In a modern full-scale naval shooting war, would non-subs be sunk fairly quickly?

[robby]

@MichaelEmouse

…Yes, I said “little payload” because space is at a premium inside a submarine as I’m sure you very much realized when you lived aboard one. They do have a payload, no doubt about that.

Modern submarines are without a doubt very tightly packed, but they are still relatively large, massive vessels that can carry a sizable weapons loadout. A modern fast-attack submarine (e.g. Los Angeles-class or Virginia-class) displaces 7,000 to 8,000 tons and can carry 12 vertically-launched cruise missiles and 25-30 heavyweight Mark 48 ADCAP torpedoes. These torpedoes are wire-guided and controllable by the launching submarine.

@MichaelEmouse

I should have made my reference to height more explicit. Height is useful because of the curvature of the earth. A plane flying at 15km altitude has a much farther detection horizon than a submarine can ever have for equivalent levels of tech.

What LSLGuy said. Height only matters for line-of-sight sensors, like radar or visual search. Submarines don’t use either of these, because radar is counter-productive to being stealthy, and visual searches require you to put up a periscope, which can be detected either visually or by radar. Submarines prefer to use passive sonar if they are relying on their own sensors.

@MichaelEmouse

…I don’t know the proper term. What are the terms used to refer to the submarine equivalents of EW, ESM, ECM and ECCM?

Noisemakers and sonar decoys, maybe? FWIW, submarines do carry ESM arrays that are mounted on photonics masts or a periscope. These are useful to detect search radars.

@MichaelEmouse

What about being small makes them not terribly effective?

When compared to the large heavyweight submarine-launched torpedoes, they’re relatively slow; they have a relatively short range; they’re not wire-guided, and they have a relatively limited search capability before they run out of fuel; and finally, they don’t carry much explosive.

@MichaelEmouse

…Why just partially?

Because a surface ship is stuck in the noisy surface interface environment above the thermocline, so it can never fully utilize it’s bow-mounted sonar in conjunction with it’s towed array sonar like a submarine can.

@MichaelEmouse

Thank you for the informative posts.

No problem.

[John_DiFool]

@robby

Because a surface ship is stuck in the noisy surface interface environment above the thermocline, so it can never fully utilize it’s bow-mounted sonar in conjunction with it’s towed array sonar like a submarine can.

I believe they have planes on the array which can direct it under any thermoclines, if need be.

[robby]

@John_DiFool

I believe they have planes on the array which can direct it under any thermoclines, if need be.

A surface ship can’t do the same with their bow-mounted sonar, though. (Well, actually they can, but only once. :D) There are advantages to being able to use the bow-mounted sonar simultaneously and in conjunction with the towed array. In a surface ship, however, the bow-mounted sonar is up near the surface (by definition), and the towed array will likely be deployed below the layer. In a submarine, both sensor arrays are ideally situated below the layer.

There is one other consideration that hasn’t really been discussed…in my experience, surface ships are simply not as well trained in the use of sonar. With submarines, passive sonar is used 24/7/365 to track all contacts. It’s the primary sensor, so submarine crews get very, very good at utilizing it.

With surface ships, their primary sensors are visual and radar. Sonar is often an afterthought (it seems to me), even with ships that are supposed to be dedicated to an ASW role. (For example, since well before WWII, destroyers have been dedicated to ASW. However, the modern Arleigh Burke-class destroyer has become a jack-of-all-trades, with an AAW and ASUW role as well. Some ships in this class don’t even have towed-arrays!)

The use of passive sonar is also trickier to utilize than active sonar or radar, because passive sonar only provides information on the bearing of a contact. Range is indirectly determined over time. With active sonar and with radar, you get bearing and range immediately, and it becomes very easy to get lazy and depend on these sensors exclusively.

However, this is a dangerous habit to get into with a submarine in the vicinity, because radar is useless with respect to submerged submarines, and active sonar merely broadcasts your position out to a much greater range than any return you might hope to get.

So, with that as a background, in my opinion, it is all but inevitable that surface ship crews will not be as well trained in the use of passive sonar as submarine crews are…which is another reason why the surface ship is at a disadvantage to the submarine.

