It's not clear if Heezen was operating off the coast of Croatia because that area is of particular interest to the Navy or because it offered optimal conditions to test its upgraded oceanographic systems. However, the Navy has reported an uptick in Russian submarine activity, in particular, in the Mediterranean, as well as in the Atlantic and Arctic regions. This had already prompted the service to create reactivate U.S. 2nd Fleet, which recently reached full operational capability and is heavily focused on countering this subsurface activity.

“The beauty of the platforms that I operate with – particularly the late-generation Virginia class submarine, which is the best in the world, has the ability, flexibility, agility, dwell; it can stay places for a long time submerged, stealthy; and it has speed, it gets places fast, so I can move it around like a chess piece on a chessboard,” U.S. Navy Admiral James Foggo, who serves as the head of U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa, as well as NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command Naples, told reporters in December 2019. He added that he had taken "a zone defense approach" to keeping tabs on his Russian counterparts.

These are exactly the kind of tactics that require a solid knowledge of any underwater objects of interest, natural or man-made, as well as general depths and other oceanographic information. Knowing where submarines can and cannot operate, or hide, to begin with, makes it that much easier to search for and track potential underwater threats. Other baseline oceanographic information, such as typical ambient acoustics in various areas gathered using EARS, can further help ships, submarines, and aircraft in the detection of opposing subs. How much noise a submarine generates, and keeping it to a minimum, is absolutely essential for its survival in combat.

All told, while the Heezen and this cube-shaped buoy may have been conducting what outwardly seems to be a relatively mundane underwater mapping mission, the data that this and the other Pathfinder class ships collect is absolutely vital for Navy operations, especially submarine and anti-submarine warfare.

Contact the author: joe@thedrive.com