Will Submarines Soon Become As Obsolete As the Battleship? 439
An anonymous reader writes: The United States spends $1.8 billion to build a brand new, state of the art, Virginia-class nuclear powered attack submarine. They are the backbone of the U.S. Navy and the ultimate threat to those nations who are building massive amounts of missiles to keep U.S. naval forces like aircraft carriers away from their shores — think China, Russia, Iran and various others. Sadly, the era of the submarine could be coming to an end. New types of detection technology could make the stealth capabilities of subs obsolete, just like the age of flight made the battleship into a floating museum:
"The ability of submarines to hide through quieting alone will decrease as each successive decibel of noise reduction becomes more expensive and as new detection methods mature that rely on phenomena other than sounds emanating from a submarine. These techniques include lower frequency active sonar and non-acoustic methods that detect submarine wakes or (at short ranges) bounce laser or light-emitting diode (LED) light off a submarine hull. The physics behind most of these alternative techniques has been known for decades, but was not exploited because computer processors were too slow to run the detailed models needed to see small changes in the environment caused by a quiet submarine. Today, "big data" processing enables advanced navies to run sophisticated oceanographic models in real time to exploit these detection techniques. As they become more prevalent, they could make some coastal areas too hazardous for manned submarines."
This could force submarines to stay far away from areas where they could be found. Alternately, they could evolve into something different: underwater aircraft carriers hosting drones that could strike below the surface.
"The ability of submarines to hide through quieting alone will decrease as each successive decibel of noise reduction becomes more expensive and as new detection methods mature that rely on phenomena other than sounds emanating from a submarine. These techniques include lower frequency active sonar and non-acoustic methods that detect submarine wakes or (at short ranges) bounce laser or light-emitting diode (LED) light off a submarine hull. The physics behind most of these alternative techniques has been known for decades, but was not exploited because computer processors were too slow to run the detailed models needed to see small changes in the environment caused by a quiet submarine. Today, "big data" processing enables advanced navies to run sophisticated oceanographic models in real time to exploit these detection techniques. As they become more prevalent, they could make some coastal areas too hazardous for manned submarines."
This could force submarines to stay far away from areas where they could be found. Alternately, they could evolve into something different: underwater aircraft carriers hosting drones that could strike below the surface.
Hopefully, but probably not (Score:4, Informative)
Most of the biggest potential war zones involving China are on the coast. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Koreas, and the many disputed islands out there. So I doubt they will become obsolete.
Also, Bertridge's law says no.
Re:Hopefully, but probably not (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering the fact that either you have submarines and you know how they work - and can therefore at least have a reasonable defense against them or you don't have them and your knowledge will diminish because you can't train those scenarios.
Submarines also come in many variants - all the way from the nuclear "big dicks" to the miniature one-person type. It only takes a small one to cause a major impact in a harbor.
Big Data (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Big Data (Score:5, Insightful)
None.
Like "cloud computing" is a new buzzword for an old concept, that doesn't mean the concept loses value. In fact the old concept is quite reinvigorated, the buzzword is just along for the ride.
People have an aversion to trendy buzzwords for good reason, but it's interesting how this means a little bit of smarmy style can turn your mind off from analyzing the genuine substance here. "Big data" is being used to reinvigorate a powerful tactic. Oh you don't like that buzzword? Well, the tactic is still reinvigorated.
Why have you tuned out just because you don't like a word? It makes you and your analysis shallow. Just ignore the word and move onto the substance.
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In this case it subtracts a great deal of credibility because it isn't used in the right context. This isn't big data at all, it's just very fast processing. You couldn't call what a GPU does "big data", just a very fast vector processor suited to certain tasks.
Big data involves collecting large amounts of data from many sources and finding connections and patterns in it. This is just very advanced and computationally intensive signal processing.
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your observation applies to "big data" too
but we can only sell one revelation per post, or the natives get restless
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Seriously, I have 20+ year old network diagrams with a "cloud" that represents the server farm in a client-server environment. "The cloud" has been around ever since Visio shipped with a cloud graphic (if not earlier, I wasn't around to see the first builds of the network that had the cloud in it).
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How much credibility does this article lose once you put "Big Data" in there?
Would suggesting the use of Big Data gathered from cloud-based mobile social apps help its credibility?
Or am I just proactively leveraging my synergies here?
(Sounds like some detection technology [knowyourmeme.com] is in play here....)
Re:Big Data (Score:5, Interesting)
How much credibility does this article lose once you put "Big Data" in there?
