naval contracts, said: “As a thank you for doing some work for them Navy asked me if I wanted to go for a ride in a submarine so I said yes.

“Once we got under I was sitting in the sonar station and the sonar operator was sitting right next to me.

“Submarines are loud – people think they are very quiet and it’s true they are on the outside because the sound doesn’t get out. But inside you hear fans, noise – it’s a constant din on a sub.

“I was sitting there zoning out a little because I was sea sick and all of a sudden the sonar kid shouts ‘fast mover, fast mover’ and I’m jolted awake – thinking ‘What’s happening? Is it a torpedo?’

“The executive officer comes out and the operator shows him the path of the object and the officer says ‘How fast is that going?’

“And the kid said ‘several hundred knots’. I start to lean forward to listen in – and the officer said ‘Can you confirm it?’

“So he goes to another sonar machine and confirmed it wasn’t a machine anomaly – it was real. I thought ‘Wow that is incredible’.

“When the sonar guy said ‘What do I do with this?’ the officer said ‘log it and dog it’ – in other words log it and bury it.”

Four years later Marc said he was doing some more contract work for the Navy when he spoke to a senior naval figure about what he saw.

“I asked him ‘Can you tell me about the Fast Mover Programme?'” Marc explained.

“He looked at me and said ‘Sorry Marc I can’t talk about that programme’.

“So he basically confirmed to me that the programme exists – he said everything without seeing anything.

“What that told me was that USOs are common – we even have a programme in place to classify and log and determine the speed of them and it goes into a vault.”

Marc made the claims at the Devil’s Tower UFO Rendezvous in Hulett, Wyoming – where UFO enthusiasts from around America met at the site of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind rock to discuss alien-related findings.

We talked with a number of sources during our investigation. What we learned is that yes, unexplained noises and even tracked contacts do pop-up on submarines’ sonars, some of which seem to move at incredible speeds, but it is rare and the data is often inconclusive as to what was actually detected. But maybe most interesting, and peculiarly so, is that the Navy doesn’t actually have a way to classify these strange sounds as unknown and tag them for further review.

One of our contacts that was willing to go on the record is veteran sonar operator and instructor turned pro gamer ‘Jive Turkey’ —we did an in-depth (pardon the pun) piece on Jive recently which you can read here . After reviewing D’Antonio’s account, Jive pointed out some issues with it:

“The article is full of errors and assumptions. There is not a “Fast Mover” program and we don’t give ‘rides’ as favors.”

I asked Jive if strange encounters do occur and how they are handled if so. He told me that they do, although they are rare and there is no way to really classify them as strange:

I don’t know what they are… We usually logged it as seismic or biologic. We were instructed that nothing is ever ‘unknown.’ That’s the thing, it’s so quick you can’t measure the speed. In the examples I am thinking of, it is a detection that lasts a few seconds on the towed array. There is no way to measure the speed accurately because there isn’t enough data… I agree it’s odd. There are a lot of odd things in the ocean. Mainly, submariners!

I don’t know what they are… We usually logged it as seismic or biologic. We were instructed that nothing is ever ‘unknown.’

That’s the thing, it’s so quick you can’t measure the speed. In the examples I am thinking of, it is a detection that lasts a few seconds on the towed array. There is no way to measure the speed accurately because there isn’t enough data…

I agree it’s odd. There are a lot of odd things in the ocean. Mainly, submariners!

Another contact we talked to with extensive experience aboard nuclear submarines noted that the mission is so heavily focused on military objectives that strange sounds picked up by sonar don’t carry the weight that many may think they would unless they seem like some sort of a threat or impediment to the mission or training goals. This source also noted that they were not aware of any way to even log this type of thing for special review. In fact, they noted that the system seems uniquely designed for just the opposite.

