Navy: Rulings hurt sonar training, readiness

[Woodmonkey]

ABOARD THE USS HOWARD — When sailors spotted a submarine on their sonar screens during exercises in March, Cmdr. Curtis Goodnight sent a helicopter to drop a sonar buoy to track it.

It’s a routine tactic for a destroyer commander. But several whales were in the area where the crew needed to drop the buoy. And under a recent federal appeals court ruling designed to protect marine mammals during Navy training, the sailors were prohibited from using active sonar within 2,000 yards, or over a mile, of the whales.

The commander of the destroyer Howard faced a dilemma: should the ship linger, hoping the whales would clear and allow him to resume hunting the sub? Or should he turn around so the sub wouldn’t be able to detect and torpedo the Howard and its 300 sailors?

“These become commanders’ decisions that you probably wouldn’t make if someone is really trying to shoot at you,” Goodnight told reporters as another round of exercises started off Hawaii recently. He let the submarine escape.

To environmentalists, the episode shows the Navy can abide by the law and protect marine mammals. To the Navy, it shows how the court’s interpretation of the law impairs sonar training and, over time, may harm military readiness and national security.

The issue may head to the U.S. Supreme Court next. The Navy earlier this year appealed the ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The highest court hasn’t indicated whether it will accept the case.

Mid-frequency active sonar can disrupt whale feeding patterns, and in the most extreme cases can kill whales by causing them to beach themselves. But scientists aren’t sure why sonar affects some species more than others. They also don’t fully know how it hurts whales.

The Navy acknowledges sonar may harm marine mammals but says it already takes steps to protect whales.

The litigation’s timing in some ways couldn’t be worse for the Navy. Since the end of the Cold War, other countries have been acquiring diesel-electric submarines that are quieter and harder to detect than older subs. The U.S. is especially concerned about those owned by China, Iran, and North Korea.

The Navy, particularly the Pacific Fleet, has made sonar training a priority so its strike groups can find these stealthy subs and sail safely around the world.

When using mid-frequency active sonar, ships emit a pulse from the hull that sounds like a high-pitched whistle. (Not a “ping” like in Hollywood movies.)

When the whistle bounces off other underwater objects and returns to the ship, computers translate the data into a mess of lines and dots on digital screens.

Sailors must learn to decipher the images, differentiating submarines from seamounts, the sea floor, fish and everything else the sound bounces off.

Goodnight said submarines mostly move straight and turn in a clean arc. Even so, it’s easy to mistake something for a sub on a sonar screen. For example, currents can make seamounts appear to move and look like submarines.

Adm. Robert Willard, U.S. Pacific Fleet commander, said in an interview that court-imposed marine mammal protections were hurting training to the point he’s concerned about readiness.

For example, the 3rd Fleet said one of his strike groups showed “adequate, although degraded” anti-submarine warfare proficiency during recent exercises off California. The fleet certified the group anyway, but noted the ships altered standard techniques and procedures to comply with court rulings.

Willard said sailors were learning artificial tactics they wouldn’t use in the real world.

“Translate that into the Western Pacific or into the Middle East, where quiet diesel-powered submarines exist in large numbers, and we’re potentially in trouble,” Willard said.

Commanders instead want to follow a list of 29 marine mammal protection measures the Navy adopted last year.

These include posting specially trained marine mammal lookouts on ships and shutting down active sonar when a marine mammal comes within 200 yards of the sonar source.

Earthjustice attorney Paul Achitoff, who represents the Ocean Mammal Institute and other plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Navy over sonar off Hawaii, said these measures fall short.

He said many whales — especially beaked whales, which are most vulnerable to sonar — spend a lot of time underwater where lookouts can’t see them.

To protect whales, Achitoff said the Navy should adopt stricter measures including avoiding sonar training where there are known high densities of whales. It should reduce sonar power at night, during heavy fog, and at other times when it’s especially hard for lookouts to spot whales, he said.

Achitoff characterized the Navy’s position as it “will look for whales and if it happens to spot one, it will modestly reduce the power of its sonar.”

“There’s very little there. And that’s why the courts have said there’s so much more you can do,” Achitoff said.

U.S. District Court Judge David Ezra said the Navy must recognize other considerations in addition to military preparedness.

“Where, as here, there is a likelihood that the Navy has not adhered to federal law, it cannot simply fall back on the training argument as a catchall reason for avoiding its responsibilities,” Ezra wrote in a ruling last month concerning Hawaii exercises.

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