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Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies

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Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies

#11

Post by nradov »

_8j50 wrote: post #7
neurobashing wrote: post #3

Somewhat related, my uncle was a “Phantom driver” (F4 Phantom II) in Vietnam. Flew a bunch of missions of varying types. So Top Gun comes out, and my mom points out he had graduated Fighter Weapons School - my uncle is a real Top Gun! So I asked him for tales of dogfights, war stories. He had exactly one: “they’d send us out to fight some MiGs, and as soon as we got in range and turned our radar on to start shooting,…

Wow, I read your comment just as the movie top gun started on my TV. I really wonder what air-to-air unmanned dog fight would look like. Are drone swarms a thing yet? a sky filled with drones would be terrifying. I would hope modern jets deploy drone like missiles manned by ground crew for dogfights,but if I learned anything about F22 and F35, they spend trillions to basically let middle parties steal the money and t…

The weapons and tactics you describe might be possible in a few years but today they're science fiction.

Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies

#12

Post by beckingz »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #10
_8j50 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I read your comment just as the movie top gun started on my TV. I really wonder what air-to-air unmanned dog fight would look like. Are drone swarms a thing yet? a sky filled with drones would be terrifying. I would hope modern jets deploy drone like missiles manned by ground crew for dogfights,but if I learned anything about F22 and F35, they spend trillions to basically let middle parties steal the money and t…

Missiles are drones that are not supposed to come back.

Some missiles even have longer endurance than small drones.

Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies

#13

Post by lainga »

_8j50 wrote: post #7
neurobashing wrote: post #3

Somewhat related, my uncle was a “Phantom driver” (F4 Phantom II) in Vietnam. Flew a bunch of missions of varying types. So Top Gun comes out, and my mom points out he had graduated Fighter Weapons School - my uncle is a real Top Gun! So I asked him for tales of dogfights, war stories. He had exactly one: “they’d send us out to fight some MiGs, and as soon as we got in range and turned our radar on to start shooting,…

Wow, I read your comment just as the movie top gun started on my TV. I really wonder what air-to-air unmanned dog fight would look like. Are drone swarms a thing yet? a sky filled with drones would be terrifying. I would hope modern jets deploy drone like missiles manned by ground crew for dogfights,but if I learned anything about F22 and F35, they spend trillions to basically let middle parties steal the money and t…

6th-Gen fighter concepts include drone "wingmen" under partial control of fighter pilots in their own fighters. e.g. Japan's I3 Fighter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I3_fighter

ed.: and yes, the F-22 and F-35 are 5th generation and decade-old tech. There is unfortunately a lot of lead time on fighter development. I think the F-15 was relatively speedy at 9 years from selection to roll-out (1967 - 76).

Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies

#15

Post by CoolGuySteve »

lainga wrote: post #13
_8j50 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I read your comment just as the movie top gun started on my TV. I really wonder what air-to-air unmanned dog fight would look like. Are drone swarms a thing yet? a sky filled with drones would be terrifying. I would hope modern jets deploy drone like missiles manned by ground crew for dogfights,but if I learned anything about F22 and F35, they spend trillions to basically let middle parties steal the money and t…

6th-Gen fighter concepts include drone "wingmen" under partial control of fighter pilots in their own fighters. e.g. Japan's I3 Fighter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I3_fighter ed.: and yes, the F-22 and F-35 are 5th generation and decade-old tech. There is unfortunately a lot of lead time on fighter development. I think the F-15 was relatively speedy at 9 years from selection to roll-out (1967 - 76).

I've always wondered why there's a guy in the plane at all at this point. Doesn't it severely limit the maneuverability of the aircraft to have a liquid-fueled brain piloting it around rather than some remotely controlled semi-autonomous solid-state electronics?

Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies

#16

Post by redis_mlc »

neurobashing wrote: post #3

Somewhat related, my uncle was a “Phantom driver” (F4 Phantom II) in Vietnam. Flew a bunch of missions of varying types. So Top Gun comes out, and my mom points out he had graduated Fighter Weapons School - my uncle is a real Top Gun! So I asked him for tales of dogfights, war stories. He had exactly one: “they’d send us out to fight some MiGs, and as soon as we got in range and turned our radar on to start shooting,…

Well.

