Janda,
Yes I did see that link Hempy but unless I missed something did not find an answer to my question regarding availability of the panorama programme. However, at my age missing something is a daily occurrence.
I don't think you missed anything. I too have looked for Tom Mangold's "The Deep Cold War" and failed to find it readily available. It is listed in the
British Film Institute (BFI) catalogue so we may probably assume that a copy of it lies in the
National Film Archive located in the former SSA at Gaydon
It was shown on Day 1 of the Nimrod OCU for a number of years and I guess that we had a U-Matic format copy of the programme. This was the pre-digital era and I can only assume that a digital copy never became available. I cannot recall when we stopped showing it.
There is now a great deal of information about
SOSUS in the public domain. As you know this was not the case when the programme was first aired. However there is no doubt that the Soviets had a good picture of the system and its capabilities gained from the
Walker-Whitwoth spy ring and from observation of our activities. That they certainly knew the location of some of the chains was evident from the number of times SAR was scrambled to investigate a cable break and found a
Moma "Survey" vessel departing the datum at best speed!
In the early 1980s I recall seeing an article in an unclassified Soviet Armed Forces magazine that gave a pretty accurate description of the procedures we employed to prosecute SOSUS derived contacts. IIRC Aviation Week published an article a short time late that was almost certainly based upon the Soviet source; the graphics were remarkably similar!
The gradual withdrawal of Soviet Northern Fleet SSBNs to
patrol areas closer to their bases coincided with the reduction of radiated noise levels by Soviet vessels. But fixed SOSUS arrays were now being augmented by
passive towed array ships and later by active units.
The fixed array system was integrated into
IUSS which has itself been significantly curtailed in recent years. Whether or not the Russian system remains operational is a matter for conjecture.
It should be clear that NATO and Soviet tactics and purposes were quite different. SOSUS was aimed at detecting and tracking Soviet SSBNs deploying (and on station) in the North Atlantic whilst the Soviet equivalent was aimed at protecting their SSBN assets and bases from intruders.
One does question the reasoning behind some of the security decisions in those days. It was clearly evident that the Soviets had a fairly good knowledge of SOSUS and most maritime crews who put a little thought into it quickly deduced that the Soviets were conducting acoustic surveillance of their own. However crews were very rarely briefed on this, even when tasked against Soviet vessels involved in this activity. I am sure that many will recall "Svanetya" or "Ribachiy" and the heavenly twins "Vavilov" and "Lebdev". One does wonder if a little more openness might have increased the effectiveness of our operations.
YS