Just about as much as when he declares them "the backbone of the US Navy". Anyone who knows anything about the navy understands that our nuclear carriers are the backbone of the US Navy. Just about everything the navy does revolves around those carrier groups.
Submarines may someday become obsolete. Not in the foreseeable future though. Eventually, we'll probably have massive swarms of small, cheap, robotic drones that can swarm the oceans and search for them with active methods (not caring if they get detected themselves). That will probably signal the end of practical, stealthy submarines.
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The question though is will you be able to destroy all other players capitals before someone claims cultural victory?
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Nuclear carriers are great for asymmetric warfare, but useless in a nuclear war.
Everything is useless in a nuclear war. Everything can be expected to be destroyed, including the submarines. "Success" means launching your attack before you are destroyed. The submarines might delay engagement thus their crews might live a day longer than then those on surface ships but the result is much the same. Submarines have greater ability hide but nuclear depth charges are devestating weopens. An 8 KM kill radius makes precise location information unnecessary.
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During Cold War it was clear that if on side starts a full scale conventional war and is going to lose it will use its nuclear arsenal to stop the enemy. In most scenarios this was first done with a limited nuclear attack followed by a nuclear resonse of the same magnitude. However, at this point it might trigger mass retaliation which would require a response in same magnitude. Therefore, in almost any scenario at the end all are dead. This was also the key logic used to tell the opponent that if you start
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The oceans are big places, you might be able to locate submarines that you already know the rough location of. But how are you going to bounce laser light off a hull if you're not even within 50km of the submarine?
Wake detect
Re:Big Data (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone knows that the military airplane became obsolete once radar was invented. Same thing here. Must be true....
Cat and mouse, as always. Stealth subs aren't a new idea (go watch Red October, one of my all time favs) and we have only scratched the surface in that area. Even in the 80s when I was in the air force, the Navy was considered the strongest leg of the Triad. That isn't likely to change soon, although the technology they use certainly will.
Re:Big Data (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone knows that the military airplane became obsolete once radar was invented. (Sarcasm?)
The SR-71 was shot at too many times to count. Never once shot out of the sky. RADAR? Sure, they may have known she was there, and wasn't nothing to be done about it, as nothing could catch it.
The only reason why we parked the SR-71 is that satellites could do the same thing, cheaper, 24x7.
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Actually this is not correct. The Russians developed the Mig-31 Foxhound specifically to counter both our long range bombers and our high-speed reconnaissance aircraft such as the SR-71. Satellites are predictable (as their orbits are easily able to be calculated) so having the "surprise" capability of an SR-71 flight is not the same as having satellite coverage. Same reason we have the AF X-37B among other things that have not yet come out of the black. But as for nothing being able to touch the SR-71
Re:Big Data (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Big Data (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Big Data (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Big Data (Score:5, Interesting)
The battleship maybe obsolete as a ship fighting platform but the ground artillery support role they were the most cost-effective methods around. that main guns were firing $25,000 rounds and are very accurate. Guided missiles attached to a plane are way more expensive and fighter planes are not cheap to fly or maintain. They have a greater range, but it is certainly not cheap way to hit targets.
I think battleships being retired is more of a shift of the navy of wanting use aircraft and not interested in a ground support role from the coast. Battleships really should have stayed as part of the fleet.
Re:Big Data (Score:5, Interesting)
Same goes for ammunition. A 16 inch shell is about $500, a tomahawk missile nearly 1 million. Missiles certainly have their role, but we have completely eliminated our naval artillery when it is still useful and cost-effective.
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When the Bismarck was crippled by a single torpedo from a crappy biplane launched from a carrier it became clear that Battleships were a dead end. More damage at a greater range can be done by missiles and by carrier based planes than by big ship mounted guns.
Re:Big Data (Score:4, Insightful)
Our entire Navy is one of floating glass cannons anyway, the battleships are at least tempered glass.
Re:Big Data (Score:4, Insightful)
Stealth subs aren't a new idea
To some extent, all military subs have always been 'stealth'. That they need to make them stealthier is also nothing new.
Re:Big Data (Score:5, Insightful)
My favorite takeaway was "they let you do that? State to state?"
Only if you drive. and probably not for much longer.
Re:Big Data (Score:5, Funny)
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If only there was some way to store food and water in the ocean...
You sunk my battleship (Score:2)
Why the hate on battleships? Why are they out of favor?
Re:You sunk my battleship (Score:5, Interesting)
No particular hate, but no love either. They out of service [wikipedia.org] and no one is planning on reviving the class, AFAIK.
Too big, too slow, not useful enough. Although putting a couple of nuclear reactors in one of the old hulls and lighting up the energy weapons [slashdot.org] might be a way to go.