Eric Moreno—another veteran submariner, @KingNeptune767 on Twitter, and keeper of the popular Subreddit r/submarines —also had some good information to share. Strange acoustic anomalies don’t just pop up on U.S. Navy submarine sonars, but also sonars and hydrophones belonging to scientific institutions. Moreno mentioned the somewhat famous ‘ 52-hertz Whale ‘ and pointed us to this video below as examples:

As a torpedoman by training, he also mentioned very high-speed super-cavitating torpedo technology that various militaries around the globe are becoming increasingly interested in. The Soviet Union actually put one of these weapons, the VA-111 Shkval , into service. At max speed, these weapons can hit over 200mph. But just because they exist doesn’t mean they are fired at or near American fast attack submarines, and especially boats that are on training sorties with visitors onboard. Also, they are not some totally mysterious anomaly to seasoned sonar operators.

I even asked my sources if the strange contact D’Antonio’s supposedly experienced being detected could have been something above the surface of the water, such as a maritime patrol aircraft. They said the speed would make that more plausible, but it shouldn’t have been any sort of a mystery then. They also added they were aware of very high-speed targets on sonar that were never explained, but they have no idea where that information went, or where it didn’t go for that matter.

The biggest takeaway here is that mysterious sounds do emanate from the deep and are heard by the most talented sonar operators in the world working the most advanced underwater listening equipment ever created. But the Navy seems to have made it all but impossible to classify these events for further review as sonar operators aren’t allowed to ‘not know’ what something is.

As for a quartet of American submarines pinning an impossible to identify craft down in the depths of the Atlantic, we are still waiting to see any evidence of anything like that occurring. It doesn’t do the To The Stars Academy or DeLong any favors teasing such information in such an amateurish way either. This is unfortunate considering the high aims of To The Stars Academy and the impressive brain trust they have amassed.

But that’s a whole other story we will save for the not so distant future.

Contact the author: Tyler@thedrive.com

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更新于美国东部时间2019年12月1日上午6:38

近期，一系列备受瞩目的报道声称，美国海军核潜艇探测到甚至与水下不明飞行物（UFO）进行互动，这些不明飞行物在UFO爱好者中被称为USO，即不明水下物体。然而，在水下隐秘的海战世界中，外行人很容易误解一些看似匪夷所思，实则司空见惯的现象。“战区”栏目联系了一些在美国海军核潜艇上服役多年的潜艇兵，询问他们是否真的探测到过不明物体，以及他们对此有何看法。

我们听到的内容让我们感到惊讶。

目击者报告发现不明飞行物并非新鲜事。相关报道可以追溯到很多年前，其中一些甚至来自可靠来源。但是，被配备着地球上最灵敏的监听设备的核潜艇探测到，则是另一回事了。如今的核潜艇配备了声呐阵列和价值数亿美元的计算机系统。

2018年12月29日，我们的朋友、Thesilvarecord.com网站的丹尼·席尔瓦（Danny Silva）向我们透露了以下信息。曾是摇滚乐队Blink 182主唱、如今担任“星际学院”（To The Stars Academy）主唱的汤姆·德隆（Tom DeLonge）在Instagram上发布了以下帖子。“星际学院”是一个新兴的娱乐科技研究混合组织，专注于披露有关不明飞行物（UFO）的信息。他在帖子中毫无证据地声称，“几年前，一艘不明飞行物在北大西洋沿岸被多艘核动力攻击潜艇围困超过一周。”

在 Instagram 上查看此帖子 由 Tom DeLonge (@tomdelonge) 分享的帖子

Tom DeLonge (@tomdelonge) 分享的帖子

随后，一个最早于2017年流传的故事上周再次在社交媒体上疯传。据称，天文学家兼UFO研究员马克·丹东尼奥（Marc D'Antonio）的第一手资料描述了他乘坐一艘北大西洋的核动力快速攻击潜艇，以及声呐上突然出现一个高性能物体的经历。

