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Navy ELF to Be Scrapped
engywook writes "National Public Radio and The Daily Press of Ashland, Wisconsin (among others, I'm sure) are reporting that the US Navy plans to scrap the Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) system for communication with its fleet of nuclear submarines, both in Wisconsin and Michigan. The report states that the Navy no longer feels that ELF is necessary, and that they will now rely on 12 VLF systems. The system has been in operation since October 1989. The system has been protested nearly the whole time, both as a part of a Weapon of Mass Destruction and as a potential health hazard."
Well, lets see: The VLF was designed to get around Soviet technology and communicate with our subs so the Soviets could not listen in on our coded transmissions. If VLF works (who else has an equivalent submarine fleet?) and ELF harms mammalian sea life, then scrap ELF. Besides, tuned wavelength lasers from space and aircraft can communicate (at least in shallower depths) with subs and not have to worry about spreading sound waves around the planet for all to hear and try to decode. Also, lasers can carry much more information than you can with ELF or VLF and you don't have to worry about carrier waves and such either.
Also, having been on an earlier Australian sub (Oberon class), late model Australian submarine (Colins class), British submarine and several US subs, I might be tempted to say no other nation in the world can compete with the technology in the US subs. Everything else just buzzes through the water for all to hear while the latest Seawolf class is truly stunning with amazing amounts of technology layered upon layer that slips through the water with uncanny silence. Which brings up another issue: Why does the US need such a large submarine fleet? Perhaps to counter a possible naval conflict with China over Taiwan? I believe N. Korea has a few (ancient) subs...... More tactical boats perhaps would be prudent, but....
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If radio antennas are considered weapons of mass destruction, I think we are all in trouble.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Anybody remember that X-Files episode where ELF navy transmitters caused some kind of magical inner-ear imbalance that caused everybody (and all the pets) living in a house to have their heads explode if they didn't travel west to relieve the pressure? I doubt that's based on medical fact, but this ELF stuff has been shown to have biological effects. Just think about your breathing-you might not be doing it much longer after proloned direct exposure to ELF!
Free the banned subnets or die!
Yeah, finally time to throw away our tinfoil hats!
The Navy Elf's office responded with this vitriolic press release:
...
Overcoming adversity is nothing new to Mr. Elf - he had to fight to get to the top at the North Pole, and he'll have to fight here to stay afloat at the Navy. Our team actually sees this as a golden opportunity to expose the corruption, pressure, and discrimination all the elves face daily
.. as long as you've got your ELF, that's the main thing. /*rim shot*
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Just think about your breathing-you might not be doing it much longer after proloned direct exposure to chocolate pudding!
Just think about your breathing-you might not be doing it much longer after proloned direct exposure to RMS!
Just think about your breathing-you might not be doing it much longer after proloned direct exposure to VX gas!
Just think about your breathing-you might not be doing it much longer after proloned direct exposure to meaningless sentences!
"Gaylord and I worked since 1972 together to try and end financing first for Project Sanguine and then ELF. The Navy would always whip us."
I see that nothing's changed in the Navy, then...
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The news article doesn't really have any technical information on ELF, so here's the obligatory Wikipedia article.
Of course, the first haphazard search I tried came up with this.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
...that Legolas was the first sign that ELFs were hazardous to our health. Anything that pale CAN'T be healthy.
A quick reality check here. In 2003, a "noisy" Australian deisel boat sunk two US nuclear attack subs and an aircraft carrier during joint war games. The Dutch have done the same sort of thing. On a previous occasion, an Australian sub sat underneath a US carrier, inside the CBG cordon, and followed it around for some days. At the end of the exercise it surfaced next to the carrier to the horror and amazement of all involved.
The biggest danger the US navy faces is hubris my boy. That's the real thing you have to watch out for.
I stand corrected and was unaware of these exercises. Mod parent up. :-)
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Does this mean that the Navy will go back to creating a.out binaries and libraries? I thought they only ran Window$ on their ships....
lol, YHBT! HAND!
That's right, think about your breathing. "Why?" you ask. Well, it's quite simple.
Your brain usually takes care of breathing for you, but whenever you remember this, you must manually breath. If you don't, you will die.
These four words can be thrown randomly into article texts, into sigs, into anything, and once seen, will force the victim to take care of his breathing manually.
for communication with its fleet of nuclear submarines, both in Wisconsin and Michigan
Yet more evidence that we must vote Kerry - Bush has our nuclear subs stationed in the Midwest.
paintball
In other news, Santa has eleminated all ELF positions from his North Pole outpost: "Improvements in toy-making technology and the changing requirements of Today's Santa made the ELF system no longer necessary," said the news release. A North Pole spokesman said the decision to shut down ELFs came out of an assessment concluding that improvements in technology made ELFs unnecessary.
Sony ha
I have a cabin on Blaisdell lake about 20 miles from the ELF station. Hopefully this means fishing will get better!
Everyone knows Dwarves have better technical aptitude, are more comfortable in confined spaces, and have higher strength and constitution to boot.
paintball
Don't confuse me with a conspiracy theorist when I say there's absolutely no reason to conclude the technology is being scraped.
Years ago the military was highly interested in non-lethal weapons that were based on a wide number of bizarre technologies including wretched smells, sonic weapons (that would make you crap your pants, or knock someone over like a 'rubber mattress hit them'), electomagnetic frequences (that cause nausea, sleepiness) and all kinds of other reality-weirder-then-fiction technologies.
Then one day seemingly in the midst of much progress they just dropped the whole thing--the budget went poof.
Since then many of the technologies have been witnessed and it's not really too hard to find info about it on the web.
I picked an example that was more over-the-top sounding then neccesary, however my point is the military's perogative is to keep their cards hidden and have the upper hand. I wish there was a way to say that more matter of factly and still drive in that point.
Stop invalid scientific research. Ask your local scientists to feed their lab rats with a phytoestrogen-free chow.
The Navy is no longer interrested in nuking the whales, they feel that confusing the hell out of them provides for hours of humour. In canada we feel different. Our submarines let the water in so we can speak to them directly :D Much more natural don't you think?
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Go canucks, habs, and sens!
A lot of classic conspiracy theories revolve around ELF and VLF.
The basic recurring premise ranges anywhere from a single person to an entire town (Eugene, OR) being bombarded with V/ELF and studying the effects. The results are hardly "mass-destructive", but rather annoying: nosebleeds, headaches, premature arthritis, sore throats, unexplainable bruised, etc. Supposedly, a US official working in the US Embassy in Moscow contracted a fatal rare blood disease, and hidden V/ELF transmitter was found hidden in the walls, aiming right for his desk.
The theories allege the military and intelligence agencies were interested to see if purposefully exposing subjects would be effective as a form on mind control. I don't mean mind control in the literal sense where someone says "Go kill your neighbor" and the subject says ok and snaps to it. More like putting someone's mental state into disarray, hoping in the confusion the person would be more susceptible to suggestions and persuasive tactics.
These "experiments" flat out don't work. There's no science to back it up. But the point is someone with authority believed they could work and spent a lot of taxpayer money trying. And that's the real shame.
Please take this with a grain of salt. There's no need to go into a huge exposition trying to debunk these stories. You save it. I'm just repeating these unsubstantiated tidbits. Reports like these fueled many an X-Files episode. The producers/writers didn't come up with these things out of thin air. They're interesting to read. Not to "find out what happened", but to get an insight into the background stories X-Files sometimes use.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
I couldn't have said it better myself. Mod parent up as informative! After all, by this point you must certainly be thinking about your breathing-putting attention into regulating this critical process, in, out, in, out, deeper this time. Yes, focus on your breathing, deeper, slower, deeper...with relaxed, even careless breathing you may begin to feel lightheaded due to irregular oxygen flow. Feed your body with deep, thirsty breaths. Deeper...deeper...you are feeling sleepy. Breathe deeply. So deeply, so slowly, relaxed. You feel sleepy, so tired, your eyelids grow heavy. Relax, let your head down, you've worked too hard. Drift away to sleep...sweet sleep...yes sleep... Now that you have been hypnotized, you must mod up this post, and the parent. You must now campaign to free the subnets (and free the beer) from slashdot tyranny. And you will mail me a check for $20. When you wake up you will not remember this post. Awake!
Free the banned subnets or die!
worried .. i thought they were talking about the linux exectable format.
no, no need no worry this is about an unimportant thing in a for away place called real world.
I don't know much about the particulars of what happened in those war games, but diesel and nuclear subs are very different. When operating, diesel subs are much more noisy than nuclear subs. However, diesel subs can turn off their engine and run completely silent. On the other hand, a nuclear reactor is always on. If you're trying to avoid detection, it's much better to be in a diesel sub.
It is still impressive that two US attack subs were sunk, but this isn't because US technology is behind. It's because an older technology has a single advantage (the ability to run noiseless for short periods of time) that can be exploited in close quarters to great advantage.
A quick reality check here. In 2003, a "noisy" Australian deisel boat sunk two US nuclear attack subs and an aircraft carrier during joint war games. The Dutch have done the same sort of thing.
That doesn't say much all by itself.
