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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.
No particular hate, but no love either. They out of service and no one is planning on reviving the class, AFAIK.
Too big, too slow, not useful enough. Although putting a couple of nuclear reactors in one of the old hulls and lighting up the energy weapons might be a way to go.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
That is the primary mission of the Fleet Ballistic Missile submarine ("Boomers"), but there are the guided missile and the attack submarines in the US fleet as well. Their primary purpose is to deny a potential adversary the use of their seapower. Some commentator once said "A submarine can't perform every naval mission, but it can prevent the enemy from performing ANY naval mission".
I'm not crazy,I'm actively irresponsible.
We can't find MH370. If we can't find a missing plane in the ocean, then the tech for finding subs has a ways to go before it makes submarines obsolete. Plus, I bet all these detection techniques only work over a short distance. You'd need a lot of detectors to get good coverage. The ocean is large. Plus, anything active (sound, lasers, etc) can be detected by the sub and avoided.
Plus, for non-ship based sensors, you try covering the ocean with highly sensitive detectors. Things that are highly sensitive and the ocean don't mix - unless you are going to pull each detector up on a regular basis for maintenance. Plus, detectors require power. Getting power 50-200 km offshore isn't all that easy. Surface ships pinging away in shallow waters pose the greatest danger. But for every threat, there is a way to counter it. Satellite tracking of enemy ships so subs have some warning of what's coming. Special coatings to reflect lasers. Active cancellation of the acoustic waves.
hunter killers of naval warfare. You think you can find them? Best of luck. Lasers don't go far under water and they diffract all over the place in the water column. US Submarines have some of the most sensitive acoustic detection equipment designed. They can hang suspended in the ocean, listening. They can silently go shallow or deep in the water column. Just stick the nose above the main thermocline, or tilt down to just penetrate into the deep sound channel.
If you are a surface ship, and a submarine wants you you are just dead. By the time you hear a MK-48 torpedo, it is too late. You don't even want to be in the same ocean with one those because it will kill you. By the time you detect that harpoon missile you might get the first one but the second one will get you. Your a surface ship, you can't hide, but that submarine can and you cant hear it over the background noise of the ocean.
Look up how many weapons a Virginia class submarine can carry. If you are a surface group dumb enough to be cruising in proximity of each other, they can put a shit load of torpedoes on your ass, turn around, go deep and haul ass while you are still trying to rescue your sinking ship mates.
5 US Nuclear Submarines can deny ANY fleet the Straits of Gibraltar, The Straits of Hormuz. There is not a Navy in the world that can challenge the US Navy at sea. If the Chinese tried to cross Taiwan Strait it would just be a shooting gallery.
Lest anyone think I know not from whence I speak, I spent 10 years in two classes of fast attack submarines in the US Navy. Are motto was then and still is now, "There are two kinds of ships, Submarines and Targets."
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
How much credibility does this article lose once you put "Big Data" in there?
Just about as much as when he declares them "the backbone of the US Navy". Anyone who knows anything about the navy understands that our nuclear carriers are the backbone of the US Navy. Just about everything the navy does revolves around those carrier groups.
Submarines may someday become obsolete. Not in the foreseeable future though. Eventually, we'll probably have massive swarms of small, cheap, robotic drones that can swarm the oceans and search for them with active methods (not caring if they get detected themselves). That will probably signal the end of practical, stealthy submarines.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
If Halsey had been less of an idiot and left Admiral Lee behind with Task Force 34 during Leyte Gulf you would have seen modern battleships clashing with each other off Samar, an engagement that almost certainly would have been an ass raping of the Imperial Japanese Navy, barring alien intervention or extremely bad luck on the part of the USN.
As it was it only happened only three times in the entire war under what might be considered an equal footing, once in the Pacific (Washington vs. Kirishima off Guadalcanal) and twice in the Atlantic (Bismarck vs. Hood and Scharnhorst vs. Duke of York). There were other battles where battleships were involved (Surigao Strait and Bismarck's final battle) but they can't even charitably be described as fair engagements. Surigao involved a depleted Japanese force against an entire American battleline that outclassed them in every department while Bismarck was crippled before her last fight, unable to steam at speed or maneuver.
The battleship wasn't as useless as people would have you believe, nor was it Pearl Harbor that sealed its doom. The oft-repeated mantra is that the United States Navy was invested in the battleship and Pearl Harbor was a rude awakening; this doesn't survive even a casual examination of the historical record. The Two-Ocean Navy Act passed Congress in 1940, nearly 18 months before Pearl Harbor and it very deliberately recognized the supremacy of the aircraft carrier, both in number of ships ordered and the statements of the legislators who wrote it. The Japanese were more invested in the battleship than the USN, wasting their limited resources on two mega battleships that ultimately accomplished nothing, while deluding themselves into thinking that a single decisive battle like Tsushima would be enough to convince the United States to throw in the towel, a country that had seventeen times Japan's GDP and twice her population!