All of this is why U.S. carrier battle groups always include a fast-attack submarine or two, because the best weapon to use against an enemy submarine is a friendly submarine.

[carnivorousplant]

@robby

Modern submarines are without a doubt very tightly packed, but they are still relatively large, massive vessels that can carry a sizable weapons loadout. A modern fast-attack submarine (e.g. Los Angeles-class or Virginia-class) displaces 7,000 to 8,000 tons and can carry 12 vertically-launched cruise missiles and 25-30 heavyweight Mark 48 ADCAP torpedoes. These torpedoes are wire-guided and controllable by the launching submarine.

Loose Lips Sink Ships! :dubious:

[dba_Fred]

@Throatwarbler_Mangrove

<clipped>
Meanwhile Britain, who hasn’t had a real catapult carrier since 1979, no institutional knowledge of how to operate one and since they’ve retired the Harrier, actually won’t have any fixed wing carrier aircraft or carriers at all until the F-35B enters service (i.e. never) is still a “large modern navy”. <clipped>

Bolding mine.

Marines Declare F-35B Operational
The plane was declared operational by Gen. Joe Dunford, the outgoing Marine Corps commandant — and incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs — in a July 31 announcement.
And I can’t wait till the squadron here deploys in 2017 - they are noisy!

[dba_Fred]

@LSLGuy

<clipped>
As a separate matter to the above there is the promise of networked warfare. This is only now coming to pass, but all of DoD is working feverishly in this direction. Once satellites and aircraft can track everything everywhere, and those tracks can be datalinked to shooters anywhere of any type, then own-ship sensor range becomes much less important for the shooters. Be they subs, or fighters, or future airborne missile wagons. <clipped>

Maybe I’m missing something but the surface Navy has been using NTDS (Naval Tactical Data System) since the 1960s to network sensors.
My experience in the 1980s was standing watches on the Bridge and in the Surface Module of the Combat Information Center (now CDC) but we (the ship) was receiving sensor data from other ships, aircraft, satellites, possibly land-based sensors, maybe subs. I’m sure the integration has only improved since then. So in what way is networked warfare only a promise for the surface Navy?

[robby]

@robby

Modern submarines are without a doubt very tightly packed, but they are still relatively large, massive vessels that can carry a sizable weapons loadout. A modern fast-attack submarine (e.g. Los Angeles-class or Virginia-class) displaces 7,000 to 8,000 tons and can carry 12 vertically-launched cruise missiles and 25-30 heavyweight Mark 48 ADCAP torpedoes. These torpedoes are wire-guided and controllable by the launching submarine.

@carnivorousplant

Loose Lips Sink Ships! :dubious:

:rolleyes: I’m well aware of what information is classified and what has been made publicly available. That’s the reason I don’t answer all questions posted in threads like this.

That being said, the data you quoted above is all publicly available general information that has been released by the U.S. Navy at sites like this:

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_print.asp?cid=4100&tid=100&ct=4&page=1
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=2100&tid=950&ct=2
http://navylive.dodlive.mil/2013/03/15/meet-ssn-785-the-navys-12th-virginia-class-submarine/

404 Error Page

www.history.navy.mil%2Fmuseums%2Fkeyport%2FHistory_of_the_Torpedo_and_the_Relevance_to_Todays_Navy.pdf

The U.S. Navy has to trumpet the capabilities of its submarines to a certain extent, or the funding from Congress will dry up.

[robby]

@robby

…That being said, the data you quoted above is all publicly available general information that has been released by the U.S. Navy at sites like this:

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_print.asp?cid=4100&tid=100&ct=4&page=1
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=2100&tid=950&ct=2
Blogs
(404 - Page Not Found)| Raytheon
www.history.navy.mil%2Fmuseums%2Fkeyport%2FHistory_of_the_Torpedo_and_the_Relevance_to_Todays_Navy.pdf

Corrected last link:
http://www.history.navy.mil/museums/keyport/History_of_the_Torpedo_and_the_Relevance_to_Todays_Navy.pdf

[MichaelEmouse]

@robby

Noisemakers and sonar decoys, maybe?