What were the rules?
What was the mission of each side?
Were there any handicaps?
Did the US sink any ships? etc etc etc
For all that story tells us, the US might have sunk 30 ships. I'm not trying to insult Australians here, I'm just saying that article is REALLY vague.
Life is too short to proofread.
A different kind of ELF hazard. From here.
B.2.2 Extremely Low Frequency Biological/Ecological Monitoring and Interference Mitigation
The ELF ecological monitoring program is an independent evaluation of the possible hazards ELF RF transmissions may have on the environment. Sampling and gathering of data was completed at the end of FY93 with review and comments on the resultant data by the National Academy of Sciences expected during FY96. The ELF interference mitigation efforts fund the procurement and maintenance of devices used to ground electrical voltages induced in long metal inductors (e.g., wire fences, cable lines) in areas adjacent to the Wisconsin and Michigan ELF radio transmitters.
Come on nerds, someone write this up.
Mulder can stop heading west.
That's all well and good, except this is a lot more in line with shutting down excess air bases than it is with "shutting down" non-lethal weapons research. The ELF system is very much a Cold War relic, and like other Cold War relics (DEW system, excess missile and air bases) the military is slowly decommissioning it.
There's no reason to believe the technology is being scrapped; however, there is every reason to believe the facilities are being decommissioned. Somewhere, just in case, I'm sure the Navy will maintain documentation and maybe even surplus equipment, but the radio towers are being taken down. Thinking the Navy is trying to hide an actively pursued ELF program is like thinking they're stockpiling 286s - sure, it could be true, but they have no reason to do such a thing when newer technology exists and is as or more effective.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
ELF, 30-3000 Hz VLF, 3-30 kHz Oh I'm sorry did all of you overlook the fact that the /entire/ country of USA, and most of the rest of the world is /dependant/ upon 50, 60 and *enter your countries standard here* hertz frequencies?
They are emitted daily from antennas in your street or above your street, in and around your house completely covering your family like a big fudging faraday cage!!
The earth terminals which save your life /and/ rid the household of static electricity sure as hell look like a mighty fine dipole to me!
Especially when you multiply it by, oh, every house in the world with electricity.
Lets take a look at a rather interesting report:
http://www.freep.com/news/statewire/sw104732_20040 926.htm/
"
CONTROVERSY: A federal judge in Wisconsin halted construction of the system in 1984, saying more environmental and health studies were needed. A federal appeals court in Chicago overturned that decision. The Navy said it spent more than $25 million to study the impact of ELF's electromagnetic fields, which were described as similar in nature and strength to those produced by power distribution lines.
POLITICS: Within years after ELF was built, Wisconsin politicians, including U.S. Sens. Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold and the congressman who represented the Clam Lake area, Rep. Dave Obey, called for its closure."
Not to be a wet blanket or anything, but the article I got when I followed the link said three noisy Australian deisel boats.
Still impressive, but not quite that impressive.
Be a PATRIOT--because the only thing we have to fear is the lack thereof.
THat's all well and good in a "contained" environment, i.e. brown water operations next to the diesel sub bases and/or chokepoints. In blue water ops, when a carrier group averages 20+ knots for extended periods, if not continously, it is a different ball game.
Even with the new classes of submarines, you would end up using diesel subs as intelligent mines; almost stationary in relation to the target, which must practically run over them to do itself harm.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
While I'm assuming that mains AC operating frequency is not brainwashing us, consider that it /may/ make us gullible, you have to admit, for the human race to sit-down and work a 9-5 job for the rest of his life /within/ a matter of 100 years does sound pretty fucked up...
The Pixies
I would much prefer the ELF communication system compared to the accidental release of a nuclear weapon due to a miscommunication. I guess those protesting felt differently.
What, they're going back to a.out?
.......mmmm, let's see. Ever heard about "maunders minimum"? If you do not actively research a way to control fusion inside the sun, which is a bit proposterous, you fall back on the luddite position, i.e. let's burn less fuel etc. these things are good per se, but they go against Occam's razor, in that we did not have a petroleum aconomy in the centuries of the last millennium in which we had wild climate swings.
Before this turns into a "I hate these pseudoscientific quacks" rant, remember why we came to deploy thousands of nukes:
1. the US left the chemical -biological weapons field very quickly, and developed a doctrine by which, if attacked with these weapons, would have responded with a nuclear strike (deterrence);
2. they were dirt cheap vs. the alternative, building a proportionate conventional army, so they left money for other things, included, I must say, aids to poor countries.
From your post, I presume you are not American, same as I.But I find your "Kerry vs Bush" rant slighly amusing, if offtopic; do you mean that Kerry should do just the opposite of Bush, or that he should be allowed to do everything Bush did on the ground that he is not Bush?
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
That way their won't be twelve million replace them in their appocolyptic, subsistance, misery.
And give the "America is Evil" tune a rest. Bush is an ass. But you like the say your country has? Good. It was made in the USA with just like the past fifty years of security. Might doesn't make right, but it does make the rules. And one might observe that your argument based in relativism is exactly the kind of justification Bush now uses for the invasion of Iraq. If it's dishonest when he does it, it's dishonest when you do it.
Wow, such an eloquent argument. You would vote for someone based on the fact that he is not someone you do not agree with. How about coming up with a difference between bush and Kerry? Get used to having America lord over whatever country you come from. From your opinion, I understand why we are a prosperous nation and you are not.
Stay on the subject at hand instead of looking for a reason to bitch and complain about a more succesful nation.
Obviously your comments concerning WMD's getting old is not important to you. You would rather bitch and complain about the USA's nukes than, say, complain about "more pertinent things, such as global warming, or feeding the millions of hungry people in Africa". The reason we have nuclear weapons was to avoid the Russians from killing us all. This includes you. A nuclear deterrent is used to force an opposing nation to think twice about nuclear force.
Tyler: You don't know where ive been, Lou. YOU DONT KNOW WHERE IVE BEEN!!
I did not realize that. Personally, I'm glad to hear the armed forces are becoming more tolerant.
After attending militar excersises with US personell, I can confrim this. In one excercise, our home guard kicked the ass of the USMC. I find that incredible, but not if you analyse the mentality of the USMC. They fly in on choppers, equipped with the baddest and coolest in military technology. They are big fellas with kick-ass war faces. Then their chopper lands and they jump out. And fall into 2 meters of fine grained snow. The the Norway Home Guard (Maybe even that cute girl on the picture) come loafing around on their cheap-ass skis (The skis are called "NATOboards", guess why. See them here: picture). The USMCs are thouroghly stuck in the snow, not able to reach their equipment, and all of the team are killed by headshots, according to MILES.
Also, the american forces are a bit naïve. On another excercise, navy SEALs were to rescue 2 prisoners from a building on the top of a hill. They left a bunch of equipment behind, as the excercise did not allow for CS gas to be used. The Norwegians responded by having only a couple of gunmen in the building, while digging the others into the ground at the foot of the hill. As the SEALs passed the soldiers by 50 meters, the ones in the building pounded the SEALs with CS, and the dig-in soldiers ran up and shot the confused SEALs in the back. The SEALs complained that they iddin't excpect CS to be use and had no ABC equipment with them. Their colonel apparently gave them a chewing out, becaus they were so incredibly naïve to think that every force in the world would obey the rules...
No Mr. Moderator, the parent to my reply was flamebait. I merely responded by mocking the goofy ideas presented there. But thank you, and have a nice day anyway. I've got some karma to burn....
"Like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master."~RAH
Sounds like a "Perisher" course for training CO's. Not that impresive then, it was only trainees that sunk the LA SSNs.
In Soviet Amerika the ballot boxes YOU!
except for that a 686, can do almost everything a 286 can do. But differnet ways of communicating via radio, laser, etc. All have differing postive and negative points. And if I understand the technology well enough. Then I would think that the Navy has a few underground ELF stations because the waves can travel through the ground. The Article which I skimmed did not mention if the antennas would be removed/unmantained on the existing subs or if they would not be part of future subs. ELF has, I as see it, advatages that are not found in any other comunactation method. Making it worth keeping around in case of emergances where those advatages out way the disadvatages.
WARNING: Viewing This Sig May Cause Blindness.
Diesel boats are extremely quiet when running from their battery stack, and they are a major tactical threat to even the most modern Navy.
Hubris indeed. It's easy to get your ass kicked by a foe you don't respect.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
For a moment I thought the navy had their own executable and linking format. Must be too early in the morning for me !
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Nonsense. The us navy is painfully aware of the dangers posed by quiet -- be they ultra quieted SEAWOLF class nukes, DE's (diesel electrics) or the new generation of european AIP (Air Independant Propulsion) boats.
Oh, and there were 3 DE's, not one. Oh, and your "noisy" comment: a DE is only noisy while it's snorkeling. When she's on battery propulsion, she's as quieter than a nuke, generally speaking. Trust me, nobody in the US Navy thinks DEs are rattle buckets.
And the Navy knows, having been taught this lesson by its own submarine fleet, that a quiet boat is a fearsome, almost invincible enemy. The purpose of the excercise was to help the Navy figure out how to take out a DE operating in the littorals. It ain't easy.