Re:You sunk my battleship (Score:5, Informative)
They became obsolete when naval warfare stopped being about shelling things and started being about launching aircraft, missiles, and torpedoes. They haven't really been relevant since the second world war, and even then their utility was questionable: aircraft carriers dominated naval battles of the 1930s and 1940s. Nobody has built one in more than 70 years.
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The Zumwalt-class destroyer is a a lot smaller than a battleship. But it is supposed to do land bombardment too. With missiles and railguns instead of big conventional naval guns.
A lot of people claim aircraft carriers are obsolete as well. So what's left? Ekranoplans?
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Unlikely you get such a time span.
A sub is refueled less then every 20 years and a Nimitz class carrier about every 25 years.
And most of all, we should be building those, like we built the liberty ships. Lots of them. ... on top of that there is no competition ... against what would they supposedly fight, that you need many?
Why? First we live in peace times, relatively speaking, and the running costs would be enormous
Re:You sunk my battleship (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the hate on battleships? Why are they out of favor?
Effective range of a battleship cannon: 25-45 km
Effective range of a anti-ship missile: 270+ km
Effective range of an aircraft carrying an anti-ship missile: ~2000km
You do the math. Battleships are as dead as the cavalry charge.
Re:You sunk my battleship (Score:5, Insightful)
Effective range of a Trident II nuclear missile: 6000+ miles.
Nuclear subs are not stealthy to get close their target. Nuclear subs are stealthy to be by FAR the most difficult nuclear platform to hit in a first strike, while still being able to hit targets VERY FAR AWAY.
Re:You sunk my battleship (Score:4, Informative)
While we have enemies that are nuclear armed superpowers, boomers will not become obsolete.
However TFA was talking about the Virginia class, which are attack subs, not SLBM platforms.
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No, the reality is the details of the actual technical article referred to all nuclear submarines. There was only a brief mention of the Virginia class as a (what I guess we would both agree) somewhat stupid example.
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BB's were used as ground fire support in Nam (a co-worker once told me an apocryphal story about a call for fire that got routed to a BB), but other than showing the colors, they really haven't done anything else since.
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i wonder how accurate you can be with shelling. can you target a particular building.
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Yes. Just not on the first shot. By the time they hit that particular building, a few acres around it are craters.
Still somewhat useful, even in modern warfare. Keyword being 'war'. Lately we do 'missions', with precision strikes and little collateral damage, so not very useful there.
Re:You sunk my battleship (Score:5, Informative)
i wonder how accurate you can be with shelling. can you target a particular building.
Incredibly accurate, even with the cutting edge of 1940s technology. This was always the advantage that the United States Navy had which the Japanese couldn't even dream of duplicating. Read about the USS Washington savaging of Kirishima [wikipedia.org] off Guadalcanal, in the dark, with 5" and 16" fire directed solely by radar. The USN credits Washington with eight or nine 16" inch hits but modern research [navweaps.com] suggests she scored over 20 main battery hits and as many or more hits with the secondary 5" battery. If the USN had had more officers in the early days who understood the proper usage of radar (Admiral Lee [wikipedia.org] is one of the most underrated WW2 leaders, in my humble opinion, a man who was way ahead of his time) Iron Bottom Sound would be littered with Japanese wrecks instead of American ships.
For another example, read The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors [amazon.com], the story of Taffy 3 off Samar during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Our destroyers and destroyer escorts could land first salvo hits at maximum range, while maneuvering at flank speed, simply by pointing their computerized fire control directors at the Japanese ships. Even at this late stage in the war the Japanese could not duplicate radar directed fire control, they relied on optical rangefinders for their fire control, the consequence of which is they could not actually land hits on maneuvering targets until they were nearly at point blank range. Nor could they really maneuver themselves without losing their fire control solutions and starting from scratch.
Want an personal anecdote to add to all of the above? One of my best friends was aboard the USS Antietam [wikipedia.org], where he served in the 5"/38 battery. During target practice he tells me that they didn't actually aim at the target sleeves being towed by airplanes, rather they would aim at the cable connecting the sleeve to the airplane and more often than not they could hit it. There's a reason why the Japanese paid a very heavy price whenever they tried to attack our ships with aircraft, look at what happened to them during the Battles of the Eastern Solomons [wikipedia.org] and Santa Cruz Islands [wikipedia.org].