I’d have expected the equivalent of chaff for use against torpedo pinging.

Taking advantage of terrain bouncing or curved trajectory of sound through water may also enable active sonar to mislead other subs and surface ships.
For what reason(s) is it impossible to have the equivalent of active electronically scanned arrays which would allow low probability of intercept active sonar?

@robby

they’re not wire-guided

What advantages come with a torpedo being wire-guided? There’s the ability to integrate the sub’s sensor data, update trajectory and the greater computational capability of the sub. What else?

@robby

All of this is why U.S. carrier battle groups always include a fast-attack submarine or two, because the best weapon to use against an enemy submarine is a friendly submarine.

Would it make sense to have carrier battle group made up of a carrier and submarines with not much else? The carrier should be able to defend itself against aircraft with its own aircrafts. The subs should be able to get the upper end on other surface ships and travel faster. The subs could even launch SAMs, no?
Do you think submarines will be used for more functions than nukes, attacking ships/subs and carrying small diver teams?
For the same general capability as an Arleigh-Burke, what’s a reasonable ballpark figure for how much more expensive it is to have a sub?

[robby]

@MichaelEmouse

…Would it make sense to have carrier battle group made up of a carrier and submarines with not much else? The carrier should be able to defend itself against aircraft with its own aircrafts. The subs should be able to get the upper end on other surface ships and travel faster.

No, that would not make sense. The carrier’s own aircraft is used for long-range defense of the carrier out to several hundred nautical miles. Escort vessels, such as cruisers and destroyers, are utilized to defend against shorter-range air threats, as well as surface threats including small fast attack craft that may best be engaged using guns.

@MichaelEmouse

The subs could even launch SAMs, no?

The problem with SAMs is that subs currently have no good way to track and engage aircraft without sacrificing their stealth advantage. Any SAM launched by a submarine would provide a great way to vector all other enemy assets to the location of the submarine.

@MichaelEmouse

Do you think submarines will be used for more functions than nukes, attacking ships/subs and carrying small diver teams?

They already are. That’s part of the mission of a fast attack submarine. Nuclear weapons are primarily deployed on ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). This thread is concerned with the former, not the latter.

@MichaelEmouse

For the same general capability as an Arleigh-Burke, what’s a reasonable ballpark figure for how much more expensive it is to have a sub?

Submarines have different missions and capabilities than destroyers, so it would be difficult to compare them on that basis. In any event, Arleigh Burke-class destroyers cost about $1.843 billion each, while a Virginia-class submarine goes for about $2.688 billion each.

[LSLGuy]

@dba_Fred

Bolding mine.

Marines Declare F-35B Operational
The plane was declared operational by Gen. Joe Dunford, the outgoing Marine Corps commandant — and incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs — in a July 31 announcement.
And I can’t wait till the squadron here deploys in 2017 - they are noisy!

While factually true, the rest of this story is that the definition of “operational” has been stretched to, and IMO past, the breaking point here for essentially political reasons. Lockheed and USMC both had a very strong institutional need to have IOC declared in this fiscal year. So it was.

The fact the aircraft are all but unarmed and all but blind doesn’t matter. Unless they need to actually go to war in the next year before they’re retrofitted with all the stuff (mostly software) needed to become actually capable of harming the enemy they were designed to fight.

I am *not *one of the folks who believe unshakably that the F-35 is a latter day F-111, destined to never be anything but an expensive overhyped disappointment. There are some things it ought to truly excel at and be a real game-changer for the forces that have it.

Nevertheless, as of today this thing is way late, way over budget, a bit under-capable vs. promised even in the full-capability build, and is in grave danger of entering the classic DoD/Congress death spiral where ever increasing price per unit leads to reduced volume buys which in turn increases the price per unit for the next years’ batch.