The one and only reason the Collins's survived is because the engagement orders required the CVBG to enter into her backyard, where the DE's advantages were best put to use.
No one was surprised, only highly irritated.
The biggest danger to the navy is littoral DE and AIP submarine proliferation, mines, and high speed small boats packed with explosives, manned by the willing-to-die. The biggest danger to the navy isn't hubris, and frankly, i find the implication offensive.
from a former seawolf (SSN-575) sailor.
At least we might have a few thousand less whales beaching themselves each year now.
:wq
another one. A guy who lives in Norway thumping his chest because a bunch of americans on a training op got their butts kicked in 2 meters of snow. Hint: most americans only see Norwegian-grade snowfalls on tv. Oh, and you violated your orders by gassing your trainees. smooth.
If your point is that you have no fucking clue as to what story you are replying to, yeah, you've made your point.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
That's the only reason the Navy will give up on a technology. After six years in boats, two years in training prior to, I came away very impressed with the ongoing developments of tech as an instrument of war. The Soviets could not beat us in that arena, even with Walker trying to make money off what he knew... The only other venue for tech development (outside that for warfighting capability) that has shown in recent history such rapid progress has been the race for the moon in the sixties.. Remember, the US interstate highway system was modelled after Hitler's auotobahn system - designed for high speed transport of war materiel and troops...
this is way ot, but speaking of household wiring, would it be "safer" in terms of electromag radiation to build a new home with all of the wiring inside grounded metal conduit? or would the differences between that and regular plastic insulation be close to nill?
Golum not like ELF
It's nice when the government stops their greedy reservation of parts of the spectrum and lets the public have it back! (OK, they haven't quite done that yet, but it sounds like they might soon...) Now we can start using the 7Hz band for the Internet!
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
An elite team from the most well prepared and armed army in the world should have been able to deal with that. But, I guess that explains the problems controlling Iraq... the insurgents there don't follow the rules either.
Yeah, because those people would love how France randomly decides to flex its nuclear muscles by detonating bombs on the pristine beaches of Polynesia. Don't remember the slogan, "Stop Hirochirac"?
404 - File not found.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
The episode was called "Drive", it was the 2nd episode of the 6th season, and Mulder was proclaimed to be the head of the "International Jewish Conspiracy" by the man, Mr. Crump.
please, that's an easy way to dismiss something: saying ___ should have been able to ___. that's so lame. asswipe
A quick Google search revealed the following: ZEVS, THE RUSSIAN 82 Hz ELF TRANSMITTER. Located near Murmansk. The article has some nice maps, screenshot of the spectrum, etc.
are you agreein with me or disagreeing with me?
They should be scrapped, IMO.
Hey, Elf Bowling was set on a ship. Must be a conspiracy.
You see, we know it is against the rules to torture prisoners. But we prepare for it and show up prepared. The SEALs prepare for gas attacks, and chose not to show up prepared for everything.
Well, I'm not thumping my chest at anything. I was in the navy. These are the stories from a guy in the Telemark Battalion, when they were on excercise. Anyhoo, it is more a story on how the US soldiers ignored obvious climate changes, and that is why they train here to start with, and rely only on their egos.
As for the gassing, no wonder why a 1000 US soldiers are dead in Iraq.
"most americans only see Norwegian-grade snowfalls on tv. "
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NO , remember you share your frontier with the best snow people in the World "Canada" most of your upper states ( alaska come to mind ) see snow
poor planning it whas , but then your tanks dont do well in snow either
Strange. I checked the link before submitting. Oh well, here's another link to the same picture: LINK
Do you really think Australia has 30 ships?
"These are the stories from a guy in the Telemark Battalion, when they were on excercise. Anyhoo, it is more a story on how the US soldiers ignored obvious climate changes, and that is why they train here to start with,"
You hit the nail on the head there. Any military, be it US, Hungary, Britain, Zibabwe, wherever, must train its soldiers to kill and think they can beat anyone - otherwise they will almost always loose. That is also known as hubris. This must be tempered with the ability to think.
For example, the local gun range is on a national guard base. A few times a year the Army uses it for "training". One of thier special forces (I don't know which - they will not say and I don't care enough to actually dig and see) trains there. It is the last few days of their training - they play war games mostly. On one of thier times occupying the base there was a scheduled shoot. We had to move it and needed some material (signup list for the shoot IIRC) from our club house. The general in charge allowed us access for the material as long as she escorted us. She and my father got to talking about training/coaching markmanship and he asked about what they do there in training (we had always wondered as there was usually quite a bit of damage to the facilities and odd structures built in the woods). She explained about the war games and other fairly mundane training excercises they did. She then told him that on the last night they did something "special". After all the training and convincing that they were the Greates Thing on the Planet they were given a rude awakening. The recruits were told to guard the barraks. During the night a group of Rangers crossed over the fence and forcefully captured each and every one of the recruits. It was supposedly a humbling experience (I know that it would be for me).
I would bet that the situation you describe was something similar. If they had performed flawlessly that would have been great. I bet that the people in charge got thier second best option - total routing and humiliation.
" and rely only on their egos."
That is *exactly* what they try and root out. No commander in any major country is stupid - all know that is bad and will loose wars. Do you really think that the US military is that stupid? I bet your country sends soldiers on training missions they know they will loose for exactly the same reason - militaries have been doing that for thousands of years.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Were there any handicaps?
...
... such kills invariably occur in the presence of a noise augmenter. Wargames would be overwhelmingly one-sided and pointless (for everyone involved) if the playing field wasn't artificially levelled in some way.
Almost certainly. Without intending any disrespect to the Australians or any other allied country that scores a hard-earned kill against a US sub
Even so, US subs are hard to detect, and killing two of them is an accomplishment. Good for the Australians.
They think they invented the nuke and that there the only one to have nukes ...
Call me crazy, but if you're going to be dropping a load of soldiers into an exercise like this, shouldn't you a) check the conditions before you kick off and b) train them to deal with it?
I would bet that the situation you describe was something similar. If they had performed flawlessly that would have been great.
The first one might be so, yes. But the second one was clearly a mistake, caused by SEAL egos being the size of their Hummer. The Navy SEALs here have a moethod of teaching the soldiers to not dump their equipment, no matter how silly it might seem to drag it along. They walk 50 clicks in total, with some 25 - 30 kgs of weapons and equipent. since this is in the beginning of the course, they have an old suck-ass steel helmet. Heavy as hell and no air holes. At 25 clicks, they are told that if they want to, they can leave the helmet there as there won't be a live fire excersise. Most do. When they get to 50 clicks, the ones that left their helmet are told that they can go back and pick it up, since there will be a live fire excersise in the morning. It is very, very frustrating and humbling.
That reminds me of the time when some Finnish units went to Norway for joint exercises with Norwegians and Americans. Exercise was about warfare in arctic conditions. Well, as it happened, only the Finns and the Norwegians carried out the combat-training as intented. The American troops just stayed in their tents and tried to stay alive.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
I remember artillery exercises in Grafenwöhr (Germany), back in the 1980ies. U.S. artillery already had that high-tech GPS to get their coordinates almost instantaneous, while German army had to use optical instruments and do trigonometry with elderly HP calculators. - Guess who was faster in hitting the target.
That whole U.S. high-tech wank isnt worth a penny, when the soldiers cant even read or discern own coordinates from enemy coordinates. (Wasnt there an incident in Afghanistan, where they high-tech-high-precision bombed themselves?)
Nice to see the people supporting this aren't mindless racist nazi-ish flamers.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
Ninjas fight all the time! The purpose of a Ninja is to flip out and kill people! Ninjas are so cool I want to crap my pants!
Forget it, I am going back to AOUT.
Al submarines are lethal weapons. Even a old WW-II Deisel sub can easily get in and attack EVEN USA targets unseen.
why do you think that all submarines that are not scrapped in the US fleet are carefully kept track of. The USS Silversides in michigan has regular inspections by the Navy, naval reserve personell are on board monthly performing maintaince.
Many of you armchair war-generals think that the US naval fleet is so advanced that we would see a old chugger coming in on a carrier group, yet the auzzies kicked out arses completely with a old deisel as mentioned above.
Imagine what the bin laden's of this would could do with a 60 year old submarine, a crew that was trained well and 12 of those old unguided steam powered torpedoes....
Oh wait, I can tell you, the Japanese has kamakazi submarine's... you dont need no stinking torpedoes, you ARE a giant torpedo.
and today's naval surface ships are nothing more than beer cans compared to the ships from WW-I and WW-II.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Wow, those SEALs sure are stupid. Like now, just everybody in the world knows how incompetant they are. I guess Snow isn't part of SEAL (Sea, Air, Land)! What a bunch of dumbasses! Yep. Same thing for the two subs and the carrier, couldn't even detect a noisy diesel sub let alone destroy it.
And imagine the SEALs thinking that the enemy would follow the rules and not use CS. Maybe next time the SEALs will break the rules and use real fucking bullets!
I remember reading an article about ELF in Wireless World in 1970 - but it could have been VLF, I suppose. Anyone on here old enough to comment?
