Microsoft Live Search Reveals U.S. Submarine Secrets

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
September 4, 2007 04:00 PM

Thanks to Microsoft(MSFT), one of our submarines isn't missing. In fact,
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 site

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 sites like Microsoft Virtual Earth and Google Earth, which

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.