[LSLGuy]

@dba_Fred

Maybe I’m missing something but the surface Navy has been using NTDS (Naval Tactical Data System) since the 1960s to network sensors.
My experience in the 1980s was standing watches on the Bridge and in the Surface Module of the Combat Information Center (now CDC) but we (the ship) was receiving sensor data from other ships, aircraft, satellites, possibly land-based sensors, maybe subs. I’m sure the integration has only improved since then. So in what way is networked warfare only a promise for the surface Navy?

Bolding mine.

It seems indeed the surface navy has such stuff. As I alluded to in the adjacent paragraphs. Thanks for the additional details.

My expertise is USAF, and the whole thread is about subs. Like Army, surface USN is not the focus of this conversation.

Right now USAF is still researching and/or deploying wide angle persistent networked sensors. There’s some real strong points and some real weak points. In some parts of the world we’ve got superb all-aspect situational awareness. In others, not so much. One big challenge is getting sensor data off stealthy platforms and into the network without sacrificing stealth. The other significant problem is simply reliably tracking the volume of targets, sorting & fusing them, and due to the speeds involved, providing a big enough timely enough picture customized to each of a very large number of consumers.

By contrast, the surface Navy is dealing with one hundredth the target set moving at (at most) one twentieth the speed. And with much larger & more persistent signatures against a simpler background. I agree they can, and have, been solving this problem for some time.
As to subs, it seems pretty clear to me that the high speed data links you mention are not going to penetrate to submerged subs. So as of today it’s a pretty good bet at the unclassified level that subs are neither producers nor consumers of real time networked targeting info.

I would certainly expect they can trail a stealthy surface antenna from time to time to pick up the known EOB picture within, say, 2 days steaming. What the risk/benefit tradeoff is for getting that data when they’re being actively prosecuted during a near-peer conflict is beyond my speculation.

Sorry if I gave an inaccurate impression.

[carnivorousplant]

@LSLGuy

As to subs, it seems pretty clear to me that the high speed data links you mention are not going to penetrate to submerged subs. So as of today it’s a pretty good bet at the unclassified level that subs are neither producers nor consumers of real time networked targeting info.

I would certainly expect they can trail a stealthy surface antenna from time to time to pick up the known EOB picture within, say, 2 days steaming. What the risk/benefit tradeoff is for getting that data when they’re being actively prosecuted during a near-peer conflict is beyond my speculation.

Are the very low frequency communications I’ve read about too slow for this large amount of data?

[Gray_Ghost]

@carnivorousplant

Are the very low frequency communications I’ve read about too slow for this large amount of data?

Profoundly. With Very Low Frequency radio waves, the submarine can receive the signal anywhere from 10 to 40 meters under the surface. The wiki claims that bandwidth is low enough that the practical data transmission rate is in the ballpark of 300 bits/second. Moreover the antenna size is far too large for a submarine to be able to transmit using this method; the communication method is strictly one way.

The U.S. used to use ELF along with VLF. ELF could penetrate deeper—AFAIK, neither water more much of anything else was much of an obstacle—but the communication rate was even slower than with VLF. It also required truly gigantic transmitter arrays, as opposed to the merely gargantuan arrays needed for VLF.

Compare to the transmission rates used for things like Link-16 which are in the neighborhood of 30-115 kbytes/s, which honestly seems a lot slower than I would have guessed.

[carnivorousplant]

Cool.
Thank you, Gray Ghost.

[dba_Fred]

@LSLGuy

Bolding mine.

It seems indeed the surface navy has such stuff. As I alluded to in the adjacent paragraphs. Thanks for the additional details.

My expertise is USAF, and the whole thread is about subs. Like Army, surface USN is not the focus of this conversation.

I take it as the thread is about non-subs aka surface ships being sunk fairly quickly and would encompass what the surface ships would do to prevent that; included in this thread have been comments about aircraft and allied subs. I sorta think the surface USN is the focus of the conversation as they are the target

[/QUOTE]
Right now USAF is still researching and/or deploying wide angle persistent networked sensors. There’s some real strong points and some real weak points. In some parts of the world we’ve got superb all-aspect situational awareness. In others, not so much. One big challenge is getting sensor data off stealthy platforms and into the network without sacrificing stealth. The other significant problem is simply reliably tracking the volume of targets, sorting & fusing them, and due to the speeds involved, providing a big enough timely enough picture customized to each of a very large number of consumers.

