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Articles

1987: Vol. LXIV, No. 2

Project Swathmap: Military Sonars in Service to Science

Submitted
July 31, 2015
Published
2015-07-28

Abstract

Project swathmap (one of four deep-water, long-range sidescan sonars in operation today) is the low-cost peacetime application of a U.S. Navy antisubmarine warfare system utilized on routine ocean-wide combat vessel transists. While resolution is not sufficient to observe bathymetric structures in detail, the system is particularly adept at locating them and determining continuity. Routine observations include terraces, trench-crossings, fracture zones, abyssal hills, craters, seamounts (many of them new) often topped by craters, and abyssal hills (superb clues to plate tectonic motion).