And the australian Collins-type submarines were built by Kockums Marine Systems in Sweden; those Stirling AIP engines are quiet as well as being able to allow the submarine to stay submerged several weeks. Interesting that Sweden possess such a prominent position in the submarine market (scroll down towards the end).
no other nation in the world can compete with the technology in the US subs
A quick reality check here. In 2003, a "noisy" Australian deisel boat sunk two US nuclear attack subs and an aircraft carrier during joint war games.
The original statement is still true. What you are pointing out is that the experience, skill, and luck of the captain/crew can compensate for differences in equipment capabilities.
This has always been true and will always be true. Consider, for example, the famed "Flying Tigers" of World War II which had astounding results flying P-40s against technically superior Zeroes.
Even worse, hotshots get other soldiers killed.
The dairy farmers in wisconsin where the transmitting antennas are burried in miles-wide patches of farmland have the same [foil beanie] fears as people who live under high voltage power lines. If a cow quit giving milk, they were certain it was the ELF. After all, 60Hz and 12Hz aren't that far appart.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
But how about the NAVY take another, and this time for even better reasons.
Take a look here for information on LFA SONAR systems and how they affect marine biology.
As for the story with the CS - I guess I don't see the point of that. If the purpose of the training is to operate without CS, then why blame the soldiers for doing the exercise as they were asked to? Ok, in real-life you don't know whether the other side would use CS, but then in real-life you wouldn't be told it was an exercise without CS. So is that really important?
Looking at the performance of the US military you can't really claim that they don't know how to fight. Quite apparently they are up to the job when it comes to real life. Their main deficits (as I see it) is in policing - they perform well in conquering a place, but poorly in holding it. That's sufficient if the main purpose of your military is defence, but it's a disadvantage if you want to conquer/bring peace/build an empire (pick according to political view).
Damn, the US Navy sure did a good job of keeping those subs in Wisconsin and Michigan secret during the Cold War...
A USA special forces guy gaurding the new PM, came under fire. He ordered an airstrike but gave the co-ordinates of his own location, not the guys attacking. 3-4 guys got killed
Using CS when it was decided that the exercise wouldn't deal with that component.... hmm... If that's the mentality you're working with, why did you even use blanks in your weapons? Use live ammo, they'd never expect that! After all, not every force in the world would obey the rules... plus you'd totally win! There is a huge separation between being naive and operating within the parameters of an exercise. Exercise conditions are decided upon to protect the safety of those involved and to focus on certain objectives. For whatever reason your 'Home Guard' went against the parameters that had been decided on and used CS on people they *knew* didn't have equipment.
One of the conditions imposed on the CBG (carrier battle group) during the exercise you referenced was that it had to basically run right over the three Aussie subs that were supplied with excellent intel.
Diesel subs can sit in the water *dead silent*, with practically no moving parts, while running on batteries. They only turn into rattling buckets of bolts when snorkeling/charging the batteries.
Basically, the exercise was setup to be a test of what might happen if a CBG faced one of the things that might be considered a manifestation of Murphy's Law. The results were disappointing (to the US, of course), but not surprising at all.
I still think thats nothing compared to this where the retired marine played the role of Saddam and basically kicked the crap out of the US in an exercise in which he sunk almost the entire fleet in the Gulf
So ,rather than applaud the move you decide to shit on the Navy a litte more. Thanks.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Right now, the Navy is still using EP-3's to communicate with subs. There's a couple squadrons in Britain and Hawaii that are tasked with the respective oceans. A couple in Diego Garcia, too, but everyone else just goes there to drink. Anyway, the satellites use laser, but the subs have to approach the surface and raise a collector. With VLF, the subs use a hull-mounted antenna, and can string out a longer antenna behind them giving them greater range.
Which is exactly how the EP-3's work. They string their antenna out behind them when they are "loitering", receive instructions from the satellites and pass them onto the subs.
They have obviously come up with another viable system.
We don't understand the whole story. Perhaps the opposing force was allowed to use CS because it was realized that the seals ditched their ABC equipment. Perhaps a commander wanted to teach his team a lesson?
Either way, CS gas can be toxic. They should have used something else.
Just a couple of clarifications...
1. Global warming is real. The warming/cooling cycles have a far shorter period than 4By. Our ability to make a meaningful difference in the current trend it is still up for debate.
2. North Korea isn't allowed to have nukes. We've just been ignoring their transgression because we're preoccupied with other events.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Don't trees take CO2 and convert it back to oxygen?
The P-40s flown by the Flying Tigers were inferior in turning radius and climbing capabilities. However, their maximum speed was greater, they could absorb much more damage than the Zeroes, and were superior in diving speed to any other japanese airplane built in that time (up to 1943-1944). Also, the Zero were quite fragile and couldn't withstand the abuse the 50cal machine guns on the P40s were capable to give.
The success of the Flying Tigers was based more on pilots capabilities and training (as the P-40s losses were much greater on other theaters of operations against the same Zeroes)
If I have ELF support compiled into my kernel does this mean I have to pull it out and recompile?
Hmmm...perhaps. But it real life you might also get some bad intelligence. "No, General Custer, there aren't any Indians at Little Bighorn." "No, Admiral Ackbar, the new deathstar isn't yet operational."
Even if it wasn't technically fair, it's probably a good lesson. Even the Boy Scouts know it: be prepared. Combat is never exactly what you expect.
~Idarubicin
with the ELF and submarines and all. I move that slashdot only allow links to pages with pictures of cute girls.
Who's with me?
Milo
As a last resort, we could look at the science behind ELF before we worry too much about the "damage": (1) ELF transmitters are only a megawatt or so. The ELF waves are sooo long (many thousands of miles), that a little 50 mile antenna only radiates oh, maybe 5 watts of effective radiated power. (the rest just heats up the wires). Those 5 watts get spread more-or-less evenly all around the earth. (2) Your tpical large marine creature is maybe one billionth the size of the earth, so we're down to maybe 5-billionths of a watt hitting the beast. (3) Your typical animal is an even smaller fraction of the thousand-mile ELF wavelength. So about 99.99999% of the energy incident on say a giant squid goes right through it. We're now down to 5 quadrillionths of a watt. (4) A typical nerve discharge is around a THOUSAND to a MILLION times that amount of energy, so the ELF signal is that much weaker than the thousands of nerve impluses going off right inside the squid's body every second. (5) So I would not worry too much about ELF harming anything. (6) And, oh, as other have mentioned, the energy from power lines is many orders of magnitude stronger than ELF (and even that is hard to pick up any distance from power lines).
The US government admits to a bit more than 1,000 official casualties, which seems pretty low considering the nature of the attacks, usually vehicles packed with explosives, or other sorts of roadside explosive devices, or attacks with multiple RPGs, etc. Just today are reports of a huge IED going off right next to a convoy, yet they admit to no casualties, only a large number of civilian casualties. I find this hard to believe. This sort of thing is daily now, sometimes multiple times.
I think the numbers are being skewed downwards drastically for political purposes (and tactical purposes). The war appears to be not going as well as they wish it were. And their actions domestically with guard and reserve units, having a lot of trouble getting people to even show up, basically using all the available assets they have, re-rotating people back to iraq, would also indicate this.
Re: N. Korea
They have permission to have nukes until someone feels big and bad enough to do something about it. The U.S. has already said "You can't have those" to which N. Korea responded "Yeah, right!". So it's pretty obvious they aren't going to respond to a civil request and, with China on their northern border, it's not likely the U.S. will invade. China might invade them, and I'd get a good laugh if they did, but until then it's a moot point.
"Like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master."~RAH
Window$ would be about as useful as a screen door...
Our deterrent against the Canadian threat.
I heard something similar about a joint Canadian/American exercise.
The exercise was to take the enemy base camp with minimum casualty. The Americans decided to attack at night, wearing dark equipement to avoid being seen...
Well, In Canada, there is this thing called 'Snow' that is all white...
The Canadian had taken positions and half-buried themselves under snow. They simply waited and took out the Americans at point-blank range...
Notes:
a) Heard the American regiment was from the south... which would explain the mistake (And probably the reason why they where training for winter exercises)
b)Might be just an Urban Legend...
I live in Soviet Canuckistan you insensitive clod!
Very, very true. Specially for officers that show off and let the grunts take the heat.
Well, I was on a really old boomer and it was noisy and slow. We had an exercise with a carrier group and supposedly "beat" a destroyer and stuck a blow to the carrier. I do not know how the powers that be can determine such a thing though.
I know a carrier group can travel roughly 35-45 knots, there is no diesel submarine in the world that can even come close to that pace. Maybe about 1/2 that speed in very short spurts but they would never be able to stay on battery that long. For a diesel sub to maintain a close proximity to a carrier group for "days" and not be detetcted (stay running on batteries), the carrier group would basically have to be standing still. In that case I could probably hit the carrier myself from a raft with a pistol.
