Example – In *The Hunt For Red October*, Petty Officer Jones can tell where submarines are and what they’re doing just be listening to sonar. So how do submariners do this, especially since there aren’t any viewscreens or windows on the boat? Like how did Jones know that USS *Dallas* just inbetween *Red October* and the Soviet sub to distract the torpedo?
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Submarine passive sonar can determine the direction a sound is coming from due to wave-form calculations done by computers onboard.
The submarine then uses how quickly the relative direction of the target changes, along with guesses of its speed, to estimate a range.
There is also a bunch of other techniques used to refine estimations regarding various estimations.
This kind of estimation all works together to give the submarine an imperfect idea of their surroundings, and is collectively known as “Target Motion Analysis.” On US submarines, there is a team of 2-3 fire controlmen on shift independent of the sonar team (typically 4 people in a shift) using specialized computers to combine the various data points and keep track of other vessels in the area.
Note: I am deliberately leaving out a lot of details because it’s unnecessary, I’ve forgotten it, and/or it’s classified, but it’s mostly creative uses of trigonometry.
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