The Secret Navy’s sensors detected a possible implosion around the time the Titan’s communications went down.

The US Navy used data from a secret network of underwater sensors designed to track enemy submarines and discovered “an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion” near the Titan submarine at the time communications with the ship were made on Sunday. was broken. That’s what senior naval officers said on Thursday.

But with no other indications of catastrophe, one of the officials said, the search continued.

The data from the sensors was combined with information from Navy P-8 surveillance aircraft and surface sonar buoys to determine the approximate location of the Titan, one of the officials said. The analysis of submarine acoustic data and information on the location of the noise were then passed on to the Coast Guard officer responsible for the search, Rear Admiral John Mauger.

With no visual or other conclusive evidence of a catastrophic failure, one of the officials said, it would have been “irresponsible” to immediately assume the five passengers were dead, and the search was ordered to continue even though the prospects seemed bleak. Both Navy officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational details.

It wasn’t immediately clear how widely the Navy’s acoustic analysis was distributed to the search team, nor why the Navy hadn’t made it public sooner. The Navy’s acoustic analysis of the secret sensor network was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.