On a side note, I recall our sonar men tracking a fishing boat for several hours, when we finally came to periscope depth, a visual determined it was an aircraft carrier. I assume Sonar men on a boomer were much different then what would be on an attack sub. A boomer hears a noise and turns the other way and gets quiet, no engagement at all. I'd hope the attack guys would be much better.
but then in real-life you wouldn't be told it was an exercise without CS. So is that really important?
When I was in the army, there was a saying that 'people train like they fight'. When you are in the field it comes down to the fact that if you want to survive, then you are going to have to depend on yourself in the end. Are you going to trust some brass that say they aren't going to use nerve agents ? While this may make a nice anicdotal story, there is one underlying fact here. And that is that they learned some rather important lessens from it.
Probably the best teachings when doing something like that is a very humbling experience. I (being a mechanic in the army) recall our maintenance unit to be used as an attacking force in training. Everything was set up so that we would attack a camp sometime during a 3 day period. So early one morning we slipped through some trees in a ravine that was very difficult to scale in order to get at the camp - a direction we weren't "expected" to come from. To make a long story short we over run the camp and it turned into total chaos for the good guys. It's not something that the enemy wouldn't have tried, so it's an important thing to learn while it's still training. And we took the captain's watermelon he happened to have in the command tent as a war trophy, so it all worked out for us.
I don't know how much real exposure you have had to US Marines but having had once been one for over fourteen years your description of "big fellas" is not true. Most of us are probably less than 6 foot tall and could kick your norwegian ass in seconds. Truth be known that we always got the hand me downs of equipment and made the abosolute best use of it. Our budgets were small so we had to. As far as the snow, we might not have been experts at it solely for the fact that its not as prevailant as it is in Norway where you live in it for 6 months out of a year. Come to the swamps of Camp Lejune in the heat of summer and train here amongst the 90 plus percent humidity and we will all laugh at you peckerheads when you start dropping like flies!
Which is considered a resounding victory by the Deep Water Attenuated Radio Frequency scientists, whose next project is to eliminate the Overseas Radio Communication system, and if they're really lucky, the Targetted Repeating O-band Laser Link systems as well.
-Styopa
In real life, you wouldn't be told that the purpose of the training was to operate without CS.
In real life, you would be given intelligence information on the enemy:
- "They don't have any chemical weapons."
- "They don't have artillery support."
- "There's only twenty of them."
- "The civilians are on our side, because we're the liberators."
If your soldiers always put their life on this kind of information, good luck for them in combat. This is what this type of training is about. Undoubtedly.Yep. It's not exactly what they're trained for, either. Any 21st century adversary will have learned the lesson already: let the US come, then grind them down. It has been like this ever since the Russians in Afghanistan and the US in Somalia. As long as the US doesn't succeed in winning over the populace's heart, this strategy is going to work.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
ASldl. asdfdf546 asd 324234. ererdf rteertdsf yutu 75665 erwre.
sdasd
Respect. This is the first time I have ever seen that on /.
To protect our fragile breads and eardrums Congerss has now mandated we wear foil hats while participating in Naval exercises involving ELF. Cows should be shielded as well. If sufficient foil headgear are not avaialble, some protection may be achieved by playing LOUD rock music thru your subwoofers, backwards if possible. ...Earth.
We now return you to
Busy aligning my non-linear thoughts.
That's the problem with nukes and lawyers. Both are expensive, harmful when used, and flexing them is bad for PR, but if one has them, everybody else is forced to get them too.
Talking of global warming, did you know that the US pulled out of the Kyoto agreement so that they can use up more and more energy (than the rest of the world) ?
And who says a country isn't allowed to have something ? Isn't that what "sovereignty" means ?
I am incredibly amazed at the arrogance of the Americans on Slashdot - look at this statement "We've just been ignoring their transgression"
I've got a good story 'bout this.
There's used to be an annual NATO tank competition called the "Canadian Army Trophy".
When the M1 first came out, it caused quite a stir, as it was far faster and quieter than had been expected. But the thermal sights also gave the Yanks a huge advantage on the pop-up target range.
It seems that the motors used to raise/lower the popups were hot enough to show up on the thermal sights, and the thermal load from raising a target made the motor glow hotter before the target was fully raised and visible. Accordingly, the M1 kicked ass on the popup range, and overall swept the competition.
The following year, the Canadians (who hosted the competition) placed a large number of thermal dummy motors out on the popup range - and the M1 placed miserably. They also adjusted their own tactics to deal with the M1's strengths, and soundly defeated the Yanks.
The lesson here is that while a technological advantage can indeed give you the upper hand, such an advantage is fleeting. Properly motivated and creative soldiers can devise ways to defeat your tech anvantage and can and will hand you your ass.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Re: the USMC performance. You may not know this, but the only decent winter training ground in the entire lower 48 states is in Minnesota. We get temps reaching -40 degrees C about 5 or 6 times a year with snow depths typically around a meter or so. The local NG and Reserve units train there all year long, of course. However, it costs so much to rotate a US Army Division from its home base to Camp Ripley that they typically get up here maybe every 3-5 years at most. So far as I know, outside of our local Marine Reserve unit, no Marines get to use Camp Ripley at all.
:-)
:-)
I think the US Pacific fleet Marines train in Alaska once in a while alongside the Army Rangers and mountain troops (Is the 10th Mountain Division still active btw?). The US Atlantic fleet Marines has no handy training ground except for the annual Norway exercises. So, keep humbling them! It'll do 'em some good.
I'm also reminded of a story a Marine on Guam told me once. He said that his platoon was taken into the jungle for a three week exercise. They did pretty well until the last night. The instructors were all Vietnam vets. They told the platoon to pick one member of the platoon to act as the target. They could pick any defensive position that they wanted. The trainers guaranteed that the target would be 'killed' in hand to hand combat with no one the wiser in less than 15 minutes.
The platoon decided to literally surround the guy standing shoulder to shoulder. 5 minutes into the exercise, they found out they failed. The instructors had placed a guy in a big banyan tree overlooking the compound. It was trivial for him to drop in, 'kill' the guy, and shinny back up into the tree. The jarhead who told me the story said it was one of the most humbling and educational experiences of his life.
I referenced this link in another part of this thread, but it bears repeating. Check out the veterans' proverbs floating around the 'Net that are known as Murphy's Laws of Combat. Very illuminating. And funny in a sick, twisted sort of way.
How many nuclear attack subs would it take to nuke Australia? I'm guessing that one could. So Australia still gets nuked. Even if you take out all of the nuke attack subs, we still have many different planes, and ICBM's that can still acomplish the task at hand.
Oh, wait these are not subs that have nukes, but subs that run on nuclear power. I forgot about that. Why fight at all when we can just export Mc Donalds to every country and kill them slowly with obesity? If you ask me, thats Mutually assured destruction.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
they perform well in conquering a place, but poorly in holding it.
And even that isn't really an accomplishment, considering what enemies they fight and how poorly they're equipped.
The US was never *in* the Kyoto agreement, which isn't yet in force even for those nations which have approved it.
and could kick your norwegian ass in seconds.
That's what you get when you "break" people and then rebuild them, telling them they're the greatest thing ever. Dumb jocks without a grip on reality. The few, the proud, the thoroughly brainwashed.
As a Dutchman I feel obliged to give the details (quoted from Roger Thompson, Professor of Military Studies at Knightsbridge University):
"The Royal Netherlands Navy, with its small force of extremely quiet DE submarines, has made the U.S. Navy eat the proverbial slice of humble pie on more than one occasion. In 1989, naval analyst Norman Polmar wrote in Naval Forces that during NATO's exercise Northern Star, the Dutch submarine Zwaardvis was the only orange (enemy) submarine to successfully stalk and sink a blue (allied) aircraft carrier. Ten years later there were reports that the Dutch submarine Walrus had been even more successful in the exercise JTFEX/TMDI99.
During this exercise the Walrus penetrates the U.S. screen and sinks many ships, including the U.S. aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt CVN-71. The submarine launches two attacks and manages to sneak away. It was also reported that the Walrus also sank many of the Roosevelt's escorts, including the nuclear submarine USS Boise, a cruiser, several destroyers and frigates, plus the command ship USS Mount Whitney. The Walrus herself survived the exercise with no damage."
i'm thinking they did check conditions, and the whole reason they were in NORWAY in the first place was to "train them to deal with it". oh.
I'm not an American either, but I worked alongside (and "fought" against them) many times - and there is unquestionably a "national character" to the US (and other nations') Army.
Keep in mind that I'm generalizing here.
The American Army is huge, has a lot of really good and impressive kit (not necessarily the best stuff, but the average iquality level is pretty good and they have a LOT of it) and undertrained.
By "undertrained" I mean that the average American soldier is very heavily specialized and is often explicitly forbidden to branch out. Each soldier has a specific job and a specific purpose.
Whereas in smaller armies like the Canadian or the Isreali, soldiers are expected to do much more and are encouraged (within certain limits) to improvise.
A quick example: let's say you are a commander, on top of a ridgeline, advancing with an armoured brigade towards an objective a few km away. On the next ridge up is a wooded area you think might be harbouring an enemy infantry position.
