[Kevin Gibson]

Here's a very interesting article about the US Navy running ASW war games against a Swedish diesel electric sub.

Sweden Has A Sub That's So Deadly The US Navy Hired It To Play Bad Guy

The long and short of it is the Swedes handed the USS Ronald Reagan carrier group their asses. At one point or another it managed to administratively kill most ships in the carrier group, including several kills on the Reagan itself.

Then they went and ran war games against US, Brit, and French nuke submarines and handed them their asses too.

One ASW officer said it was the most demoralizing thing he's experienced in his entire career.

The scary part is the Russian Lada class is well ahead of the Swedish Gotland class.

 

[SpecialEd]

Sounds an awful lot like that story about the Russians allegedly chasing that Cruiser out of the Black Sea and making all the sailors cry and leave the service.

 

[Kevin Gibson]

Our navy isn't omnipotent.

While the whole Black Sea thing got blown WAY out of proportion, the Black Sea is owned by the Russians, it's not a Naval war that would ever go well for us that close to Russian land based bombers.

And the trouble of DE boats is nothing new, they are crazy quiet; far quieter than anything we have. But it's something we really need to address because they're cheap and the Russians currently have close to 50 Kilo class subs in service. That's enough for some serious area denial for our carrier groups.

 

[Diamondback]

Shouldn't have scrapped those S-3 Vikings, huh?

Just one more for the "Barack Obama: Making America The World's Prison Whore" file.

 

[M118LR]

Folks, none of them passed the "Kawoosh" test. Purposely misspelled and definitely not going to be elaborated on. Aircraft are only active hunter killers. If we want we shall sink any submarine as fast as we can put a hunter killer over or around it. JMHO?

 

[Diamondback]

Our navy isn't omnipotent.

While the whole Black Sea thing got blown WAY out of proportion, the Black Sea is owned by the Russians, it's not a Naval war that would ever go well for us that close to Russian land based bombers.

And the trouble of DE boats is nothing new, they are crazy quiet; far quieter than anything we have. But it's something we really need to address because they're cheap and the Russians currently have close to 50 Kilo class subs in service. That's enough for some serious area denial for our carrier groups.

And let's not forget that the Russkies spread Kilos like a bad venereal disease to anyone with hard cash...

 

[CaptainGyro]

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the Navy has been working on a solution to the DE problem for years and may even have effective countermeasures in place. And they wouldn't expose the existence of such things on a whim, or to counter sensational stories.

Has anyone searched Hilary's emails?

 

[Diamondback]

Better to overestimate the capabilities of The Other Team's toys, expect casualties and train accordingly, that way you overperform expectations.

Sort of like I told a client when they were asking me for reviews on one of their Kickstarters for one of their miniatures lines and had an original delivery estimate of August 2015: "Assume that every possible thing that can go wrong in production will, then add another three to six months on top of that." The final estimate they went with was Thanksgiving-Christmas, and they're just getting into the distro warehouse as I type.

Their previous KS launch (which was admittedly a whole new line rather than an expansion for an existing one) came in a YEAR behind schedule, for reference...

Bit of a tangent, but it serves to illustrate the point of "better to be a pessimist and pleasantly surprised than an optimist unpleasantly so."

 

[Kevin Gibson]

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the Navy has been working on a solution to the DE problem for years and may even have effective countermeasures in place. And they wouldn't expose the existence of such things on a whim, or to counter sensational stories.

Has anyone searched Hilary's emails?

Dear God I hope so. They rented the Swede one for two years, one could surmise they learned all they needed to learn.

If they don't have a solid mitigation plan, then the sea could be a very dangerous place for a big juicy carrier. Fortunately we don't tend to square off against those with advanced DE subs.

 

[CaptainGyro]

If any of you have yet to read "Blind Man's Bluff", about years of cold war-era espionage and special operations by our submarines, I heartily recommend it. Some of the operations related in this book would be too outlandish for Ian Fleming or Tom Clancy, and yet they happened.

These things were kept secret for years; underwater is a very convenient place to conduct espionage and we are better at stealth than most. I think that reading this book will lay many of your concerns to rest.

Blind Man's Bluff

 

[SpecialEd]

If any of you have yet to read "Blind Man's Bluff">>>>>>>>

Never read the book but back when History Channel was still doing history, they aired a multi part series on the book, interviewing many of the players, etc.

My favorite stunt was tapping the underground communications cables, shear genius.

 

[CaptainGyro]

It would (seriously) not surprise me to learn that we have a small transponder attached to every DE sub in the world. Stranger things have happened.

 

[Kevin Gibson]

If any of you have yet to read "Blind Man's Bluff", about years of cold war-era espionage and special operations by our submarines, I heartily recommend it. Some of the operations related in this book would be too outlandish for Ian Fleming or Tom Clancy, and yet they happened.

These things were kept secret for years; underwater is a very convenient place to conduct espionage and we are better at stealth than most. I think that reading this book will lay many of your concerns to rest.

Blind Man's Bluff

Great book, and you're right; quite amazing what we managed to pull off. And it showed that the Russians had their moments also. They caught US subs in their waters so frequently that they developed a whole new type of depth charge that would scare the living crap out of the sub, but not sink it and cause an international incident (mighty nice of them).

And what we did with the communication cable to Vladivostok was truly brilliant.

 

[William R. Moore]

DE subs in shallow waters are (SFAIK) still a major headache. The shallows mess up active search. The old solution was the MAD but I'm not sure what the hull coatings widely used now do to that capability.