Incidentally, the turning point of the war didn't happen at Midway, as is often repeated, but rather it happened at Guadalcanal. Midway was a battle, Guadalcanal was a campaign, one which proved the Japanese were not equipped materially or psychologically to fight a long war. Guess which ship saved the day for the USN during the last decisive engagement? A battleship, USS Washington. :)
At least the USN got a return on investment for our expensive toys. I can't think of a single Japanese battleship that accomplished anything of note during the entire war. The few that they were willing to commit early in the war were destroyed off Guadalcanal with little to show for it; the rest they hoarded for a decisive battle that never came, ultimately being forced to commit them at Leyte Gulf, where they were so hopelessly outmatched that even Halsey's stupidity didn't give them enough breathing room to carry the day.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The 2700 lb shell was armor piercing. No one would waste that on jungle bunnies. The bursting charge was only 40 lb. It was just a big slug of steel. Pretty sure they were firing the 1900 lb "high capacity" shell, but again the bursting charge even on that was only 154 lb. It wouldn't have been a very pleasant experience, but why would that scare them more than the explosion of 400 lb of TNT from a 2000 lb bomb?
Horse shit. Accuracy was a big lie. Battleships themselves were the size of very large buildings, and they couldn't hit each other for shit. Hit rates at full battle range were typically 1-5%.
That may have been true in WW1, or even for WW2 battleships with outdated fire control systems, but it was most definitely not the case with the radar driven computerized fire control systems used by the USN and Royal Navy. USS Washington landed 20 main battery hits on Kirishima, out of 117 16" shells fired, not all of which were aimed at Kirishima. That was in 1942; the technology only got better as the war advanced. Duke of York achieved similar hit rates against Scharnhorst, in rough seas, during the arctic night and a blinding snowstorm.
In WW2, at the peak of battleship technology, the round-to-round uncertainty in muzzle velocity for Iowa class was speced to +-10 fps out of 2500 fps. That suggests a range repeatability/accuracy of 320 m at a full range of 40 km.
Which is largely irrelevant in a ship-to-ship action, because those weren't fought at such ranges even in war-games, never mind reality. That said, there's a story somewhere about Iowa obtaining a first salvo straddle on a maneuvering Japanese destroyer at >30 kilometers off Truk. This is another testament to American fire control; the Japanese couldn't manage to do the same off Samar at considerably closer ranges. Flip that battle around, placing a USN fleet of cruisers and battleships against Japanese destroyers in the daylight and it would likely have been a massacre.
I don't dispute the point that battleships are irrelevant now but you should correct some of your facts about them, lest you repeat misinformation. :)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I assure you I know quite a LOT about battleships, and though all are decommissioned that doesn't mean the design or concept is obsolete. They are out of service in the US for purely political/lobbying reasons. They are out of the service in the rest of the world because everyone else gone with a sea denial strategy.
The issue isn't "The End of War" or even MAD. The issue is that we are very quickly approaching the technological threshold where unmanned vehicles will outperform all manned vehicles at a fraction of the cost. (And needless to say, reduced risk to our military personnel).
To put a finer point on it: How well will the latest Virginia-class sub fare in a combat scenario against 150 different 2-meter long drone vessels?
Want to bet that the 150 drones can be produced for less than $1.8 billion?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
The cost to modernize each battleship was estimated by the navy to be about 500 million dollars (back in the early 2000s), a Zumwalt class destroyer costs 3.45 billion (not including the R&D costs). Granted the Zumwalt is the F-35 of the navy, but congress loves blowing money on military equipment.
Same goes for ammunition. A 16 inch shell is about $500, a tomahawk missile nearly 1 million. Missiles certainly have their role, but we have completely eliminated our naval artillery when it is still useful and cost-effective.
The battleship maybe obsolete as a ship fighting platform but the ground artillery support role they were the most cost-effective methods around. that main guns were firing $25,000 rounds and are very accurate. Guided missiles attached to a plane are way more expensive and fighter planes are not cheap to fly or maintain. They have a greater range, but it is certainly not cheap way to hit targets.
I think battleships being retired is more of a shift of the navy of wanting use aircraft and not interested in a ground support role from the coast. Battleships really should have stayed as part of the fleet.