"The Naval architecture of modern combatants is thus stuck in a rut of WWII mindsets without any realistic cost-risk analysis as a design driver for taking their warfighter method out of the 1940s, even though that method is proven to be a failure for it's principle exponent, the U-Boatwaffen."
M&S
A sub is just a bus vehicle. It acts as a big truck to carry the weapons and sensor systems to an ops area where THEY, not it, determine the ability of the boat to both grab the global battlespace picture and act upon it.
The network system which protects the sub is akin to a spider web of acoustic and visual sensors which are either deep sonar channeled (below the thermocline and then again 2-4,000ft lower yet). Or buried in the surface duct where a heavy anechoic coating and a small size (10ft?) allows them to ride an active buoyancy system as AIP generator while they occasionally raise an optics cluster or heavily RAM'd ESM mast to have a look see.
This is dangerous. It is akin to a gopher sticking it's head out of the burrow, looking for snakes and badgers and coyotes, only to miss the eagle.
But particularly with the DBS and InSAR sharpened, digital (i.e. it doesn't ghost away but is a stored location image with positive recall and position lock) radars out there, it is vastly smarter to use a BUOY to erect your sensor than it is to stick it out of the sub itself.
You can swim this thing in, the same way you do a creep attack on a suspect contact, at 10-20 knots, for maybe 50nm. And then stop, tilt, deploy a buoyancy/stealth shell surround bladder and start using your fuel as electrical generation capacity instead of propulsion.
You can obviously do the same with weapons turning missiles into mines ala CAPTAM or even traditional CAPTOR with a Mk.50 6nm instead of a Mk.48 20nm capacity.
If a hard contact on preset threat list is meets key signature parameters, you raise a commo aerial and squirt off a message to a satellite. If the buoy is attacked and/or the satellites go down, you fire a rocket and squirt off the contact report, via tightbeam directional microwave, to another buoy which, being 20-50nm OTH, can have it's mast raised all the time.
That buoy then repeats the process to another buoy, all the way back to the one which is hovering over a parent vessel with a Lidar or Gertrude based active link to the boat.
If the sub cannot do this, in a modern ICD environment where the 'networking' (SOSUS talks on cable to land-based collimation center) is presently all on the defender, cough, Chinese side; it is no real advance at all over the present systems. Because it remains too slow to avoid the defensive response and it is 300ft vs. 10ft worth of hole-in-ocean detectable.
At the same time, acting as a freighter for all this crap means looking at a HIGHLY expensive mission load which is lost every time you turn back for home (potential recovery exploitation risk by 'accidental' fishing net method on the buoys) and requires decent Satcomms to act as a relay besides.
The alternative is the Jimmy Carter approach to a drybay with deployment/recovery tugs so that you can spin and retract your web without having to move the boat into constricted, monitored and multi-sub defended sealanes.
Until Navies stop thinking that they can get another 600-800 million for a new hull every time they WWII U-Boatwaffen lose one fighting 'the same 'ol way', they don't deserve to have 50 billion dollars worth of hardware gifted to them.
Karl Doenitz lost th e sub war by thinking of U-Boats as primary kill effectors which he could drive around the map like toys, forcing them to give constant contact reports which were Huff Duffed back to Allied tracking stations, even when we couldn't read the Kriegsmarine cypers.
This meant THE SUBS, not their torpedoes were directly trackable.
As a result, men such as Gunther Prien died like a bitch to a deliberate attack by a pair of destroyers off Ireland, less than 2 years after Royal Oak and with only 30 kills to his name.
Indeed, Allied successes in blind-finding subs in deep water made even the overconfident Germans sufficiently suspicious enough to adopt Schwammboje delay activation buoys for their commo traffic. And they were dropping daily contact reports whereas netcentric warfare requires minute to minute connectivity.
Overall, the U-Boat Waffen sank 2,779 ships barely half what they did in WWI, while suffering 724 boats lost and 26,978 deaths. Roughly 75% of the total force for less than 50% of all allied shipping (6,000 hulls under the Emergency Shipbuilding Program) produced.