Guy I went to high school with spent several hitches in boomers. They had a black box that let them mimic the sounds of various other subs so they could play adversary with surface groups. It broke during one exercise, they sent Mike to Sherwood Forest with a steel plate and a large hammer as a substitute.

 

[CaptainGyro]

I think many may be forgetting that SONAR (active or passive) is not the only way to detect a sub. "DE subs in shallow waters", as the Nazis found out off our coast in WWII, are visible to the naked eye. In those days we had to depend on manned aircraft to spot them; today we have the advantage of drones, satellites, and (maybe soon) airships.

Unless they're completely dead and dark in the water subs also use electricity, the flow of which creates fields. Shielding can only be so good, and electromagnetic detection may very well be a reality.

As a sub, (or anything) moves through water it creates a wake. Subtle though it may be, I wouldn't be surprised if we've found a way to identify and follow it.

Biological detection is also possible. Train Flipper to come back and tell you where the submarine is and give him a bucket of mackerel when he does. Heck, throw in a squid if he can tap "shave and a haircut" on one of the hatches.

Finally, a sub has to communicate occasionally. I'm not sure how far along we are in intercepting low frequency transmissions, but I'll bet someone, somewhere is working on it.

I'm sure there are other methods of detection I haven't even thought of. I suspect that if DE subs were better than what we've got the Navy would be budgeting for a few.

 

[CaptainGyro]

William, I had to look up "Sherwood Forest" as it relates to submarines. Leave it to soldiers and sailors to come up with the best euphemisms.

For those who don't know, Sherwood Forest is the compartment filled with vertical missile tubes, frequently painted brown for some reason.

 

[TommyGunn]

I think many may be forgetting that SONAR (active or passive) is not the only way to detect a sub. "DE subs in shallow waters", as the Nazis found out off our coast in WWII, are visible to the naked eye. In those days we had to depend on manned aircraft to spot them; today we have the advantage of drones, satellites, and (maybe soon) airships.

Unless they're completely dead and dark in the water subs also use electricity, the flow of which creates fields. Shielding can only be so good, and electromagnetic detection may very well be a reality.

As a sub, (or anything) moves through water it creates a wake. Subtle though it may be, I wouldn't be surprised if we've found a way to identify and follow it.

Biological detection is also possible. Train Flipper to come back and tell you where the submarine is and give him a bucket of mackerel when he does. Heck, throw in a squid if he can tap "shave and a haircut" on one of the hatches.

Finally, a sub has to communicate occasionally. I'm not sure how far along we are in intercepting low frequency transmissions, but I'll bet someone, somewhere is working on it.

I'm sure there are other methods of detection I haven't even thought of. I suspect that if DE subs were better than what we've got the Navy would be budgeting for a few.

My first real job after college, I worked for a man who was ex-Navy and had served aboard a destroyer in the Caribbean. In those clear shallow waters, they could actually eyeball Soviet subs en route to or from Cuba.
As a sort of nasty mind-game, the crew got some handgrenades on deck, wrapped each in toilet paper, and when over the sub, pull the pin and toss the grenade overboard. The TP held the "spoon" on the grenade (the curved handle that normally pops off when the pin is pulled) until the grenade reached the sub's depth. Determining how many times to wind the TP became, I was told, somewhat of an art form.
The explosion of a grenade near the pressure hull of a sub is not going to do anything except chip the paint .... but the poor b*st*rds inside are going to wind up with some gnarly tinnitus issues!:twisted::twisted::headbonk:

 

[CaptainGyro]

.... but the poor b*st*rds inside are going to wind up with some gnarly tinnitus issues!:twisted::twisted::headbonk:

Not to mention some laundry issues.

 

[Diamondback]

I think many may be forgetting that SONAR (active or passive) is not the only way to detect a sub. "DE subs in shallow waters", as the Nazis found out off our coast in WWII, are visible to the naked eye. In those days we had to depend on manned aircraft to spot them; today we have the advantage of drones, satellites, and (maybe soon) airships.

Unless they're completely dead and dark in the water subs also use electricity, the flow of which creates fields. Shielding can only be so good, and electromagnetic detection may very well be a reality.

As a sub, (or anything) moves through water it creates a wake. Subtle though it may be, I wouldn't be surprised if we've found a way to identify and follow it.

Biological detection is also possible. Train Flipper to come back and tell you where the submarine is and give him a bucket of mackerel when he does. Heck, throw in a squid if he can tap "shave and a haircut" on one of the hatches.

Finally, a sub has to communicate occasionally. I'm not sure how far along we are in intercepting low frequency transmissions, but I'll bet someone, somewhere is working on it.

I'm sure there are other methods of detection I haven't even thought of. I suspect that if DE subs were better than what we've got the Navy would be budgeting for a few.

The other thing to consider is relative quality--the Brits and Germans build better DE boats and train better skippers for non-nucs, so we've kinda let them shoulder that responsibility while we focus on the heavy hitters.

Or so it was explained by an old friend who used to be a sub skipper, anyway...

 

[t-star]

William, I had to look up "Sherwood Forest" as it relates to submarines. Leave it to soldiers and sailors to come up with the best euphemisms.

For those who don't know, Sherwood Forest is the compartment filled with vertical missile tubes, frequently painted brown for some reason.

I have an old renwal model kit ( the one with the drop down side to reveal the interior - polaris class- that refers to the missile bay as Sherwood forest- I believe it's the Ethan Allen- the detail on those was such that the missile actually fired and it had a coke machine, crew in the mess and a beef hanging in the meat locker- it also referred to the torpedo room as the fish shop