The YouTube channel Binkov's Battlegrounds, an odd but excellent explainer of military arms and technology, is back with a new video explaining what makes submarines so quiet. PopMech has previously featured Comrade Binkov's videos, including how U.S. and Russia air-to-air missiles stack up and how the U.S. Navy's Aegis Combat System works .

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The video traces the history of the submarine from World War II to present, with particular emphasis on the Cold War years, when the US - Soviet rivalry pushed submarine research and development to a breakneck pace.

Binkov covers multiple advances in quieting submarines, from breakthroughs in understanding hydrodynamics to active measures to minimize submarine noise. The main source of submarine noise, the propulsion system, is dramatically lowered with the use of sound damping mechanisms, rubber tile coatings along the entire outside hull of the sub, propeller screw design, and the use of precision computer numerical control (CNC) machinery capable of making much higher quality components, particularly propellers. (In the mid-1980s, Japanese manufacturer Toshiba and Norwegian company Kongsberg got in trouble for illegally selling a CNC machine, then brand-new technology, to the USSR. Soviet submarines became much quieter after that.)

According to Binkov, the technological arms race isn't over. The U.S. Navy's next generation ballistic missile submarine, the Columbia class , will feature an electric drive that eliminates reduction gear, a major source of noise onboard a submarine.

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