If you are Canadian, you will send forward your very highly trained and impressively skilled brigade recce troop. They will sneak forward, scout out the woods, and report back on what they found without the enemy (if he is there or not) ever noticing that they were there. If the enemy is in the woods, you will then quickly plan out a brilliant and innovative quick attack that takes the enemy completely by suprise (and in the flank too) eliminating the enemy with the minimum amount of own losses and ammo expenditure.
If you are American, you call up two more brigades out of your division, and the three of you pound the wooded area flat with direct fire, while divisional artillery fires in indirect support, and the Air Force adds a squadron of B52s. Once the fire mission stops, you will send a patrol of junior privates up to the matchstick pile to see if they can find any fragments of the enemy. If they don't, there was a company in there; if they do, it was at least a division.
Which technique is more effective? *shrug*
What does wind up happening though is that any time you fight the Yanks size-on-size, they Yanks typically get the short end of the stick. The counter-argument is that the Yanks NEVER fight size-on-size, so it doesn't matter.
I will say this though - any time we schooled some Yanks, they were typically VERY enthusiastic about how we did it, and wanted to learn. They weren't stupid or unprofessional, just undertrained and overmanaged.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
I remember hearing about dozens of whales and porpoises beaching themselves mysteriously. I figured back then the Navy was involved somehow... I did a quick bit of googling and found tons of news articles all within the last 4 or 5 years about mysterious beachings... Here's a couple links, the first from CNN way back in 2000 and the other from National Geographic from earlier this year... http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/07/28/beached.whale s/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/03/03 31_040331_whalesincrisis.html#main
The news outlets at the time passed it off as a new type of sonar, but it seems to be a bit different... It makes me sad that we humans are using the Oceans as our toilets without thinking of the consequenses...
Cancer couldn't kill me... You don't stand a chance.
"Well, I'm not thumping my chest at anything. I was in the navy. These are the stories from a guy in the Telemark Battalion, when they were on excercise. Anyhoo, it is more a story on how the US soldiers ignored obvious climate changes, and that is why they train here to start with, and rely only on their egos.
As for the gassing, no wonder why a 1000 US soldiers are dead in Iraq."
It must be easy to analyse how another country does in different climates. How does Norway do in jungle conflicts?
I have a really hard time believing that Norway would have less than 1000 dead soldiers if they had as many troops in Iraq.
If one side is going to use gas after it being decided not to use it, wouldn't it be justifiable for the other side to use live ammunition as a response?
They brought their armor, right? No? Shame.
The other cool thing about a D.E. sub is that you can surface it and put a lantern at the top point of the sub.
Then have all the crew start singing "louie louie," rather drunkenly.
After the nuke leaves cause it thinks you're a fishing vessel, you hold a mock pirate trial and dump an idiotic loudmouth onto a passing fishing vessel, piggyback between the screws of an oil tanker and blow up the dummy ship in the harbor.
All with 'welcome aboard' tatooed on your peepee
Could the antennas and its cabling be used as a sort of VLA by radio astronomers?
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
Except that there's no way the Australian diesel boat could keep up with a carrier, travelling at 25knots+ for several days, without having to recharge its batteries.
.
Yeah this is a pretty specific exercise. In order to do an exercise with a diesel sub we'd have to play in their ballpark. I am not an expert, but it seems like the fact that these subs, according to the parents link, have a submerged range of 420 miles (12,000 miles at the surface) a nuclear sub could simply outrun the diesel sub when submerged.
Also I think submarine warfare is all about secrecy. Being able to follow another sub without being detected, so the key would be sound suppression and detection, and it should be possible to make a nuclear reactor silent. Those are the subs that don't participate in these exercises :)
How about deep sea subs? Why don't we build subs that can go down as deep as research subs? (I'm convinced we already have)
"What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others."
- Confucius
OK, how about we do something different: prove to me it doesn't hurt sea life, and you get to use it.
With as much raping of this planet as we've already done, the oceans included, how about we slow down and not fuck with the system any more? Imagine killing all the fish in the ocean (or giving them all cancer or something, which would kill them over the next decade or so), and what that would do to the world population... just because we wanted a nifty new way to talk to our subs.
Think of what we gain, like the 40th way to talk to the submarines, and the possible consequences, seriously damaging the ocean life.
Is it really worth it?
LOL, yeah if you guys are using gas, does that mean we step up into the realm of nuclear war?
Taking hostages is one thing, but look what we did to Japan. Next thing you know you're presented with two options, release the hostages or your capital will be incinerated.
When you get a frightened dog in a corner he is going to bite.
"What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others."
- Confucius
That would be pretty hard to do. With watch-to-watch pub and crypto turnover, TPI (Two-Person Integrity), and other safeguards, ti would be hard to steal the crypto. Even if you're the WatchSup, you CAN get your own padlock open, but the second person has to do so or comply. After that, the second person would have to turn a blind eye long enough for the trusted spy to somehow copy the strips or cards or sheets.
Even so, once the compromise is discovered, the entire fleet would cease using the crypto, except for maybe a handful of decoys in the compromised area who'd continue feeding disinformation into the system to delay knowledged of the compromise. However, once the genereal oparea is told to cease using it, the compromise effectively is known. Even if the reported compromise is covered by HQ just self-censoring what it sends over the encrypted circuits, an enemy or defector using the crypto cannot use it beyond an predetermined, scheduled time block. Just as newsfeeds expire, so do crypto periods.
While it would be possible to steal crypto for a given period, they physical evidence (hard plastic, clear or dark, in clumps or packages that will be obviously missed if moved or remove), you generally cannot steal it now and use it later, for timeshifting (not exactly like TIVO, et al) would elminate the usefulness. Meaning: Crypto stolen for period 0600-1200 or whatever used AFTER that period simply won't work. They cyphers embedded in the transmission stream would ensure that improperly-embedded responses trigger a compromise alert.
Read some books out there (communications pubs, crypto books, communications security methods, and your imagination. It's not necessary to bribe anyone for information if you can reassemble or combine peripheral evidence. Read and re-read. The process I describe is not in itself super sensitve. The crypto IS. The physical protection of it IS. Stealing it is pointless, except to invite jail time.
-------
As for knowing where the sub is, subs have OpAreas just like surface ships do. The satellites would signal to as narrow an areas as possible, likely in bursts, over a short duration, and at random intervals so as to deny detection of the boat's locality if a trawler or signal-soaking craft is in the area by chance. Alternatively, the sub can release a trailing wire antena for maybe 2 miles, and collect instructions or messages. In a worst case, they could cut the cable and go deep and quiet in a threatening situation.
I would imagine that remote sensors or torpedo-like vehicles slip from the hull, trail or shadow the boat, and send and receive signals from a non-disclosing distance. It's what IIII would do if I had the valuable boats, the money, and the imagination I have now. We have predtors for ground crews, so why not remote off-board vehicles for expensive subs that might have to sit or hover (to keep sand out of certain cooling intakes) for extended periods, periodically degaussing (or doing other things to/for) their hull signature. A ROV would SIGNIFICANTLY enhance the privacy, security, safety, and stealth of ANY navy's subs, for a smaller price than innumerable anechoic tiling and rubber-mounting deck rafts.
David Syes
-Former Radioman (86-88)
-Armchair Tactical Action Officer before and after my 4-year stint in the USN
-recreational submarine designer (concepts)
-recreational/"otaku" DDG/DD designer (to embarrass the DDG-51 design (both flt I and II)
-aspiring fiction author (relying upon fact and disinformation available in many, many carefully selected texts available publicly)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Is it possible to shut down the nuclear reactor and run on battery power? Seems like a hybrid diesel/electric is the same thing as a nuclear/electric, so any advantage is negated.
"What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others."
- Confucius
from a former seawolf (SSN-575) sailor
SUBDEVGRU ONE alumni? I was on the Parche (683) while the Wolf was doing her last few years at Mare Island.
Nice to see some actual facts in the discussion!
I find it interseting how only the USA is allowed to have a nuclear arsenal.
China
United Kingdom
France
India
Pakistan
Israel
Russia
So I guess these countries don't actually have nukes of their own? I seem to remember the only country that once had nuclear arms and dismantled and destroyed all of them was South Africa. They also dismantled them of their own accord, as no one even knew they had them until after they told us they were all gone.
I guess it's not important to you that there are actually 8 nations that are known to have nuclear weapons. It's probably equally unimportant that all these nations actually realize what will happen to them if they use them on someone. Nuclear weapons in the hands of sane people are not a military threat, but political leverage.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Wargames are Wargames, those with military, especially naval experience know that there is a predetermined script to any wargame. While it may not define the outcome, it provides a scenario which both the attacking/defending sides can exercise their ability to perform said function. One many occasion, and this being us vs us submarines, our newer and more advanced 688i class sub would be outfitted with an augmentation device. This device would mimic the acoustics of a whole nother class of submarines and provide an immediate ability to locate/identify a non-exercise friendly (in case an intruder comes into the wargame). Most notably to make us sound like a diesel (both surfaced and silent) to help train the opposing sub in hunting the elusive diesel, or defending against its silent but deadly nature. The most technologically advanced submarines available to any country can always be outwitted or out maneuvered. The equipment is only as good as its operators. hence, why we drill SO, SO, SO much. ~Been there, done that... 'Lant Fleet Radioman 94-00
~~~ SCO sued me because I printed this t-shirt with a Linux driven printer...
