As Rough As It May Seem,It's Still Steady As You Go...
U.S. Navy officials are less than pleased that an image
available through Microsoft's Virtual Earth tool clearly
shows the propeller on an Ohio class submarine.
By Paul McDougall
InformationWeek
it's on full public display on the Internet.
U.S. Navy officials are less than pleased that an image available through
the Virtual Earth tool on the software maker's Live Search Web
clearly shows the propeller on an Ohio class submarine.
The picture reveals the seven-bladed prop in remarkable detail. The
image was apparently captured while the boomer was in dry dock at
the Navy's base in Bangor, Wash.
The photo was first posted on a blog called MonsterMaritime.com.
Submarine propulsion systems are made to be as silent as possible
and as a result their design is one of the Navy's most closely guarded
secrets.
The cloak and dagger aspect of such systems was dramatized in the
movie The Hunt For Red October, in which U.S. forces attempt to
hunt down a Soviet submarine equipped with completely silent
hydrojets.
Navy insiders say the department is struggling with the emergence
of Web
map out virtually every corner of the globe through satellite and aerial
photography.
The Navy is now taking steps to minimize the chances that top secret
technology will again be revealed by such mapping Web sites, according
to one source.
It's not just a problem for the U.S. armed forces. Earlier this year,
pictures on Google(GOOG) Earth clearly showed a classified Chinese
ballistic missile submarine.
Some privacy groups have also complained that mapping sites violate
citizens' privacy by placing detailed pictures of their houses and
surroundings on the Internet without their authorization. In 2006,
Google Earth infamously captured a picture of a Dutch woman
sunbathing topless in her backyard.
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