This is the single biggest reason why people who select Yamoto in the "Iowa vs. Yamoto" debate are deluding themselves. Iowa, or even the so-called treaty battleships (North Carolina and South Dakota classes) would have raped Yamoto, as evidenced by her poor fire control off Samar. Having the biggest guns in the world means nothing if you can't land hits with them. Hell, I would almost take the old battleships that survived Pearl Harbor up against Yamato; they all had modernized radar driven fire control suites after their rebuilds.
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At the outset of the war IJN doctrine was to use torpedoes against capital ships. The marriage of radar and analog targeting computers caught them somewhat flatfooted. Not that it mattered, really, since by the start of the war battleships were really only useful for providing shore bombardment and as AA platforms.
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Depends on when you are talking about. Pre-2K, with the aid of an FO (Forward Observer), the shells could get fairly accurate by the 6th or 7th shell, 10th if the seas are high. Given the size of shells involved, though, that means you probably leveled an area the size of a small shopping center to hit the outhouse that had been your target.
Today, totally different story. With laser guidance from an FO, tiny little winglets will dance enough that as long as your target is within a cone of the shells targ
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For a while I worked on artillery control systems. The 16 inch NAVGUNs were considered among the most accurate.
Also, anecodtal and second hand, but allegedly when a CFF went to a BB, they'd ask what side of the street you wanted the shell to hit.
Re:You sunk my battleship (Score:5, Informative)
i wonder how accurate you can be with shelling. can you target a particular building.
Yes. The Iowa class battleships were equipped with analog mechanical computers to precisely aim and fire the guns. Combined with radar directed gunnery this system was capable of extreme accuracy and certainly building sized accuracy, especially since buildings don't move.
Horse shit. Accuracy was a big lie. Battleships themselves were the size of very large buildings, and they couldn't hit each other for shit. Hit rates at full battle range were typically 1-5%. That is why they carried ONE THOUSAND main gun rounds. It wasn't because the shells were not devastating when they hit. It was because it was almost impossible to get a hit. To sink Bismarck before running out of fuel and ammunition, Rodney had to close to less than 3 km (gun range was over 30 km). Her guns were firing flat trajectory. Even then, it took torpedoes from a cruiser to actually give the coup de grace.
In WW2, at the peak of battleship technology, the round-to-round uncertainty in muzzle velocity for Iowa class was speced to +-10 fps out of 2500 fps. That suggests a range repeatability/accuracy of 320 m at a full range of 40 km. By Korea it had degraded to +-14 fps, and by Vietnam to +-23 fps. By Lebanon in 1984, the ancient powder, manufactured and left over from WW2 had degraded so much as to bring that to +-32 fps (figure 1000 m range uncertainty). Accuracy was so poor at Lebanon as to create a scandal. The hits were all over the countryside, devastating various civilian areas and leaving the targets untouched.
An elaborate program of reblending and rebagging the ancient powder was undertaken, and supposedly got the accuracy back to WW2 standards. Some deal, eh? 300 m, compared to guided smart bomb and cruise missile accuracy of around 5 m.
But it gets even worse. Everybody knows the shells weighed over a tonne. What everybody does NOT know, but the information is readily available, is that that weight was PRACTICALLY ALL STEEL CASING! The actual explosive bursting charge for an armor piercing round was a puny 1.5% of total weight - a puny 18 kg or so. The so-called "high capacity" rounds for shore bombardment of relatively soft targets had an 8.1% bursting charge - 154 kg. That is the neighborhood of the same explosive capacity as two Mk 82 500 lb bombs, and only 40% as much as one Mk 84 2000 lb bomb.
When shooting each other, the tiny explosive power of the armor piercing shells was beside the point, because the explosion was only there to create a little collateral damage to meat and vulnerable equipment. The primary means of devastation was the kinetic energy splitting the armor and letting water in. Or, if they were lucky and hit a powder magazine, of course it was sayonara.
Battleships carried their own guaranteed self-destruction agents, in the form of huge powder magazines and shell rooms.
Re:You sunk my battleship (Score:5, Interesting)
Horse shit. Accuracy was a big lie. Battleships themselves were the size of very large buildings, and they couldn't hit each other for shit. Hit rates at full battle range were typically 1-5%.
That may have been true in WW1, or even for WW2 battleships with outdated fire control systems, but it was most definitely not the case with the radar driven computerized fire control systems used by the USN and Royal Navy. USS Washington landed 20 main battery hits on Kirishima, out of 117 16" shells fired, not all of which were aimed at Kirishima. That was in 1942; the technology only got better as the war advanced. Duke of York achieved similar hit rates against Scharnhorst, in rough seas, during the arctic night and a blinding snowstorm.
In WW2, at the peak of battleship technology, the round-to-round uncertainty in muzzle velocity for Iowa class was speced to +-10 fps out of 2500 fps. That suggests a range repeatability/accuracy of 320 m at a full range of 40 km.