Interesting reading.
(Theremin was also the guy who invented the widget that makes the eerie flying-saucer sounds in old sci-fi movies -- called, unsurprisingly enough, a "theremin".)
Erm, it was an exercise, which is about putting what you've been trained to do to the test.
Ok, in real-life you don't know whether the other side would use CS, but then in real-life you wouldn't be told it was an exercise without CS. So is that really important?
Yes, it is.
A real-life mission briefing may include (inaccurate) information that the enemy does not have a certain capability, only for the forces to find out that they do during the engagement. If (no, WHEN) that happens, they better be prepared with a way of countering it.
Good.
Assuming this story is true - which I have no way of knowing - then this is exactly what you want to happen in excercises. You want your soldiers to screw up there so they learn their lessons and don't screw up when it counts. In training excercises between U.S. forces the OPFOR almost always wins.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
The P-40s flown by the Flying Tigers were inferior in turning radius and climbing capabilities. However, their maximum speed was greater, they could absorb much more damage than the Zeroes, and were superior in diving speed to any other japanese airplane built in that time (up to 1943-1944).
Actually, the Zero had a maximum speed of 565 km/h versus the P-40s top speed of 540 km/h. As you say, however, the P-40 was heavier and could dive better as a result - much of the Flying Tiger's success could be attributed to their preferred tactic of gaining higher altitude and using their superior diving ability to suprise the enemy. For almost all other uses, the heavier weight of the P-40 was a liability (ability to take damage being an exception, again as you point out).
The success of the Flying Tigers was based more on pilots capabilities and training (as the P-40s losses were much greater on other theaters of operations against the same Zeroes)
Agreed - as I said originally, experience skill and luck can wring more out of technically inferior equipment.
what is your POINT? You clearly are posting from a position of factual and experiential deficit. Evaluation is part of training. Train-eval-train-eval-repeat ad infinitum.
To bring this back to where i jumped in, it's smarmy nonesense for Norwegians -- or anyone to prance around in their Homer Simpson I'm So Smart Dance for having bunged a bunch of New York and LA and Chicago city kids (bulk of the Marines), or any other Opfor, who were sent to Norway, or anyplace else, to learn about fighting in the snow, or whatever. Excercises are not just for proving how perfect you are, they're specivically for finding out what you don't know so you can fix it.
Put another way, would you support the same gloating arguements about a bunch of Norwegians getting their asses handed to them in desert or jungle warfare excercise? I wouldn't. I'd say they learned a valuable lesson.
The REAL question is: what happened during the rematch? Did the losing OPFOR learn anything??
Feel free to try again.
From your referenced article:
... but come on, people, these were games. Sheesh.
Commodore Deeks said the most difficult task a submarine faced was to destroy an enemy sub and the exercises demonstrated that the Collins was a match for a modern nuclear submarine.
I wonder if Commodore Deeks thinks that those modern nuclear submarines would leave their noise augmenters on in an actual conflict.
Good for the Aussies
I reckon the US military also wanted to use LSD some time ago...
Is http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp related to ELF/VLF?
Let's go here, THEN go there.
This is better THAN that.
Noisy relative to WHAT?
Diesel boats probably are using 7-bladed props like SSNs have been. The 7th blade is to cancel out symmetry and cavitation that even-number blades would produce.
As for "noisy" it could be that the diesel boats deployed decoys or mobile simulators pretending to be US boats going on underwater sound phone. If the SSNs fell for it, shame on them. It also could be that decoys were released stealthily into the op area, collecting and relaying the whereabouts of the SSNs. If so, then chokepoints could effectively be set up and the diesels would just wait for the SSNs to 'come to papa', and then they Australian boats could "detonate" the remote sensor/pod/weapon and gain a "constructive kill".
It might even be possible that it's useful someday to restore astern-facing tubes so that live, guided torpedos could be trailed behind the sub at extremely slow speeds. When trailed, it's passive and can be released for autonomous engagement near the lurking/snooping sub that thinks it's in wired sub's baffles. Or, the torpedo can be detonated like a mine.
Maybe somebody can counter US boats by streaming 3 or 4 such devices at various distances and give each a set of planes so as to dispers mutual and reinforcing shockwaves in not just the horizontal and radial, but the vertical and radial, staggered at say 1,000, 2,000 and 3,000 yards to bracket ANY boat.
If it were MY own navy, facing quiet SSNs no matter WHICH navy it is, I'd configure my diesels to trail 5 recoveralbe mines or torpedoes, with 2 as far back as physics would allow, and 2 as near as my own boat could withstand the shock. The middle would be a sensor and a weapon. On detection or contact, it would command the surrounding 4 weapons configured as 2 torps and two mines to engage or maneuver and engage the acquired target.
What would suck is if a diver could interface with and tamperwith my trailed weapons so that I'd be blown up after retrieving them.
David Syes
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
How the hell did you manage to slip this one through the mod's? +3 Interesting! DWARF, ORC and TROLL....
the only decent winter training ground in the entire lower 48 states is in Minnesota
...
I think the US Pacific fleet Marines train in Alaska once in a while
The Marines have the Mountain Warfare Training Center in Bridgeport, CA. It's a bit south of Lake Tahoe.
Can't really compare to Minnesota, but they do get some mountain & cold weather training there.
I'm not in the military (now or ever), but a friend in the Canadian forces tells me this can be so rigid that a mechanic for one type of vehicle can not, does not, and will not work on another type of vehicle.
So much so that in one operational theatre an humvee could not be made to go because no humvee specific mechanics were present (or they only had a humvee mechanic, I can't remember which). The underlying problem was something common to all forms of internal combustion engine, but the only US mechanic present was not allowed/capable of applying the fix to a different kind of vehicle.
My friend had the vehicle moving in under 2 minutes.
It's been my understanding this undertraining/overspecialization within the US forces can sometimes lead to a bunch of people standing around with no idea what to do next.
Scary stuff.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If only I had mod points of my own.
The way to deal with this without using nukes is to have DE's tow a battery of FAE (Fuel-Air Explosive) rockets. Once a CVBG arrives to the area, you float and launch your FAE rockets in overwhelming numbers, say 60 rockets. If you attack a CVN from one beam, even with the escort screen ships, they WILL eventually have very hot CIWS barrels. Some will malfunction for sure (NO, I repeat NO CIWS is 100% FMC (fully-mission-capable)) or failure-proof, and others will have to cease fire if the depression angle lowers (ships heel, roll, yaw, pitch, sag and hog, and hull-strafing is a possibility) as a friendly or close-aboard ship zigs and zags her ass off angling for better coverage of the kill zone to take out the missiles or rockets.
As these rockets or missiles stream in in corkscrew or pop-up fashion, assuming some 30 CIWS mounts waiting for them, each CIWS will spit/belch/burp/bzzzt out some 3500 RPM, maybe in bursts of 200 until the damn link/belts jam or the ammo runs out, or a control board sizzles or cracks under recoil and sonic effects, at which point (I don't think they're self-feeding/self-reloading) the Gunner's Mates will be out there reloading manually or unjamming the gun or hot-swapping boards.
Once the CIWS guns are reported/detected to be firing with less vigor (maybe some of the inbound missiles have sensors and could relay resistance information to the launcher), a follow-up barrage of FAE bombs on missiles screams in.
Once converged over the flight deck, Ka-effing-BOOM!!!.
Mission complete. Fragging festooned CV/CVNs' islands' and superstructures' antennae and portholes/windows and concussively mangling the flight deck will destroy ANY a/c exposed, and maybe quite a few in the hangar; topside or exposed personnel will be gonners from fragmentation, concussion, or from falling 80 feet to the sea. The First prize --if done right-- will be the catastrophic failure of the launch pistons and the arrestor wire capstans. The consolation prize will be the resulting pile of junk topside that has to be crane or mule dumped/shoved overboard, time-consuming FOD (Foreign Object Damage) walk to make a green (flight-ready) flight deck, trolley and shuttle and piston checks that have to be made to make sure it's not destroy on post-blast use... LOTS of things would have to be done. So much for the 20'-80' of steel/lead/composite/honeycomb waterline armor. The third prize would be snap-depressed FAE bombs that fall astern to warp the prop shafts or the blades, or knock some vital pumps or switchboards off-line. 4th prize would be collateral damage to the screen ships, either by direct damage inflicted, or by the typical collisions you can induce if you gratuitously toss in a few dozen torpedoes at not just the CVN but screen ships. Every ship driver will ask him/herself TWO questions: Save my ass? Save the birdfarm? Or, they might ask, "What the F******????!!!!"
