– How can Navy submarines communicate / navigate but the missing titanic submersible can’t do either.

Question

Context: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65953872

The above titanic submersible that went missing can only send short text messages from the ship to the submersible. From my understanding there is no GPS underwater and radio communication is impossible. How can Navy submarines communicate and navigate while submerged in the ocean but the missing submersible can’t?

In: 121

Answer 1

Radio communication is impossible, but acoustic communication isn’t. There are types of “underwater telephone” that basically playthe sound into the water that is then picked up by a receiver in the sub. A fancy version of this using quick beeps to send ASCII / text is what the sub already uses for positional data.

[Underwater Acoustic Communication / UQC Underwater Telephone](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_acoustic_communication)