In 1942, a German captain warned his fellow U-boat commanders: “The most dangerous feature of American waters is phosphorescence—at night—due to aircraft and destroyers. Beware that if you travel at periscope depth, vortices off your cannon and screws will show up as phosphorescence.”1 Innovative efforts today, combining low-light sensors, advanced signal processing, and swarming unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could provide a comparatively inexpensive, nighttime antisubmarine warfare (ASW) capability through deliberate use of “phosphorescence,” more correctly called bioluminescence.
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1. Michael Gannon, Operation Drumbeat (New York: Harper Perennial, 1990).
2. CAPT T. Q. Donaldson, USN, “Have You Seen the Light?” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 124, no. 6 (June 1998).
3. “SBIG STC-428-P Specifications,” Diffractionlimited.com (January 2021).
4. Kelsey Atherton, “Navy Office Awards $30 Million Contract for Drone Swarms,” C4ISRNET.com, 27 June 2018.
5. Liz Langley, “How Bioluminescence Works in Nature,” National Geographic.
6. Langley, “How Bioluminescence Works.”
7. Eric G. Barham, “Siphonophores and the Deep Scattering Layer,” Science 140, no. 3568 (17 May 1963): 826–28.
8. Liu Zhen, “Beijing Deploys Drones for South China Sea Surveillance,” South China Morning Post, 10 September 2019.
9. Jonathan Carey, “China’s Bioluminescent Blue Tears Are Beautiful and Associated with Toxic Blooms,” Atlasobscura.com, 14 June 2019.
10. Gen David H. Berger, USMC, “Marines Will Help Fight Submarines,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 146, no. 11 (November 2020).
11. Megan Eckstein, “Berger: Marines Need to Trust Unmanned, AI Tools for Future Warfare,” USNI News, 2 February 2021.