Which is largely irrelevant in a ship-to-ship action, because those weren't fought at such ranges even in war-games, never mind reality. That said, there's a story somewhere about Iowa obtaining a first salvo straddle on a maneuvering Japanese destroyer at >30 kilometers off Truk. This is another testament to American fire control; the Japanese couldn't manage to do the same off Samar at considerably closer ranges. Flip that battle around, placing a USN fleet of cruisers and battleships against Japanese destroyers in the daylight and it would likely have been a massacre.
I don't dispute the point that battleships are irrelevant now but you should correct some of your facts about them, lest you repeat misinformation. :)
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the last battleship built seemed more of an AA platform than anything. Sure it had the expected complement of a bunch of cool looking big guns, but more importantly it had an advanced (for the time) selection of fire control radars, something like 100 Bofors 40mm quick firing guns and a decent complement of slower firing heavy AA guns.
I don't think it ever saw active combat, and even fairly shortly into its career, AA missiles weren't all that great and aircraft had got rather better than the AA guns, so i
Re:You sunk my battleship (Score:5, Interesting)
If Halsey had been less of an idiot and left Admiral Lee behind with Task Force 34 during Leyte Gulf you would have seen modern battleships clashing with each other off Samar, an engagement that almost certainly would have been an ass raping of the Imperial Japanese Navy, barring alien intervention or extremely bad luck on the part of the USN.
As it was it only happened only three times in the entire war under what might be considered an equal footing, once in the Pacific (Washington vs. Kirishima off Guadalcanal) and twice in the Atlantic (Bismarck vs. Hood and Scharnhorst vs. Duke of York). There were other battles where battleships were involved (Surigao Strait and Bismarck's final battle) but they can't even charitably be described as fair engagements. Surigao involved a depleted Japanese force against an entire American battleline that outclassed them in every department while Bismarck was crippled before her last fight, unable to steam at speed or maneuver.
The battleship wasn't as useless as people would have you believe, nor was it Pearl Harbor that sealed its doom. The oft-repeated mantra is that the United States Navy was invested in the battleship and Pearl Harbor was a rude awakening; this doesn't survive even a casual examination of the historical record. The Two-Ocean Navy Act [wikipedia.org] passed Congress in 1940, nearly 18 months before Pearl Harbor and it very deliberately recognized the supremacy of the aircraft carrier, both in number of ships ordered and the statements of the legislators who wrote it. The Japanese were more invested in the battleship than the USN, wasting their limited resources on two mega battleships that ultimately accomplished nothing, while deluding themselves into thinking that a single decisive battle like Tsushima would be enough to convince the United States to throw in the towel, a country that had seventeen times Japan's GDP [combinedfleet.com] and twice her population!
Incidentally, the turning point of the war didn't happen at Midway, as is often repeated, but rather it happened at Guadalcanal. Midway was a battle, Guadalcanal was a campaign, one which proved the Japanese were not equipped materially or psychologically to fight a long war. Guess which ship saved the day for the USN during the last decisive engagement? A battleship, USS Washington. :)
At least the USN got a return on investment for our expensive toys. I can't think of a single Japanese battleship that accomplished anything of note during the entire war. The few that they were willing to commit early in the war were destroyed off Guadalcanal with little to show for it; the rest they hoarded for a decisive battle that never came, ultimately being forced to commit them at Leyte Gulf, where they were so hopelessly outmatched that even Halsey's stupidity didn't give them enough breathing room to carry the day.
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The reason they built Yamato and Musashi was because they knew they had no way to match American industrial capability and that they would always be outnumbered. So they decided to build ships that could destroy multiple enemy battleships. But remember, the ball got rolling for this in 1934, long before it was obvious battleships were obsolete.
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If he said that prior to 1984 he would have been right, but in 1984 New Jersey was used to try to attack some targets in Lebanon. Unfortunately it was a tragic fiasco, with shells landing as much as 10 km from the untouched targets, and inflicting terrible collateral damage which stirred up a huge reaction. The Marines can tell you how that reaction ended up, with their barracks devastated in an explosion.
In 1991, Missouri
Re:You sunk my battleship (Score:4, Interesting)
The 2700 lb shell was armor piercing. No one would waste that on jungle bunnies. The bursting charge was only 40 lb. It was just a big slug of steel. Pretty sure they were firing the 1900 lb "high capacity" shell, but again the bursting charge even on that was only 154 lb. It wouldn't have been a very pleasant experience, but why would that scare them more than the explosion of 400 lb of TNT from a 2000 lb bomb?