By contrast, the surface Navy is dealing with one hundredth the target set moving at (at most) one twentieth the speed. And with much larger & more persistent signatures against a simpler background. I agree they can, and have, been solving this problem for some time.
[/QUOTE]

Perhaps my mentioning standing watches on the bridge in the Surface Module alluded to only being concerned with ships. We (the ship) also had an Air and ASW module that focused on those threats, sending and receiving info from other ships in the battlegroup via NTDS and radio, I believe the Comm folks dealt with satellite communications.
As an example, a ship might get a subsurface contact, a helo with dipping sonar would be sent and the info networked to the battlegroup. The Air Force uses the E-3 AWACS for airborne command, control and communications, the Navy use the E-2 Hawkeye in the same manner.

[/QUOTE]
As to subs, it seems pretty clear to me that the high speed data links you mention are not going to penetrate to submerged subs. So as of today it’s a pretty good bet at the unclassified level that subs are neither producers nor consumers of real time networked targeting info.

I would certainly expect they can trail a stealthy surface antenna from time to time to pick up the known EOB picture within, say, 2 days steaming. What the risk/benefit tradeoff is for getting that data when they’re being actively prosecuted during a near-peer conflict is beyond my speculation.

Sorry if I gave an inaccurate impression.

[/QUOTE]
—————————————

You’re probably bet right and as Gray Goose states, the sub assets aren’t connected to the high-speed networks because of transmission reasons. For what my out-of-date minimal experience and WAG is worth, I expect there is some exchange of data: the sub releases a buoy/balloon that transmits after it reaches the surface and allowed time for the sub to depart the area, a helo lowers a powerful dipping transmitter to send data in predetermined the 200 square mile area at a predetermined time for the sub, ect.
I slept well at night on a carrier knowing people much smarter than I had been and were dealing with these matters

[dba_Fred]

My main reason for entering the conversation was to point out the Navy had and has a networked system of data exchange.
Smart people, continue the discussion

[MichaelEmouse]

@robby

Escort vessels, such as cruisers and destroyers, are utilized to defend against shorter-range air threats, as well as surface threats including small fast attack craft that may best be engaged using guns.

1. Short-range air threats: Couldn’t helicopters do that in addition to their anti-sub duty? Putting a ship in-between a missile and the carrier seems like an awfully expensive way to protect the carrier.

Hitting a destroyer worth more than 2.5 billions (I’m including the personnel, munitions and upgrades) is a pretty good success for any potential enemy. More generally, I don’t really get using ships for anti-aircraft warfare when ships are so vulnerable to aircraft attacks.

2. Surface threats: So, to defend against enemy green-water navies?

@robby

They already are. That’s part of the mission of a fast attack submarine. Nuclear weapons are primarily deployed on ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). This thread is concerned with the former, not the latter.

For more functions than that. What functions do you seem future fully submersible ships (which may or may not look like current subs) doing?

Couldn’t a ship or sub have more than 1 sonar array?

How is range determined with passive sonar? Triangulation by getting data from several bearings, presumed speed and likely orientation?

If there are questions you don’t want to answer, could you explicitly say so? That way I’ll know that it’s closed off rather than just forgotten.

[LSLGuy]

@Gray_Ghost

… Compare to the transmission rates used for things like Link-16 which are in the neighborhood of 30-115 kbytes/s, which honestly seems a lot slower than I would have guessed.

Like so many DoD systems this is an example of something envisioned in the 1980s when it was bleeding edge, designed in the 1990s, and finally achieving critical mass deployment in the 2010s when it’s a technological dinosaur versus the corresponding progress in similar civilian products.

Jam resistance and encryption add a bunch of overhead, so you can blame a lot of the apparent lack of speed on that.

[John_DiFool]

@MichaelEmouse

How is range determined with passive sonar? Triangulation by getting data from several bearings, presumed speed and likely orientation?

Pretty much. See Target Motion Analysis for more info (Google link note).