Only the RAF BC, with 8,617 losses and 47,268 dead, suffered more. The difference is that the RAF as indeed airpower overall has made massive changes to their WWII 'mass laydown from overflight' warfighting method with precision guidance and now standoff capabilities on the order of 200nm or more for hard targets.
Whereas subs, by nature of their operating environment, can still surface blind under fishing boats and seldom hunt beyond a 12nm LOS horizon. They have ZERO overland ISTAR capacity via drones or other persistent/recoverable means.
Type VII U-Boats cost 2.25 million. Today, the Type 218 for Singapore costs 680 million each.
The Naval architecture of modern combatants is thus stuck in a rut of WWII mindsets without any realistic cost:risk analysis as a design driver for taking their warfighter method out of the 1940s _even though that method is proven to be a failure for it's principle exponent, the U-Boatwaffen_.
If the nature of the environment restricts your propulsive efficiencies or sensor detection radius, then move the weapon and sensors closer. Do NOT put a submarine which is 300 times more expensive than a WWII U-Boat into harm's way, operating exactly the same (stupid) way of blind sound location, simply because you are operationally (logistics) or physics restricted from doing better.
How stupid can you be?
This much: Ten knots sustained underwater speed is a circular error probable of 20nm after two hours. Vs. a 550 knot jet like a P-8, _launching from home base_ that's a 1,000nm down range that the sub can be 'hidden' and, by simple act of transmitting it's location to a compromised network, have it's own location divulged. If there is an ongoing battle which you are the sole fire support for, can you tell me that you will be able to refuse communication with higher for the SIX MORE HOURS that that ASW MPAT is overhead?
If it uses a secondary commo buoy, as the Germans learned to do when PBY airpower was 200 knots and six hours out, the only thing you can do is blow up it's relay transmitter which may or may not be attached to the boat.
The same goes for the weapons silo buoy. If the launch of a missile is an instant indication of location due to transient noise, flash and continuing heat/radar signature of a broached missile, then WHY for pities' sake associate it with the boat when a missile like Hoplite uses 'SVL' or soft vertical launch (small gas generator explosive charge) to fling the weapon well clear of the launcher before hot-firing the motor? Can you not bring they buoy to the surface, fire and resubmerge as quickly if not more so than the sub can come to a hover?
If there are 6-10 missiles, each worth 2 million dollars, on a 2 million dollar recoverable buoy, can you not see that 12 million dollars worth of hardware risk is still only a kill vehicle loss, vastly more sustainable/replaceable than a command platform equivalent, 60 times more valuable?
You don't even have to worry about depleted stores on the sub. You can air drop as a direct insertion.
CONCLUSION:
Australia cannot determine a valid submarine performance spec because, world wide, the nature of the platform is being both under and oversold as a BMC2 vs. Direct Kill platform, using the WWII employment methodology as justification.
We are so far beyond the shoot-thru-periscope days as to be fundamentally unable to equate submarines of today with those of yesteryear in mission execution approach. Either as a tactically survivable or economically viable means of justifying their purchase and 20 year operational costs.
Yet that is precisely what modern submarine buying programs continue to try to do, laying all costs/capability reasoning on the hull as an ASW/ASUW platform and none on the combat system which, rightly, should be reversed. Taking the combat value off-board to save lives and conserve a 600 million++ investment. While shifting emphasis to strike and overland targeting/power projection.
U-Boat Shipping Kills
http://uboat.net/special/faq.h...
U-Boat And RAF Losses
http://boards.straightdope.com...
Emergency Shipbuilding Program
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
Sea Ferret
http://fas.org/irp/program/col...
Submerged Endurance Buoys, Civilian Use
http://pifscblog.files.wordpre... http://www.ship-inspect.com/si...
Hoplite Missile
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... |
No comments:
Post a Comment