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No particular hate, they were never replaced after WWII. While no one is planning any new ones, modern destroyers are getting larger and larger with the Zumwalt class destroyer larger than many WWII cruisers. I suspect that a battleship-esque design will be proposed sometime in the next few decades to mount powerful railguns.
Anyway, there are several reasons why battleship fell out of favour.
1. Battleships were often used as a fleet-in-being. Battleships are highly impervious to surface fire, so a single ba
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Carriers are just about as obsolete.
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Yeah cause what use is a floating nuclear powered city that can go anywhere in the world and be used as a platform to stage invasions and relief efforts.
right sure (Score:2)
And just what vessels will deploy such sensors, and how many decades will it take to fully deploy such networks?
The Virginia class will be in use for many decades. Navy generally plans ship hulls for 30-50 years of active use. The enterprise cvn was in service for 50 years.
While such sensors may limit future sub combat options it is decades away. For one simple fact you still have to move attack assets into positions. Battleships disappeared due to two separate but equal reasons. The armor effectiveness
Nope (Score:3)
Betteridge says the likely answer is no. Looking at the article, there's a whole lot of predictions and guesses in there. LEDs and lasers? Water is very good at attenuating light, and even a ship directly on top of a submersed vessel wouldn't be able to detect anything using light... and coastal water attenuates light MUCH faster than open ocean, due to all the extra stuff in the water...
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Not to mention that the "Chinese supersonic sub" [extremetech.com] could bring about the downfall of the Virginia class and all the fancy big-data detection technology. Short of a super-sonic sub, the detection technologies aren't that far-fetched - detecting an exoplanet hundreds of light-years away has some of the same signal processing issues, and look at the improvements in that area.
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Your comment reminds me of the joke from the early 2000s (IIRC) about what we should do if the North Koreans tested an atomic bomb: tell them to test the other one.
This, and then some (Score:3)
Not only is there a whole lot of requirements to make them obsolete, the most obvious reasons will still keep subs working.
Long ago Submarines were ship killers. That is what their job was, and they did it very well. Over time that role changed, primarily due to the advent of nuclear missiles being tucked inside. Submarines are the single best deterrent anyone has for nuclear war. New sensor technology won't change that, because a sub does not have to be close to another ship to launch, does not have to
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21" guns??? Where did you get the idea that anyone used 21" guns on any battleships? 18" on Yamato and Musashi, 16" on the last two classes of American BBs, 14-15 inches more other battleships.
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21" guns are amazingly expensive to fire.
16" guns were what we used, and they are expensive to maintain (along with the entire ship, of course), but relatively cheap to fire compared to a cruise missile - probably in the order of hundreds of times less expensive (I haven't run the numbers - just a guess). Given, however, that we can expect to maintain air supremacy for the foreseeable future, we can expect our apparently immortal B-52 fleet (also a system whose demise has been predicted time and time again) to perform our ground saturation missio
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It gives away their position
Not exactly, the torpedoes can travel some distance away from the sub before turning and acquiring the target.
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Well, there is the little detail that no 21" gun ever put to sea on any ship. Try 16", and Yamato and Musashi with 18". That will do it (outside of Hitler's fevered dream of 20" battleship guns).
And 16" guns are NOWHERE NEAR as expensive to use as aircraft carrier planes and cruise missiles. But if we worried about cost in a war we would all still be using slingshots and arrows.
MAD (Score:5, Insightful)
* I know the Virginia-class subs don't have nukes yet.
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I'll just point out the Tomahawk submarine launched missiles do have a tactical nuclear package option.
I can neither confirm nor deny whether any of those packages have ever been deployed.
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I'll just point out the Tomahawk submarine launched missiles do have a tactical nuclear package option.
Taken out of service some time ago. Of course there's nothing stopping it from coming back, either on the Tomahawk or its planned successor. :)
You can also mount nuclear warheads to torpedoes though to the best of my knowledge the USN hasn't done that in decades. Nothing stopping them from doing it again should the need arise though.
Nuclear Attack (Score:2)
I thought the whole point of submarines these days was as mobile launchers for nuclear weapons.. Launchers that could be anywhere (not necessarily close to the coast), and therefore harder to eliminate in a first strike.
Re:Nuclear Attack (Score:5, Interesting)
That is the primary mission of the Fleet Ballistic Missile submarine ("Boomers"), but there are the guided missile and the attack submarines in the US fleet as well. Their primary purpose is to deny a potential adversary the use of their seapower. Some commentator once said "A submarine can't perform every naval mission, but it can prevent the enemy from performing ANY naval mission".
