Just curious if this will eventually lead to prostitutes asking for a bailout due to lost business? Worth a thought. ... ;)

If my memory serves me correctly, the answer to this is not that straight forward. There are plenty of confidential reasons for search that require strong sonar on a sub. The greater the ocean depth the stronger the signal that is needed (as well as the ocean temperature). You also have other considerations such as the clarity of the water of marine life and strength and location of currents. We had to open open several times though I will be the first to admit it occurred about 10 times more often on the CG I was on. So do they need strong sonar - of course they do and you should know why. They just dont need it often.

As another former surface and sub sonar tech out of San Diego, you would probably have to agree this is a rediculous concern. Reason I say this is when on the CG, we used Dolphins for target practice qualifications. I would think that and others like throwing freon filled units off the side of the ship are much larger concerns than damaging dolphin or whale hearing. I just bet in the last ten years this has not changed one bit since I got out. My senior cheif used to encourage us to 'open up' when whales would slam upside the sub outside Alaska. You dont just make them deaf, you melt their insides when you do that. So make them deaf???!!! I think this should be peoples last concern.

I worked on the original release of voting machines from a company (not to be specified) and took part in the negotiations between several companies for merging in this industry. I am absolutely not surprised this is occurring. The FEC was so critical and ridiculous in their formalities that most time was spent documenting over and over and over again (punctuation is absolutely essential) and less time was spent on the actual architectures. In addition, I rarely saw security as the primary concern. They were more worried about it working for some guy without arms (the lowest common denominator) vs. what I and others felt were more credible concerns. Absolutely ridiculous. So do I trust Diebold as one example? No. But really I am more concerned about the knuckleheads developing Micro$oft interfacing software for tactical warfare for subs. That is a serious concern.