其中一种说法是：

马克经营着一家名为FX Models的特效公司，专门承接海军的合同。他说：“为了感谢我为他们工作，海军问我是否愿意乘坐潜艇，我欣然答应了。下潜后，我坐在声呐站里，声呐操作员就坐在我旁边。潜艇很吵——人们以为它们很安静，从外面看确实如此，因为声音不会传出去。但在里面，你能听到风扇的声音、各种噪音——潜艇里一直都是嘈杂的。我当时有点晕船，正坐在那里发呆，突然声呐操作员喊道‘快动的！快动的！’我猛然惊醒，心想‘怎么回事？是鱼雷吗？’执行官走了出来，操作员向他展示了目标的轨迹，执行官问：‘那东西速度有多快？’” “那孩子说‘几百节’。我开始向前倾身想听听——军官问‘你能确认一下吗？’”“于是他走到另一台声呐仪前，确认这不是机器故障——是真的。我当时想‘哇，太不可思议了’。”“当声呐员问‘我该怎么处理这个？’时，军官说‘记录下来，然后封存’——换句话说，就是记录下来然后埋起来。”四年后，马克说他正在为海军做一些合同工作，并就他所看到的一事与一位海军高级官员谈起。“我问他‘你能跟我说说快速移动计划吗？’”马克解释说。“他看着我说‘抱歉，马克，我不能谈论那个计划’。”“所以他基本上是向我证实了该计划的存在——他什么都没看到就全盘托出了。”“这让我明白，不明飞行物很常见——我们甚至有一个专门的计划来对它们进行分类、记录并确定速度，然后把数据存入档案库。”马克在怀俄明州休利特的魔鬼塔UFO聚会上提出了这些说法——来自全美各地的UFO爱好者聚集在电影《第三类接触》中出现的岩石遗址，讨论与外星人有关的发现。

马克经营着一家名为 FX Models 的特效公司，承接海军的合同。他说：“为了感谢我为他们做了一些工作，海军问我是否愿意乘坐潜艇，我答应了。

“我们潜入水下后，我坐在声呐站里，声呐操作员就坐在我旁边。”

“潜艇很吵——人们认为它们很安静，从外面看确实如此，因为声音传不出去。但在里面，你能听到风扇声、各种噪音——潜艇里一直都是嘈杂不堪。”

“我当时坐在那里有点走神，因为我晕船了，突然声呐员喊道‘快速移动的物体，快速移动的物体’，我猛然惊醒——心想‘发生了什么事？是鱼雷吗？’”

“执行官出来后，操作员向他展示了物体的运动轨迹，执行官问‘它的速度有多快？’”

“那孩子说‘几百节’。我开始向前倾身想听听——然后警官说‘你能确认一下吗？’”

“于是他又去另一台声呐仪上检查，确认这不是机器故障——而是真实存在的。我当时想‘哇，这太不可思议了’。”

“当声纳员问‘我该怎么处理这个？’时，警官说‘记录下来，然后埋起来’——换句话说，就是记录下来，然后埋起来。”

四年后，马克说，当他再次为海军做一些合同工作时，他向一位海军高级官员讲述了他所看到的情况。

“我问他‘你能跟我说说快速晋升计划吗？’”马克解释道。

“他看着我说：‘对不起，马克，我不能谈论那个节目。’”

“所以他基本上向我证实了这个项目的存在——他在什么都没看到的情况下就说了这些话。”

“这告诉我，不明飞行物很常见——我们甚至制定了一个程序来对它们进行分类、记录和确定速度，然后将它们存入保险库。”

马克在怀俄明州休利特的魔鬼塔UFO聚会上提出了这些说法——来自全美各地的UFO爱好者聚集在电影《第三类接触》中出现的岩石遗址，讨论与外星人有关的发现。

我们在调查过程中与多位消息人士进行了交谈。我们了解到，潜艇声呐确实会探测到无法解释的噪音，甚至追踪到目标，其中一些目标似乎以惊人的速度移动，但这非常罕见，而且数据往往无法确定实际探测到的是什么。但或许最令人费解的是，海军竟然没有办法将这些奇怪的声音归类为未知声音，并标记出来以供进一步审查。