The ocean is a noisy place (Score:2)
While each DB of quieting maybe more expensive it's also more effective.
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I thought we were already to the point where you pretty much looked for the quiet spot for modern subs, not the loud spot?
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Attack Submarines Not Backbone of US Navy (Score:4, Insightful)
Attack submarines, like the Virginia class, are not the backbone of the US Navy. The aircraft carrier battle group, typically including one or two attack submarines attached, is still the main battle group of the US navy. The other type of submarine is the SSBN ballistic missile submarine which always deploys alone and spends its entire patrol hiding from anything and everything, its sole purpose being to guarantee a nuclear 2nd strike capability for the United States as part of our nuclear triad. The Ohio class submarines serve in this capacity for the United States and even then they aren't the "bakbone" of the US Navy, but rather a specialized asset with a singular purpose. The US doesn't show the colors around the world with submarines, it's the carrier battle group that commands respect, even from our enemies.
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big submarines might be dinosaurs (Score:2)
MH370 (Score:5, Interesting)
We can't find MH370. If we can't find a missing plane in the ocean, then the tech for finding subs has a ways to go before it makes submarines obsolete. Plus, I bet all these detection techniques only work over a short distance. You'd need a lot of detectors to get good coverage. The ocean is large. Plus, anything active (sound, lasers, etc) can be detected by the sub and avoided.
Plus, for non-ship based sensors, you try covering the ocean with highly sensitive detectors. Things that are highly sensitive and the ocean don't mix - unless you are going to pull each detector up on a regular basis for maintenance. Plus, detectors require power. Getting power 50-200 km offshore isn't all that easy. Surface ships pinging away in shallow waters pose the greatest danger. But for every threat, there is a way to counter it. Satellite tracking of enemy ships so subs have some warning of what's coming. Special coatings to reflect lasers. Active cancellation of the acoustic waves.
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Submarines are actively moving. Plane wreckage falls to the bottom and stops.
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We can't find MH370. If we can't find a missing plane in the ocean, then the tech for finding subs has a ways to go before it makes submarines obsolete.
This completely ignores that MH370 is (likely) a stationary, fragmented husk, spread over a significant portion of the ocean bottom (as in, below crush-depth), with zero emissions, and not in any way expected to support life. Strange how "two things in the water" can still have a bunch of important attributes that differentiate them.
Re:MH370 (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem of find an object siting on the bottom of the ocean is different from finding an object actively propelling itself through the ocean.
One possible method of detecting submarines is looking at [fas.org] the wake they produce [koreascience.or.kr]. As submarines move through the water they leave an underwater wake that slightly modifies the wave pattern at the surface. One can use radar or lidar along with a bunch of computing power to detect these wakes and thus reveal submarines. Implementing such a system could be done relatively cheaply by mounting such systems on a UAV. Submarines have allegedly been detected from SAR satellites.
Acoustic cancellation is no countermeasure for this, one would have to find a way for the submarine to be propelled without making a wake, which is possible [physicsworld.com], but probably not practical. Although this detection technique does not work well when there are a lot of breaking waves.
Submarines are the undisputed... (Score:5, Interesting)
hunter killers of naval warfare. You think you can find them? Best of luck. Lasers don't go far under water and they diffract all over the place in the water column. US Submarines have some of the most sensitive acoustic detection equipment designed. They can hang suspended in the ocean, listening. They can silently go shallow or deep in the water column. Just stick the nose above the main thermocline, or tilt down to just penetrate into the deep sound channel.
If you are a surface ship, and a submarine wants you you are just dead. By the time you hear a MK-48 torpedo, it is too late. You don't even want to be in the same ocean with one those because it will kill you. By the time you detect that harpoon missile you might get the first one but the second one will get you. Your a surface ship, you can't hide, but that submarine can and you cant hear it over the background noise of the ocean.
Look up how many weapons a Virginia class submarine can carry. If you are a surface group dumb enough to be cruising in proximity of each other, they can put a shit load of torpedoes on your ass, turn around, go deep and haul ass while you are still trying to rescue your sinking ship mates.
5 US Nuclear Submarines can deny ANY fleet the Straits of Gibraltar, The Straits of Hormuz. There is not a Navy in the world that can challenge the US Navy at sea. If the Chinese tried to cross Taiwan Strait it would just be a shooting gallery.
Lest anyone think I know not from whence I speak, I spent 10 years in two classes of fast attack submarines in the US Navy. Are motto was then and still is now, "There are two kinds of ships, Submarines and Targets."
