GY, that's 160.5 dB relative to what at what distance?
If it is 160.5 dB relative to hearing threshold at a distance of 0.17 meter then at 1700 meters it would be suffering square law attenuation of 10000^2 to 1 or 80dB. Then you have water losses.
All I have for solid information is that they seem to be described as detectable to 1700 meters distance. Thus my question about the submarine detecting it. What is the ambient noise level at around 36 kHz to 39 kHz? What is the ambient noise spectral characteristic in that range? (Gaussian, lots of tones,, chirps, and whatnot.) 160.5 dB relative to what? ( 10 dB is a 10 : 1 power ratio. It is a ratio so it has no units of its own. And I suspect in this case it is not relative to a jet engine at 1 meter. {^_-} I also suspect it is relative to 1 micro Pascal sound pressure level. (Yes, relative to 1 micro Pascal at 1 meter.) Nor do I know the receiver sensitivity. (Whales can hear very weak signals in water, far weaker than human ears can hear in air.)
I do understand, if I am correct, that military sonars run at power levels that can cause cavitation in the water. I understand 10kW is not out of the question for power levels.
And I understand that at 1.5 kHz the MDS is about 30 dB to 50dB relative to 1 micro Pascal. I've no idea what transducers can do these days with regards to efficiency changing the pressure waves in water into electricity.
I do suspect the 1700 meters is awfully conservative. There'd only be a 65dB loss in that distance for distance squared loss. Add another 7dB for absorption and you get 72 dB loss or about 88dB for signal level at 1700 meters. I thought that had some from one of the BEA papers. But, I am getting old and soft on the memory.
Something just came to mind. I bet water is a somewhat "dispersive" medium that would tend to smear the ping's power out over time. I'm not sure of the magnitude of this effect, though.
{^_^} (Please excuse the stream of conscious here. I was doing a lot of "looking up" and learning while writing this.)