You would expect the Navy would have the technology to detect such things…
But can they detect such things without giving away their own position?
I thought there was a thread on this, but I’m not seeing it.
Essentially, I think they do have technology to see these things and I don’t believe they hit a seamount. But, then, I’m cynical.
Yeah, in “The Hunt For Red October” subs could weave around giant obstacles with ease. 
This would be news if they hit one above water. 
Our submariner Dopers like robby or iiandyiiii can surely comment a lot more but if I’m not mistaken there is no way to detect such things without prior mapping by someone else or using active sonar.
I was never on a sub, but I think this is essentially correct. Subs use passive sonar, so if the mountain wasn’t making any noise they wouldn’t detect it unless they went to active sonar…which would give away their position. If this range wasn’t mapped then it’s plausible they could hit it without knowing it was there prior to contact.
Does that mean that the captain won’t get in trouble?
No, he can get in a lot of trouble indeed. The USS San Francisco hit an underwater mountain like this over a decade ago (albeit much more severely) and the captain was demoted.
Well, I know that if you hit something on a chart, that is problematic. But if this was uncharted?
The USS San Francisco hit an uncharted mountain but the captain was disciplined anyway because some charts indicated “probable presence” of a sea mountain. So even if not known and confirmed beforehand that a mountain lurked there, its possible presence demanded a certain caution.
Same may apply here.
What, like windows? 
I guess I’m surprised that something that is sufficiently large enough for a sub to run into would be uncharted. I see the article says many seamounts are “unexplored”, but does that mean no one has even a general idea of the topography of the sea bottom? I thought I had seen pretty detailed maps of (at least some) portions of the seabed. ISTM, that if you didn’t know if there might be mountains in a particular area, you might want to increase your distance from the seabed just to be careful.
I’m hoping that there is some explanation that makes this sound like something other than a colossally avoidable fuck up.
They could always put in a screen door to see out of. 
I can’t think of what technology they could use, aside from what they have already, that would help. Mapping is always the best way, but you can’t map everywhere, and these boats (we only have 3 of these) go a lot of places where eagles…or I guess dolphins…fear to, er, swim.
Yeah, the Navy isn’t always that forgiving to captains who bend their boat, even if it wasn’t necessarily their fault. And this boat in particular is one of the elite platforms with the most elite crew. Even if it was 100% not his fault he could still be blamed, and it will certainly be a blemish on his career going forward.
Surveys of the ocean floor are conducted primarily by using side scan sonar. This is an effective way to make detail maps of the ocean floor but it isn’t something that gives real time cartography of the surface, as it requires post-processing interferometry to actually build up a 3D signal and filter out noise. The ocean floor provides a very “noisy” surface for sonar returns. The active sonar used on submarines to detect other ships and subs actually is actually reflected by the difference in density between the air inside the vessel rather than the hull itself because the aluminum, steel, or titanium alloy of the hull is of the same order of magnitude in density as the water.
There are certainly reasons to suspect that the official report is not accurate or complete because it is pretty much a habit for the Navy to keep secret and make false cover statements about submarine operations. It is surprising that the US Navy would purportedly not have high quality surveys where they patrol and would not maintain clearance adequate to avoid any possibility of running into known, fixed obstacles because subs are essentially “blind” when it comes to navigating underwater, and are only able to detect things via acoustic radiation.
And fly around doing “Top Gun” style avoidance maneuvers to redirect a missile back that the pursuing sub or somehow detonate an air-launched torpedo remotely. It’s an entertaining movie but only slightly less absurd in portraying naval submarine operations than Crimson Tide.
A submarine captain that grounds his boat, even due to unforeseen circumstances or an error in navigation charts, has effectively ended his career. This will probably be an administrative punishment rather than general court martial unless there was gross negligence, but he’ll never command another boat again.
Stranger
Is it really a mountain if it is below sea level?
Not with SCOPE.
I suppose this is a semantic argument, but yes, high protuberances from the ocean floor are referred to as “underseas mountains”, unless of course they break the surface in which case they are “islands”.
Stranger
Exactly. He won’t be drummed out of the Navy or anything, but he will almost certainly never have his own command again, and whatever track he was on to rise further will be stifled if not ended, though that will depend on other factors. Still, when you bend one of the Navy’s toys you can’t expect them to give you another to play with.