Re:Submarines are the undisputed... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not going to argue your main points, but as a less partial party I need to raise some points of my own. This is less aimed at you (I'm sure you know everything I'm about to say), and more aimed at the other readers, to give them a more objective viewpoint.
1. The natural counter to a submarine is another submarine. Russia and China may not be able to match us fleet-for-fleet, but assuming they're the aggressors, they'll be able to bring all their force to bear at one point, outnumbering us in the battle but not the war. Do we have half our submarine fleet or more near Taiwan at all times? If not, they can make a reasonable attempt at crossing.
2. Submarines and aircraft basically can't touch each other (specialized ASW aircraft notwithstanding). If the entire Russian Tu-95 fleet flies over the entire US submarine fleet, neither one will do anything to the other. They might not even notice each other. Fleets and aircraft carriers are declining in primacy as aircraft ranges increase. We flew a B-52 combat mission from America to Iraq and back without landing - aircraft carriers, and thus navies in general, are no longer the sole way to project power. If America and Russia finally go to war, the winner will probably be the one who wins the air war, not the one who wins the sea war or land war. (Of course, with nuclear missiles in play in a US-Ru war, the real winner would be China, unless one of us decides to nuke them anyways while we're at it).
3. Consider the effect of naval drones. How many small boats is an aircraft carrier able to fight off? Imagine a USS Cole scenario, except instead of just one suicide boat masquerading as a civilian, it's dozens or even hundreds of suicide drones. You don't need to take my word for how effective these would be, there were Navy wargames for asymmetric warfare that had a "fleet" much like I proposed take out the entire Blue-team fleet, which was basically a full carrier group (the brassholes decided this was "cheating" and ordered the wargames to continue according to a script guaranteeing Blue-team victory) [citation: look up "Millennium Challenge 2002"]. Surface drones may be no threat to our subs, but our subs are similarly no threat to them, and eventually someone will get submarine drones usable. At that point, they're basically just really smart torpedoes with trans-Atlantic range. I'm not sure what the counter for *that* is, except for "not being in the water" (see point 2).
Re:Submarines are the undisputed... (Score:4, Funny)
Are you kidding? There's no navy left inside Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Those subs work better than tiger repellant.
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Sure it does... (Score:2)
So you can detect all my subs with your fancy sensors and "Big Data". So how are you enjoying the cyber attack/EMP burst/barrage of cruise missiles targeting your power grid?
Can you hear me now? Didn't think so.
Betteridge's Law Applies (Score:5, Informative)
The answer is "no". People who say submarines are obsolete are the same people who say "stealth doesn't work". They're missing the point. The point is not to be able to sidle up to your enemies without detection and tag their ships with slogans. The point is to gain a tactical advantage by detecting the enemy before he detects you. Detection isn't a yes/no thing - it's all about range.
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A submarine without stealth is an expensive missile boat.
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A submarine without stealth is an expensive missile boat.
Re:Run Silent, Run Deep (Score:4, Insightful)
Depth charges dropped from a plane
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Sorry, but yes.
The weapon to counter, is a missile coming at mach 20 that can be placed on a postage stamp.
Or rather, a dozen of them at once. Shoot that down.
Gee, maybe OO is sensible after all? (Score:3)
It was Mr. Obama who offered the snark about "horses and bayonets."
At the outset of the Afghan War, our Special Forces learned to ride horses so they could cover terrain to designate targets for PGMs. The bayonet or knife or some form of edged weapon is the last-ditch defense when the enemy appears within arm's length. Which is not an unusual tactic for enemies our forces have faced, given our ability to pound them from the air when they
It's not well known, in fact actively hidden (Score:3)
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http://armscontrolcenter.org/issues/securityspending/1917_navy_2012_navy/
"All told, the displacement of the U.S. battle fleet -- a proxy for overall fleet capabilities -- exceeds, by one recent estimate, at least the next 13 navies combined, of which 11 are our allies or partners."
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Of course there have been non-remote control underwater drones for a century. They're called torpedoes.
They're called drug smuggling submarines
We can expect remotely positionable minefields to become a thing soon, if they haven't already
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I'm sure he learned his lesson.
No, But maybe the end of manned combat vehicles. (Score:4, Interesting)
The issue isn't "The End of War" or even MAD. The issue is that we are very quickly approaching the technological threshold where unmanned vehicles will outperform all manned vehicles at a fraction of the cost. (And needless to say, reduced risk to our military personnel).
To put a finer point on it: How well will the latest Virginia-class sub fare in a combat scenario against 150 different 2-meter long drone vessels?
Want to bet that the 150 drones can be produced for less than $1.8 billion?