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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.
How much credibility does this article lose once you put "Big Data" in there?
As long as they can remain undetectable from beyond the range of their nuclear warheads*, they will be indispensible. You should even be glad your enemies have them, as they are one of the most stabilizing technologies because they discourage first strikes (by guaranteeing a second strike).
* I know the Virginia-class subs don't have nukes yet.
Why the hate on battleships? Why are they out of favor?
Effective range of a battleship cannon: 25-45 km
Effective range of a anti-ship missile: 270+ km
Effective range of an aircraft carrying an anti-ship missile: ~2000km
You do the math. Battleships are as dead as the cavalry charge.
Attack submarines, like the Virginia class, are not the backbone of the US Navy. The aircraft carrier battle group, typically including one or two attack submarines attached, is still the main battle group of the US navy. The other type of submarine is the SSBN ballistic missile submarine which always deploys alone and spends its entire patrol hiding from anything and everything, its sole purpose being to guarantee a nuclear 2nd strike capability for the United States as part of our nuclear triad. The Ohio class submarines serve in this capacity for the United States and even then they aren't the "bakbone" of the US Navy, but rather a specialized asset with a singular purpose. The US doesn't show the colors around the world with submarines, it's the carrier battle group that commands respect, even from our enemies.
Effective range of a Trident II nuclear missile: 6000+ miles.
Nuclear subs are not stealthy to get close their target. Nuclear subs are stealthy to be by FAR the most difficult nuclear platform to hit in a first strike, while still being able to hit targets VERY FAR AWAY.
Depth charges dropped from a plane
"His name was James Damore."
Yeah cause what use is a floating nuclear powered city that can go anywhere in the world and be used as a platform to stage invasions and relief efforts.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Considering the fact that either you have submarines and you know how they work - and can therefore at least have a reasonable defense against them or you don't have them and your knowledge will diminish because you can't train those scenarios.
Submarines also come in many variants - all the way from the nuclear "big dicks" to the miniature one-person type. It only takes a small one to cause a major impact in a harbor.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I'm not going to argue your main points, but as a less partial party I need to raise some points of my own. This is less aimed at you (I'm sure you know everything I'm about to say), and more aimed at the other readers, to give them a more objective viewpoint.
1. The natural counter to a submarine is another submarine. Russia and China may not be able to match us fleet-for-fleet, but assuming they're the aggressors, they'll be able to bring all their force to bear at one point, outnumbering us in the battle but not the war. Do we have half our submarine fleet or more near Taiwan at all times? If not, they can make a reasonable attempt at crossing.
2. Submarines and aircraft basically can't touch each other (specialized ASW aircraft notwithstanding). If the entire Russian Tu-95 fleet flies over the entire US submarine fleet, neither one will do anything to the other. They might not even notice each other. Fleets and aircraft carriers are declining in primacy as aircraft ranges increase. We flew a B-52 combat mission from America to Iraq and back without landing - aircraft carriers, and thus navies in general, are no longer the sole way to project power. If America and Russia finally go to war, the winner will probably be the one who wins the air war, not the one who wins the sea war or land war. (Of course, with nuclear missiles in play in a US-Ru war, the real winner would be China, unless one of us decides to nuke them anyways while we're at it).
3. Consider the effect of naval drones. How many small boats is an aircraft carrier able to fight off? Imagine a USS Cole scenario, except instead of just one suicide boat masquerading as a civilian, it's dozens or even hundreds of suicide drones. You don't need to take my word for how effective these would be, there were Navy wargames for asymmetric warfare that had a "fleet" much like I proposed take out the entire Blue-team fleet, which was basically a full carrier group (the brassholes decided this was "cheating" and ordered the wargames to continue according to a script guaranteeing Blue-team victory) [citation: look up "Millennium Challenge 2002"]. Surface drones may be no threat to our subs, but our subs are similarly no threat to them, and eventually someone will get submarine drones usable. At that point, they're basically just really smart torpedoes with trans-Atlantic range. I'm not sure what the counter for *that* is, except for "not being in the water" (see point 2).