Earlier quoted context omitted.
> To put it another way, if there was a war so bad, the US reinstituted the draft, would these tools still be relevant? The drafted people would all go to factories and boatyards to build thousands of new submarines. Each submarine would likely have no people on board, and be fully remote control. The age old problem of "you can't hide while sending and receiving data, so you can't make a drone sub" has been solved b…
I'm a cryptographer, so I'm inherently curious about secret communication. It just so happens that I'm also very curious about radios, satellite communications, etc. Do you have a link that provides more information on these "below-noise-floor gold codes"? I tried googling, but I haven't found much technical information that I trust is entirely truthful or relevant.
Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies
201–210 of 219 posts
Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Top Gun was created in response to heavy losses in Vietnam That in itself is a crucial piece of historical context. The MiGs of the day were better than contemporary American fighters such as the F-86. They operated at altitudes the Americans couldn’t reach and shot downwards. One reason America was in Vietnam in the first place was a genuine fear that the Soviet system was actually better! It was the Sidewinder miss…
The F86 was on a rough par with the MIG15 in Korea. Yeager's assessment was that it was all about pilots, not the planes. Trivia: the Soviets eventually recovered an intact downed Sabre and shipped it to Russia for evaluation. They copied from it, including the Sabre's gun-sight that later fitted out the MIGs in Vietnam. Did the F86 ever serve in the Vietnam war?
In Vietnam, the F100 (successor to F86) was in use, and it was actually obsolete at the time in comparison to the Migs.
The F100 was the first jet that could fly supersonic in level flight. It was known as the widowmaker, as it was basically a subsonic aircraft that could go supersonic, with pre-supersonic cockpit and controls. The workload on the pilots was intense, and many pilots died in flight school.
Since it was basically obsolete, it was used as ground attack aircraft, with fighter support provided by F105s.
Source: family member flew F100s in Vietnam
Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies
#203You 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)
What do 70-75 year old torpedoes (look at the manufacturing dates in the articles you cited) have to do with modern torpedoes?
Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies
#204You 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)
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Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies
#205Take EVERYTHING in that article with a giant tub of salt. The specifics of torpedo combat are some of the most closely guarded military secrets. Take the following: "These high-torque, permanent magnet electric motor torpedoes ramp up to speed in under a second. They go from sitting in a torpedo tube to 50 knots in a near-instant because they don’t have the mechanical lag and inertia thermal torpedoes must overcome d…
Very tangential question. I can think of only a handful of targets that the US might want to shoot at. (I realize there might be a ton, and this is my lack of imagination). The handful I can think of, almost all of them seem like they're in the supply chain to actually build the torpedos. I'm pretty skeptical of the depth of the US stockpile. To put it another way, if there was a war so bad, the US reinstituted the d…
According to wikipedia the US stockpile of Mark 48s is over 1000, and the current manufacturer is building about 50 a year, which certainly seems like enough for a little bit. Most military manufacturing happens in country or in an allied country, and there are people in the military devoted to making sure the supply chain for this stuff is healthy, and making sure there is room for surge if needed. As for overseas needs, it's hard to imagine a scenario where the US Navy is unable to defend American convoys in the Atlantic (linking them to manufacturing and raw materials in South America, Europe and Africa) at least not in the first year of the conflict.
Of course in a total war scenario things start to change. When it's truly nation against nation in a global conflict every part of society needs to be re-tooled into a giant war machine. In WW2 the US told General Motors how many cars they were allowed to make a week, because they needed steel for tanks. I imagine any facility capable of making electronics in the US and Europe today would be re-tooled to make the chips for Mark 48s, AIM-120s, SM-2s, etc.
EDIT: Oh, and in a total war scenario, submarines are essential weapons. Remember, a total war isn't just army against army, it's also economy against economy. If you can deny your opponent access to the resources it needs you can win the conflict, and that means you need submarines to sink enemy supply convoys. This would certainly come up in a hypothetical Sino-American conflict. The overwhelming majority of Chinese imports and exports come through ports. The port of Shanghai alone gets more tonnage of supplies in and out in a month than all land routes in and out of China COMBINED get in a year.
Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very tangential question. I can think of only a handful of targets that the US might want to shoot at. (I realize there might be a ton, and this is my lack of imagination). The handful I can think of, almost all of them seem like they're in the supply chain to actually build the torpedos. I'm pretty skeptical of the depth of the US stockpile. To put it another way, if there was a war so bad, the US reinstituted the d…
> if there was a war so bad, the US reinstituted the draft US has something better than the draft: poverty. As long as there's a large enough pool of young people without options, there's no problem. A draft generally can only be minimally discriminatory for PR reasons, so poverty as enlistment incentive works much better. Though, talking about US military running out of manpower is a far, far fetch, isn't? It surpas…
Currently most military recruits come from the middle classes. Youths in poverty typically fail to meet enlistment standards due to health problems, low standardized test scores, criminal record, drug use, etc. Of course there are many exceptions but that's the general rule.
Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
... torpedos can go 50 knots for 100km/over an hour, but a drone can't? Fundamentally underwater hydrodynamics is still in its infancy. How do I know? I just have to look at a shark.
A typical ship is going to be out at sea for a long longer than an hour. A drone-net that only lasts for an hour isn't exactly a persistent detection zone. If you want something with range + speed, you're going to need size for the power plant and fuel. Maybe you could hack together something with drones coming back to a mothership to recharge.
Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
These got a lot of attention a while back. But their use case is limited because they're really short-ranged. These things go all out soon after leaving the tube, make a hell of a lot of noise, and are good only really close in. They're sort of a last resort weapon, a snapshot provided that the enemy shooting at you is even within range. A modern US Mark 48 can swim out quietly under wire guidance and emit no noise o…
My personal theory is that a big use case for Shkval is in the littoral and shallow waters of the Baltic Sea where there is fantastic opportunity to play hide and seek. Especially sub to sub. I think the Soviet command expected enemy subs to successfully sneak up on them and then have something up their sleeve to raise hell right back.
For that kind of case, wouldn't it make more sense to keep the torpedoes deployed all the time at 100 meters or so from the main sub, so that they can counterattack after it gets destroyed? It could drag them behind it on cables.
Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Luftwaffe even in 1944 was known to sneak through Allied defenses and shoot down B-17s. My father served as a B-17 navigator in 1944 and heard a Luftwaffe fighter shoot two bursts and bring down 2 B-17s in the landing pattern. The B-17s were caught by surprise cleaning their guns and never fired a shot back. The Luftwaffe could have taken out a squadron of P-51s with just a handful of fighters. This would have re…
Wait, was your dad a P-51 pilot, or a B-17 navigator? Quite different roles. I know the AAC moved people around at whim, but this seems unusual.
He was a B-17 navigator during WW2 for 32 missions. After the war, he left the military and went to college. After that he rejoined to become a fighter pilot (what he wanted originally anyway). He flew P-51s, and later transitioned to jet fighters. Flew combat in the Korean War, mostly ground attack missions.
I would have joined the Air Force too, but with my thick glasses the AF told me no way I would be a pilot. So I wound up as a compiler nerd instead :-)
Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Long gone are the days of the British soldiers taking a knee in formations to shoot their muskets. Essentially expecting to take turns with the enemy trading shots. Never did understand that mentality at all.
Well, that was when individual muskets were inaccurate and the coordination issues with commanding thousands of men using drums and flags meant a large mass of soldiers firing in sync could scare the opposing side into fleeing and allow calvary to mop up. And before that, you had knights with plate armor that could could shrug off most bladed weapons on a battlefield that would have destroyed peasant conscript withou…
Defense vs Offense is the quintessential cat & mouse game. If the offense comes up with a new weapon, the defense is forced to come up with a counter. If the defense comes up with a better shield, offense comes up with a bigger bomb.