US Navy unveils superconductor 'cloaking device' destroyer US Navy boffins say they have made a significant breakthrough in countermeasures against sea mines - by using superconductors to nullify the magnetic signature of an American destroyer. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) says that high-temperature superconductor (HTS) "degaussing" coils fitted to the destroyer USS Higgins were …
I would think that the cloaking device would be better suited for installation on submarines. It would be ideal for the stated anti-mine function and aid in elluding airborne magnetic anomoly detectors. Subs are generally nuclear so power generation is likely not a problem.
IIRC, the influence mines that damaged both the USN ships in 1991 were thought to have been Italian Manta acoustic and magnetic detecting types, supplied (with US approval) at an earlier date when Saddam was viewed as a bulwark against Iranian influence. Both the USSs Princeton and Triploi were using degaussing rings, which implies this old design of mine still managed to pick up enough of a magnetic signature or just enough of an acoustic signature to detect both ships, and may therefore still be a threat to even a superdegaussed ship. Looks like time for the laser-turrets to be mounted on massive hovercraft!
It's perfectly possible to use liquid nitrogen at -240°C, it boils at -192°C, but with additional cooling it can easily be taken cooler. If you don't have a ready supply of liquid N2 you might want to keep it below boiling point so it doesn't all disappear when you reach e.g. the Persian gulf. The more you chill the superconductors the larger the magnetic field you can use without the superconductivity breaking down.
"Couldn't they get a similar effect by running a load of CRT monitors just inside the hull, and pressing all the degauss buttons at once?!"
On the other hand, you should see the effect on a CRT when they reverse the current through that degaussing coil.
Its a bit more than "<click> - <TUNG!> wobble wobble wobble".
One explanation that I heard is that the ship sailed into a fog bank at night, and an inexperienced observer saw this and thought it had vanished. All the rumours started there.
The conspiracy theory is that they were testing out a way to make ships invisible, but instead it caused the ship and its crew to be transported through space and time and so on.
A middle ground explanation is that there was a top secret (naturally) project to make ships invisible *to radar*. And it worked. Unfortunately, the intense electromagnetic fields interfered with the brains of some of the sailors, causing hallucinations and psychedelic episodes. Since it turned out to be impossible to screen off the sailors from the effects so as to keep them fit for combat, the project was quietly shelved. But by this time, a number of sailors had hallucinated a lot of stuff, and were no longer competent to keep silent about it.
Usually this was done at base and I would hope never while they were in a minefield.
The way you degauss something (stating the obvious here to forestall all the 'knew that' comments) is to alternately magnetize it in opposite directions; with a steady decline in current every time.
Which would be nice but I can't really see that (degaussing) changing the Permeability of that block of iron which is probably what the mine is designed to detect.
Maybe it makes the personnel feel safer?
Degaussing is only "permanent" when the degaussed metals are not moved through a magnetic field - such as the one caused by a blob of molten iron/nickel 7000 miles under our feet.
Even that moves, so degaussing is only permanent if the degaussed object is moved in sync with it.
Paris, because she thinks about as slowly as the earth's magnetic field changes.
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