Well, I got banned from reddit before my post could even be approved by the sub r/aliens. Here it is:
Burner account for obvious reasons. Eleven years Navy, STG rating. Eight of those at AUTEC, Andros Island. TS/SCI with additional program access, still bound by SF-312 and other agreements. Nothing here violates those agreements. Everything is from direct observation or conversations with colleagues most of whom are now dead or retired.
Writing this because RADM Timothy Gallaudet is now saying publicly what I saw on watch for years. He was Oceanographer of the Navy, Deputy Administrator of NOAA. Published a white paper through Sol Foundation in 2024 calling for DOD to treat USOs as a research priority. If someone with his background can talk about this openly I can document what I observed.
Background on the facility. AUTEC established 1966 under BUSHIPS, now NAVSEA. Eastern coast of Andros overlooks TOTO. TOTO is a U-shaped trench, roughly 20 miles wide by 150 long. Depth ranges 3,600 feet south to 6,600 north. Surrounding reefs create acoustic isolation, ambient noise among the lowest in the Atlantic. That's why we built there.
Official mission is test and evaluation. Sub crews certify readiness, torpedoes get tracked, sonar systems calibrated. Weapons Range tracks up to 63 in-water objects simultaneously via hydrophone arrays connected to shore by undersea cable. Technology descends from SOSUS. First prototype was a 1,000-foot horizontal array of 40 hydrophones off Eleuthera, January 1952. System used the SOFAR channel to track Soviet boats across thousands of miles. By the 60s arrays ran from Barbados to Nova Scotia.
I got to AUTEC as an E5. Standard work. Operate and maintain surface sonar, analyze acoustic data, classify contacts. Track subs running exercises. Log whale vocalizations, shrimp noise, commercial shipping. Learning what normal looks like. Virginia-class sounds different from 688. Sperm whale sounds different from beaked whale.