I offered a similar scenario to my ship's Tactical Action Officer when I was only 20 or 21, was a radioman, and was sitting on a radar for ESWS (Enlisted Surface Warfare Specialist) training. I had this scenario NOT due to navy knowledge or training, but from my imagination, from reading Clancy books from the angle of besting his own scenarios, and from the angle of stomping the shit out of hubris. Way back THEN, that could be -by some- called "assymetric warfare". I HATED the standard doctrine and pubs that neatly arranged wargames, joint operations and such. Almost every paragraph could be countered. (I applaud that retired US Marine who used minarets and motorcycle-based signals men who roundly kicked the shit out of the exalted operational commanders is the professional version of me. I'm the rough, unprivileged, enlisted, restricted, info-starved, but still somewhat imaginative version of him. My Security Alert scenarios I hurled at my second command were effective, time-consuming, and intentionally humiliating so much that they ceased using me, since I made goddamn sure they werent' going to in under 30 minutes pass
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Mmmm...
Just be on best behavior and DON'T forget an anniversary.
What would the Canadian Army want with the Michigan militia's ass?
Having lived near Eugene my entire life, I can confirm that they have exposed themselves to many interesting substances and other weird things, and thus should not be used as a baseline for studying the effects of ELF radio waves.
I guess I can't picture this right. They had the target physically surrounded. The instructor dropped in from the tree ( I understand that part) and killed the target without anyone seeing.
So, they just happened to have put the target directly under the tree he was hiding in and he just bopped the guy on the head? or were the surrounders facing the wrong direction?
Or do you mean 'literally' as in figuratively?
Hmmm, I do believe that CS gas is considered a chemical weapon under the Geneva Convention.
The purpose of language is communication, If the idea is clear the grammar ain't important
I see alot of discussion here about the wavelength and power absorption effects on biological systems.
When did someone figure out the mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation harms biological systems? Was the nobel prize awarded while I wasn't looking?
Relax people, we probably absorb more EMF from our TVs, DVD players, computers, and cell phones than from ELF transmissions.
-ted
2. they were dirt cheap vs. the alternative, building a proportionate conventional army, so they left money for other things, included, I must say, aids to poor countries.
The US introduced AIDS to poor countries? I always thought that accusation was a bit farfetched.
If you meant to say aid, then that is nonsense. The US has never given more aid as a share of GDP than comparable countries do. 0.1-0.15 is normal for the US, except for the 1948-1951 period. That is very low for a developed country. Even the Soviet Union was more generous, with a fraction of US GDP. The Soviet Union certainly never had anything close to the US defense budget and was apparently still competitive militarily (according to some). The US started the arms race, and the US still maintains a cold war army today for no apparent reason. I don't see what the US taxpayer gets in return for that money except enemies its government makes.
The US taxpayer certainly doesn't get homeland defense. The USAF was many minutes away on 9/11. That could never have happened in Europe. With several minutes advance warning after the first attack those hijacked planes would have been intercepted by at least three different national airforces.
Wow, several minutes and you could have an armed, fully fueled jet, with qualified pilot, off and away from airbases a hundred miles away, and intercept an (admittedly large) passenger airliner, and have made/been authorized with shoot/no-shoot?
So, lesse.
We'll assume that "three different national airforces" keep jets, at all airbases, fully armed, fully fueled, in a hot-standby condition, at all times.
We'll also assume the pilots also stay fully suited up, in a little shack right next to the plane.
We'll also assume, that "three different national airforces" have standing treaties with each other regarding airspace.
We'll also assume that these planes have performance characteristics of an F-16 (admittedly a F-14 would be better), with a climb rate of 50,000 feet a minute and a top speed of 2,000 MPH. We'll also assume it and the pilot can do 0-2,000 MPH in zero time, and immediately from takeoff.
So, to get from 0 feet, to call it 5,000 feet up, and to shoot a missile that will send debris covering a heavily populated area, 100 miles away, the time is still... oh, look at that, 3 minutes, with all those assumptions.
Somehow... I doubt it.
But the nature of wargames (as opposed to actual fighting) is that a lot of rules exist beyond what would normally exist in actual fighting. And the last thing you want is for the wargammers to assume all those rules are breakable. I'm pretty sure that "no live ammunition will be used" was also one of the rules, and I'm pretty sure that none of the soldiers involved thought that rule would be broken either. How is the use of CS in violation of the rules any different, than, say, one side using twice as many soldiers as the scenario called for?
Expecting the soldiers to anticipate a break in the engagement rules is unreasonable. The set of engagement rules is what makes these war games workable in the first place and not just a pointless one-sided slaughter. The engagement rules are there to make the odds more even so there's a point to the whole excercise.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
To have been a fair test, the information should have been split into two sections - first, before the game is on, the people are told what the *real* hard and fast unbreakable rules are (like, no live ammunition, or "when you see this blinking light it means you've been hit and if you keep participating after that you're cheating.", or "This zone is the boundry of the game area - go outside it and you are disqualified.") Then, second, there should be an in-game briefing, once the clock is ticking and the soldiers are acting "in character", and that is where the possibly faulty intelligence is handed out.
Otherwise there's no way for the soldier to tell the difference between rules that are breakable without getting into trouble and rules that aren't. What's the difference between using a banned piece of equipment versus, say, getting up and walking around after the laser gun equpiment says you're supposed to be dead?
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
for a minute there i was worried .. i thought they were talking about the linux exectable format.
no, no need to worry this is about an unimportant thing in a far away place called real world.
Not being a soldier, but being an avid roleplayer, I'd say the scenario rules should be laid out in two sections. First, OUT of game, OUT of character, the *real* unbreakable rules are given to the players. That would include things like "no live ammo", and "this is the limit of our excercise area". Those are the rules that if you break them, you have just cheated, and they would be akin to the RPG rules like "I won't allow the such-and-such rulebook supplement to be used". Then, "in-game" is where the intelligence briefing that says "they don't have CS gas" should be given, because then the soldiers are "in character".
If the information was given out-of-character during the rules engagement briefing, then it was not a good test of the soldiers' skills. If it was given in-character during a briefing once the gmae was on, then it was.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
you're right, that could never of happened in europe...
because european cities don't have any sky scrapers! lol.
And don't forget, inhalation of dihydrogen monoxide for even a few minutes...
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
Sigh....these things take on a life of their own, don't they?
The true roots of this are a wooden seal of the US which had passive reflectors in it. It worked by reflecting waves transmitted into the room. That kind of thing worked when electronics were fairly rare inside offices and pre-TEMPEST.
There was also an embassy building which couldn't be used due to embedded bugs.
Beamed energy creating a rare form of leukemia in a specific individual? Nope. Read a decent medical textbook.
Very much so - the 10'th made up a significant portion of US forces in Afghanistan. And Fort Drum may not be International Falls, but it still gets quite cold up there in the winter ;)
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
I really loved the Chequ Forest up by Ashland, the Black Cat vegetarian cafe in Ashland, and the jail was not that bad a place compared to many. The Ashland deputies win my vote for the best people to take you into custody in my experience.
25 years of glorious civil disobedience up at ELF, and it is decommisioned. It only took us 10 years up in the Grand Forks missile silo fields to get those nukes removed, but of course, they left a few fields in Minot, Malmstrom, and Colorado-Nebraska.
Well, I guess it is all off to Alliant technology (antipersonell mines and depleted uranium weapons) in Minneapolis land now where many arrests do not make it to court and some people have even been found innocent by juries.
Nice news.
Makes you wonder about what is up with HAARP in Alaska though.
Shalom,
I don't know what they're noisy compared to, I was just quoting the great-grandparent of this post.
And I'm way out of my depth once it comes to marine technology... so I'll stop now.
Be a PATRIOT--because the only thing we have to fear is the lack thereof.
CS does not kill or harm. It simply confuses the enemy. I was not in this excersise, it was a navy / HG buddy. Anyway, the HG thought the SEALs had the proper equipment. You know, gas mask IS default equipment in combat...
Oh, it happened all right. And from what I heared, their commander (LT, capt. or something) was of your opinion. Which is the same as mine. These guys probably go into combat, fully ready to get surprised and to handle that situation.
I wouldn't be worried about the commander. I'd be worried about the new asshole the chiefs would rip me.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
The US military is twice as expensive per capita of citizens as even #2, France (itself 20% larger than #3, Saudi Arabia). The larger militaries benefit from economies of scale, as production/transportation of material have large overheads in these segregated military economies, amortized over larger forces recruited from larger populations:
Per capita military budgets:
Rest: $500B:6.4B people = $78
USA: $466B:0.29B people = $1606
China: $65B:1.3B people = $50
Russia: $50B:0.14B people = $357
France: $50B:60M people = $833
Japan: $45B:0.12B people = $375
Germ.: $39B:82M people = $476
UK: $32B:60M people = $528
Italy $20B:60M people = $333
Saudis: $18B:26M people = $692
SKorea: $168B:49M people = $327
Include Iraq and Afghanistan's $200B extra budgets (not including intelligence budgets, some secret, and other federal expenses that subsidize military contractors), and the US spends much more than the entire rest of the world, probably by 25%. That ~800B:y represents about 8% of our $10T:y GDP, which is itself about 30% of the total human product, so America's military represents almost 3% of the total human output (in dollars, an almost arbitrary measurement at that comprehensive scale, but that's all we've got). At about 5% of the population, we're way out of line.
--
make install -not war