The US Navy ordered a safety stand-down for the entire submarine force on Wednesday in response to the results of an investigation into an incident last month in the South China Sea.
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Ok, just starting to look into this but present day undersea charts are made by satellite imagery - generally - and (I believe) as a consequence US Naval charts would be complete, comprehensive and accurate. Thus an "uncharted" seamount smells fishy to me.
Did a lot of ocean sailing (under sail) but that was 40 years ago. The charts we used back then were often sketchy. But this is today, and things are a lot different.
Bathymetry is the science.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877705815019815
A bit more research and it is clear the seafloor is NOT entirely mapped - if fact frr from it so there may have been an uncharted sea mount:
Despite modern computer-based research, the ocean seabed in many locations is less measured than the topography of Mars.[1]
The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project, which aims to motivate a number of collaborators to create a full map of the ocean floor, was launched in 2016.[12] There are four Seabed 2030 centres, which coordinate mapping activities in different regions, gather and compile the bathymetric information, and partner with existing mapping activities within their regions. The Seabed 2030 Global Center is responsible for "producing and delivering global GEBCO products".[13]
GEBCO stands for General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans. It is the only intergovernmental body with a mandate to map the whole ocean floor. At the beginning of the project, only 6 per cent of the world's ocean bottom had been surveyed to today's standards; as of June 2020, the project had recorded 19 per cent mapped. About 14,500,000 square kilometres (5,600,000 sq mi) of new bathymetric data was included in the GEBCO grid in 2019. Satellite technology, using altimeters that infer seafloor topography from the way its gravity affects the surface of the ocean above it, but it does not give a sufficiently high resolution. Seabed 2030 aims to achieve a resolution of at least 100m over every part of the ocean floor.[12]