For those who think firing a missile or dropping a bomb from a UAV is a ‘new’ thing…

Not so much…  🙂

And one more oldie but a goody… JP and a few others will recognize this one…

Julie Gibson…

What connection did she have with the Navy???

In the mid-50’s, the Naval Air Development Center, Johnsville, PA, was involved in the development of an explosive echo-ranging technique employing practice depth charges (PDC’s) — later known as Signals, Underwater Sound (SUS) — and passive-listening sonobuoys to detect quiet submarines.

One evening, between days of one of the program’s technical reviews by visiting NAVAIR sponsors, some of the visitors took in the entertainment at The Wedge, a burlesque theater in nearby Philadelphia. A performer that evening was Julie Gibson, doing her “Dance of the Bashful Bride”. The visitors were duly impressed, deciding that Julie “made passive boys (think: buoys!) go active.”

OK, it may be kind of a lame play on words, but that is how they arrived at naming the program Project JULIE.

Julie Gibson was subsequently apprised of the honor bestowed on her and used that line on one of her pictures.

JULIE was introduced into the Fleet in 1956, employing SUS and the AN/SSQ-2B sonobuoy, which was replaced in 1957 by the AN/SSQ-23.

JEZEBEL, the acoustic detection method using passive-listening sonobuoys, likely had its name — somewhat oddly — inspired by Biblical reference. In Kings 1, Jezebel, a queen of ancient Israel, was nothing but bad . She was (among other things) “a Betrayer”, and it was likely that idea of betraying the presence of an enemy submarine through passive acoustic detection that gave this technique — also in development at NADC — its name.

NADC was kinda the Navy version of the ASW skunkworks back in the day…