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Will Submarines Soon Become As Obsolete As the Battleship?
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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 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 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 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, 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, 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 and Santa Cruz Islands.
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.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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 battleship was often enough to deter any fleet that did not have an equivalently armoured and armed battleship of its own from attacking while simultaneously forcing that enemy to keep a nearby presence to deter the battleship from doing the same. As a result, many WWII Battleships spent their time sitting in port as nothing more than a highly glorified gatekeeper.
2. Nations that did not have extensive blue-water navies often used battleships on their own, with little to no support fleet. This made them easy targets for swarms of aircraft laden with bombs and torpedoes. The USA used this tactic extensively against Japan and sunk many of Japans heavy naval ships. The battleship Yamato (the heaviest battleship ever built) was sunk this way along with most of its accompanying fleet; the USA lost only 10 aircraft in the assault.
Anti-airacraft systems advanced heavily after the war, so it's doubtful that similar tactics would work against a modern battle group.
3. Battleships are extremely expensive to maintain and operate during both peace time and war time. Extensive automation and improvements have lowered this amount dramatically over time, but it's still high.
4. Logistics are a bitch. Modern nuclear powered craft can carry enough supplies to last several months, and require refueling only once ever couple of decades, but hydrocarbon powered battleships required regular refuelling by either an oiler or at a friendly port. Bigger ships require more supplies and don't necessarily extend any additional influence
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.
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.
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.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
You do realize that the vast majority of battleships worldwide were decommissioned in the 50's and 60's, and no navy has had a battleship in service since the 90's, right? The first Iraq war was the last time one was used.
Battleships became obsolete beginning in World War 2. During that war the US Navy moved away from focusing their fleets around the big battleships and instead focused on building their carrier fleet supported by smaller destroyers. Aircraft carriers make battleships obsolete because a carrier can destroy a battleship long before the Battleship could fire a shot at the aircraft carrier. One of the big battleships could fire nine 2,100 pound armor piercing shells every minute at a range of 19 miles. A plane could drop a 2000 pound bomb on a battleship from a range of a hundred miles. Not only that, but planes were cheap and could be quickly replaced, but replacing a battleship was expensive and time consuming. Part of the reason the US had some early stunning victories during WW2, despite Japan being more prepared for war and having one of the most powerful Battleship fleets in the word was the the Japanese were often still fighting using battleship tactics used in the previous wars while the United States was forced to use carrier tactics because their battleship fleet was gutted at Pearl Harbor. All the advantages that battleships had, namely a larger platform for heavier armor and massive guns, have all been negated by the introduction of air power and better munitions. That is even more true today with the guided missiles and more powerful aircraft.