Revolutionary computing technologies are defined in terms of technological breakthroughs, which leapfrog over near–term projected advances in conventional hardware and software to produce paradigm shifts in computational science. For underwater threat source localization using information provided by a dynamical sensor network, one of the most promising computational advances builds upon the emergence of digital optical-core devices. In this article, we present initial results of sensor network calculations that focus on the concept of signal wavefront Time-Difference-of-Arrival (TDOA). The corresponding algorithms are implemented on the EnLight™processing platform recently introduced by Lenslet Laboratories. This tera-scale digital optical core processor is optimized for array operations, which it performs in a fixed-point-arithmetic architecture. Our results (i) illustrate the ability to reach the required accuracy in the TDOA computation, and (ii) demonstrate that a considerable speed-up can be achieved when using the EnLight™ 64α prototype processor as compared to a dual Intel Xeon™processor.