我们联系到的一位愿意公开露面的人士是资深声呐操作员兼教官、现任职业玩家“Jive Turkey”——我们最近对Jive做了一篇深度报道（请原谅我用了这个双关语），您可以在这里阅读。在审阅了D'Antonio的叙述后，Jive指出了其中的一些问题：

“这篇文章充满了错误和臆测。根本没有所谓的‘快速通道’计划，我们也不会提供任何‘搭车’服务。”

我问吉夫，是否真的会发生奇怪的遭遇，如果发生的话该如何处理。他告诉我确实会发生，虽然很罕见，而且也很难真正将其归类为奇怪：

我不知道它们是什么……我们通常把它们记录为地震信号或生物信号。我们被告知，没有什么是“未知”的。关键是，它发生得太快了，根本无法测量速度。在我想到的例子中，这种探测在拖曳阵列上只持续了几秒钟。由于数据量不足，根本无法精确测量速度……我同意这很奇怪。海洋里有很多奇怪的东西。主要是，潜艇兵！

我不知道它们是什么……我们通常把它们记录为地震或生物现象。我们被告知，没有什么是“未知”的。

问题就在这里，它的速度太快了，根本无法测量。在我举的例子中，对拖曳阵列的检测持续时间只有几秒钟。由于数据量不足，根本无法精确测量速度……

我也觉得很奇怪。海洋里有很多奇怪的东西。尤其是潜艇兵！

另一位在核潜艇上拥有丰富经验的人士指出，任务的重点完全在于军事目标，因此声呐探测到的异常声音并不像许多人想象的那样重要，除非它们看起来像是对任务或训练目标的某种威胁或阻碍。这位人士还表示，他们甚至不知道有任何方法可以记录这类情况以供特别审查。事实上，他们指出，这套系统似乎恰恰是为了应对这种情况而设计的。

另一位资深潜艇兵埃里克·莫雷诺（Eric Moreno，推特账号@KingNeptune767，同时也是热门Reddit子版块r/submarines的管理员）也分享了一些有用的信息。奇怪的声学异常现象不仅会出现在美国海军潜艇的声呐上，也会出现在科研机构的声呐和水听器上。莫雷诺提到了颇有名气的“52赫兹鲸鱼”，并向我们推荐了以下视频作为例证：

作为一名受过鱼雷训练的军官，他还提到了超高速超空泡鱼雷技术，世界各国军队对此越来越感兴趣。苏联实际上已经将其中一种武器——VA-111“暴风雪”鱼雷——投入使用。这种鱼雷的最高速度可以超过200英里/小时。但这并不意味着它们会被发射到美国快速攻击潜艇附近，尤其是在有访客在艇上进行训练飞行时。此外，对于经验丰富的声呐操作员来说，它们也不是什么完全神秘的异常现象。

我甚至问过我的消息来源，D'Antonio 声称探测到的奇怪接触是否可能是水面上的物体，比如海上巡逻机。他们说，速度确实让这种可能性更大，但如果是这样的话，这本来就不应该是个谜。他们还补充说，他们知道声呐上出现过一些速度极快的目标，但从未得到解释，他们也不知道这些信息去了哪里，或者说，根本就没去哪里。

最重要的启示是，神秘的声音确实会从深海传来，而且会被世界上最优秀的声呐操作员使用最先进的水下监听设备听到。但海军似乎已经让对这些事件进行分类以供进一步审查变得几乎不可能，因为声呐操作员不允许“不知道”某种声音是什么。

至于四艘美国潜艇在大西洋深处锁定一艘无法辨认的飞行器的说法，我们仍在等待任何证据。以如此业余的方式吊人胃口，对“星际学院”和德隆来说也毫无益处。考虑到“星际学院”的远大目标和他们汇聚的强大智囊团，这种情况令人遗憾。

但这又是另一个故事了，我们留待不久的将来再讲。

联系作者：Tyler@thedrive.com

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