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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

#61

Post by themodelplumber »

kitteh wrote: post #53
phkahler wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently saw an old video on youtube about that. Top Gun was created in response to heavy losses in Vietnam. It was very small and they had trouble even finding space for classes. A turning point came when a Mig was captured and they trained with it to find weaknesses. After that everything changed. The kill ratio inverted and they did start to run when engaged in some cases. Your uncle was lucky to go after the stra…

Have Doughnut and Have Drill were the govt programs (which have been declassified) where we used acquired MiGs to learn their weaknesses. There are some great videos on YouTube and books from people who were directly involved in the Red Eagles.

It appears that "Have" was used by assignment of the Joint Staff to a specific organization. Still random of course, but interesting that its provenance and scope of application is not quite so super secret, at least not anymore.

https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/meaning-of-have-in-c...

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

#62

Post by jfnixon »

magicsmoke wrote: post #57
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #39

I rip on surface fleets as being floating reef fodder that would be sunk almost immediately against any modern power, either because of the sophistication of submarines, the rise of cheap drones winning the economic exchange, or death-from-above missles and ICBMs that are basically undefendable. But against subs I'm surprised there aren't plans for a drone-net that surrounds a fleet or high value ship that can detect…

Smaller drones have weaker propulsion and can't keep up with the ship its supposed to provide a detection bubble around. Being underwater and having to deal with additional drag also doesn't help. The large size of an aircraft carrier belies the fact that it is the fastest ship in the carrier group and can outrun all of its escorts. Larger ship = more space to pack powerful engines. That's also a major issue for a lo…

If by fighter you mean "manned fighter" there are several reasons to build large, fast drones; no life support overhead, much better maneuverability (tolerance for high g), no worries about pilots flying highly dangerous missions, can use impact kills.

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

#63

Post by _jal »

c3534l wrote: post #52
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,…

I knew a guy who was a chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons guy in the army. He took bomb diffusal training, studied old soviet missiles, the lot. What did he do on a day to day basis? Mostly blew up grenades that didn't blow up on their own. Apparently it was super boring.

That's the sort of job you want to be super boring.

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

#64

Post by sien »

kitteh wrote: post #50
neurobashing wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He told me he didn’t have a lot of confidence in the Sparrow. They eventually got some aircraft with guns but never used them; despite Top Gun school something like 90% Of his flights were ground attack missions.

Highly recommend folks who are into aircraft warfare pick up a book about how the AIM-9 Sidewinder was developed as a side project at China Lake by the Navy that had to be done under the radar due to politics. It's a great story about engineers driven by a real customer need fought bureaucracy, politics and some interesting technical challenges to build a missile and get it in the hands of pilots. They were up agains…

Is the book - Sidewinder - Creative Missile Development at China Lake?

https://www.amazon.com/Sidewinder-Creative-Missile-Developme...

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

#65

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

m4rtink wrote: post #48

You mean like how torpedoes actually detonate when they hit a target in a movie ? ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo Or how in the movies they don't run in circles and sink the submarine that launched them ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_18_torpedo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Tang_(SS-306)

To be fair, the article title does say "Modern", which, argueably, neither of those two are.

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

#66

Post by dbcurtis »

reddog wrote: post #43
1123581321 wrote: post #14

“A torpedo cannot be ‘command-detonated’ as seen in the movie Hunt for Red October.” Why is this so? The wire controls seem sufficient.

That is odd. I know that during the war in the Pacific the Japanese were extremely careful to avoid having the vastly superior longlance torpedoes fall into the hands of the Allies. They would go to great lengths to search for and recover lost, unexploded torpedos that were in shallow water. It seems like a command-detonation options would be very useful in this regard.

Well, I can guess at a few reasons. 1. As mentioned elsewhere, the radio signal path loss through salt water is astoundingly high -- I did the math once. 2. WW II era radio technology was bulky, and did not work well on batteries -- vacuum tube filaments eat a lot of power and the plate supply requires a high voltage battery. 3. WW II era radio technology did not have encryption built-in -- it would have been pretty easy for the enemy to signal the torpedo to blow up before you launched it, which would kind of ruin your afternoon.

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

#67

Post by kitteh »

sien wrote: post #64
kitteh wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Highly recommend folks who are into aircraft warfare pick up a book about how the AIM-9 Sidewinder was developed as a side project at China Lake by the Navy that had to be done under the radar due to politics. It's a great story about engineers driven by a real customer need fought bureaucracy, politics and some interesting technical challenges to build a missile and get it in the hands of pilots. They were up agains…

Is the book - Sidewinder - Creative Missile Development at China Lake? https://www.amazon.com/Sidewinder-Creative-Missile-Developme...

Yep, that's the one. Thanks for finding and posting (wasn't able to do this where I was at).

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

#68

Post by user5994461 »

1123581321 wrote: post #14

“A torpedo cannot be ‘command-detonated’ as seen in the movie Hunt for Red October.” Why is this so? The wire controls seem sufficient.

If we follow the spirit of the article, submarine operation is all about stealth. Detonating a (missed) torpedo would give away that there is an engagement, whereas letting it sink is quiet.

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

#69

Post by user5994461 »

jdjrirkfkfk wrote: post #29
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.

From linked reference: Silver oxide-aluminium (AgO-Al) Silver oxide-zinc (AgO-Zn) Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) Lithium-polymer Lithium-iron phosphate (LiFePO4) 1,040 Wh/kg 490 Wh/kg 600 Wh/kg 600 Wh/kg 520 Wh/kg The F21 is powered by a new generation of silver oxide-aluminium (AgO-Al) sea-water primary battery using dissolved sodium dioxide powder as electrolyte and incorporating a new electronic closed loop electrolyte circ…

And here we are on Hacker News with other threads on how battery density is peaking with Lithium and there is nothing better in sight.

Turns out there are silver based battery that can do almost double. So what's the catch as to why it's not being adopted by phones?

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

#70

Post by Arubis »

kragen wrote: post #47

How is there an article entitled "modern submarine torpedo attacks" apparently written in 2020 that doesn't contain the word "supercavitating"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VA-111_Shkval

Somewhat cynical take: because the West doesn’t have superiority in this space.
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