The Vietnamese pilots were using Soviet tactics, mainly Ground Control vectors.

Most Vietnamese pilots were rookies, but they did have some aces who would dogfight, like Colonel Toon, who was shot down by Randy Cunningham:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Cunningham

But largely the tactics were to surprise the Americans with first MiG-17's, then have a MiG-21 at high speed do an ambush pass from the clouds through lower-flying Americans.

The Vietnamese could have done a lot more damage had they known how worthless the US air-air missiles were at the time. There were all kinds of problems with taking too long to arm (around 4 seconds) and vibration from takeoffs and landings inerting the missiles. And that no gun thing.

Additionally, US pilots were expected to have up to a dozen radio channels active, causing pilot workload problems until they turned off like 11 of them.

Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies

#17

Post by tra3 »

Never occurred to me that torpedoes can be battery powered. Any idea what kind of cells they have?

I got confused by the dual units here:

> 65cm torpedoes have enough fuel to travel in excess of 100 kilometers at 50 knots for just over an hour.

Turns out 1 knot/hr is nearly 2km/h so that checks out. Weird nautical units.

Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies

#18

Post by lainga »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #15
lainga wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6th-Gen fighter concepts include drone "wingmen" under partial control of fighter pilots in their own fighters. e.g. Japan's I3 Fighter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I3_fighter ed.: and yes, the F-22 and F-35 are 5th generation and decade-old tech. There is unfortunately a lot of lead time on fighter development. I think the F-15 was relatively speedy at 9 years from selection to roll-out (1967 - 76).

I've always wondered why there's a guy in the plane at all at this point. Doesn't it severely limit the maneuverability of the aircraft to have a liquid-fueled brain piloting it around rather than some remotely controlled semi-autonomous solid-state electronics?

You could make an argument about drone jamming and autonomous behaviour not being quite there yet... I think that's what the "wingmen" are for.

The paradigm we're moving out of was one where you'd get high-quality sensor data from a specialized patrol or AWACS plane like an E-3, which would send information to ground, which would relay it to the fighters. Now, platforms like the F-35 often have better sensors than patrol planes do; and despite still having a person inside, are better at evading missiles than big patrol planes are. So it's more like the fighters take on the role of the patrol planes; the human inside decides what to do, probably assimilating information from other fighters; and sends the drones out to do acrobatics. And there's no need to run that information through a ground station first.

Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies

#19

Post by karatestomp »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #15
lainga wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6th-Gen fighter concepts include drone "wingmen" under partial control of fighter pilots in their own fighters. e.g. Japan's I3 Fighter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I3_fighter ed.: and yes, the F-22 and F-35 are 5th generation and decade-old tech. There is unfortunately a lot of lead time on fighter development. I think the F-15 was relatively speedy at 9 years from selection to roll-out (1967 - 76).

I've always wondered why there's a guy in the plane at all at this point. Doesn't it severely limit the maneuverability of the aircraft to have a liquid-fueled brain piloting it around rather than some remotely controlled semi-autonomous solid-state electronics?

I think the idea with all the modern long range smart weaponry and anti-radar targeting tech and such is that the airplane with the squishy, fragile pilot is really a platform for very deadly, smart single-use drones (missiles) and if anyone gets close enough to shoot at the drone platform then several things have already gone wrong.

Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies

#20

Post by extrapickles »

tra3 wrote: post #17

Never occurred to me that torpedoes can be battery powered. Any idea what kind of cells they have? I got confused by the dual units here: > 65cm torpedoes have enough fuel to travel in excess of 100 kilometers at 50 knots for just over an hour. Turns out 1 knot/hr is nearly 2km/h so that checks out. Weird nautical units.

Probably some form of lithium primary cell as they have high energy densities and good shelf life.
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