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Are Submarines About to Become Obsolete?

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Re: Are Submarines About to Become Obsolete?

#41

Post by desdiv »

dimitar wrote: post #28
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but if they have to launch from the middle of the ocean, their advantage over ICBM's becomes much smaller, maybe none if they can't strike & destroy hostile C&C and launch sites. It is already a very small window of time that boomers are most useful for in a hot war. SLBM's utility in peacetime/pre-war is contingent upon people not knowing where they are. OTOH, relying on ICMB's is contingent on enough people…

Nuclear ballistic missile-armed submarines are considered second strike weapons, even though there are first strike scenarios for their use. Their missiles don't have the range to hit launch sites that are far inland in North America or Eurasia. Even if they did the missiles would be vulnerable to anti defence. Additionally they are slow moving, which is very undesirable in first strikes. However they can get really…

Their missiles don't have the range to hit launch sites that are far inland in North America or Eurasia.

You're severely underestimating the range of SLBMs. The Russian RSM-56 can cover the entire continental US from both Saint Petersburg and Vladivostok.

Re: Are Submarines About to Become Obsolete?

#42

Post by hga »

brudgers wrote: post #38
ghshephard wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article wasn't talking about Boomers, like the Ohio Class, which can go hide in the middle of the ocean, but attack class submarines, which need to get up close to their target. The theory is that with more advanced detection technology, you can blanket an small area with sensors, and deny that small area to an attack submarine. This has no implications for MAD.

To extend this, the US attack submarine has seen mission creep from suppressing the opponent's missile submarine; directly engaging the opponent's attack submarines to protect friendly boomers; and harrying the opponent's capital naval and merchant fleets. With the end of the Cold War, US attack submarines have been increasingly deployed out of blue-water roles for which they are truly suited. Industrial inertia more…

I've always considered them to be a "trump-card" against any developments that negate surface craft.

Suppose in a future "Battle of the Taiwan Straight" the PRC makes it sufficiently unhealthy that our carriers can't support the ROC? And things are marginal for the destroyers we can spare? If they can't also negate the attack subs....

I would cut the carrier force before I'd cut the attack subs.

Re: Are Submarines About to Become Obsolete?

#43

Post by tsotha »

dimitar wrote: post #28
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but if they have to launch from the middle of the ocean, their advantage over ICBM's becomes much smaller, maybe none if they can't strike & destroy hostile C&C and launch sites. It is already a very small window of time that boomers are most useful for in a hot war. SLBM's utility in peacetime/pre-war is contingent upon people not knowing where they are. OTOH, relying on ICMB's is contingent on enough people…

Nuclear ballistic missile-armed submarines are considered second strike weapons, even though there are first strike scenarios for their use. Their missiles don't have the range to hit launch sites that are far inland in North America or Eurasia. Even if they did the missiles would be vulnerable to anti defence. Additionally they are slow moving, which is very undesirable in first strikes. However they can get really…

>Their missiles don't have the range to hit launch sites that are far inland in North America or Eurasia.

This is just wrong. We're talking about ballistic missiles here, not cruise missiles. There isn't a spot on the face of the earth that can't be nuked by a sub from a safe distance.

>Even if they did the missiles would be vulnerable to anti defence.

Also mostly wrong. Only a handful of countries have any defense at all against an IRBM, those defenses only cover a tiny portion of their respective territory, and are both unreliable and relatively easily defeated.

>Additionally they are slow moving, which is very undesirable in first strikes.

Why? If I launch a missile hundreds of miles from enemy ships they're not going to find me. The only thing I have to worry about is a nuclear response, which is a hazard for any platform conducting a first strike.

>However they can get really close to major population centers near the oceans and kill millions.

If by "close" you mean 4000 miles. I guess it's a relative term.

>Area denial can make them much less effective if combined with proper air defence to take down the missiles.

Air defense that wasn't specifically designed to take down ballistic missiles won't have any effect at all.

You're confusing ballistic missiles with cruise missiles. The former are an order of magnitude more difficult to deal with from a planning perspective.

Re: Are Submarines About to Become Obsolete?

#45

Post by Shivetya »

rbc wrote: post #13

Obsolete sounds a little strong. The denied areas for submarine operations will get larger, but the ocean is really big. Running the fixed and mobile sensor arrays to detect submarines is not cheap. Regardless of the foreseeable improvements in submarine detection, they'll still be harder to find than surface ships.

Considering we cannot find a modern airliner that crashed into the sea I really doubt submarines will be all that threatened until a means to see through the atmosphere and sea is derived for satellites.

The real means to obsoleting boomers and other weaponized menaces is to create a world where the consumerism dominates any nation with sufficient means to go to war. Simply put, their population will demand everything but war.

The only threat to that is sliding backwards from a consumer driven economy to a state driven one like Russia is experiencing.

Re: Are Submarines About to Become Obsolete?

#46

Post by cocoablazing »

hga wrote: post #39
pm90 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. MIRV's also make it incredibly hard for any kind of "Missile Defense". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targeta...

I didn't clearly state my case. A first strike requires reliably hitting a bunch of targets, often on a schedule. If your intended target has a possibility of randomly (from your viewpoint) taking out some fraction of these incoming warheads, how much more complicated does that make your plan? If you're talking about protecting a target (nation) from an attack, then "Missile Defense" shouldn't even be your first line…

No ABM system has demonstrated success against either MIRVs or deployed PENAIDS (much less 53T6), but more to the point BM's of any sort are not a first strike weapon (given US and RF radar nets, 24/7 US launch detection capability, and part-of-the-day RF launch detection capability).

If the US has a first strike weapon, it's a fleet of nuclear-capable stealth bombers employing GPS-guided laydown-capable munitions, coupled with a pretty nasty set of eyes in the sky to find mobile launchers. F-35 is also stealth and MAY get a B61 interface to replace NATO Tornados and F-16s, etc.

Re: Are Submarines About to Become Obsolete?

#47

Post by InclinedPlane »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #23
rbc wrote: post #13

Obsolete sounds a little strong. The denied areas for submarine operations will get larger, but the ocean is really big. Running the fixed and mobile sensor arrays to detect submarines is not cheap. Regardless of the foreseeable improvements in submarine detection, they'll still be harder to find than surface ships.

Right, but if they have to launch from the middle of the ocean, their advantage over ICBM's becomes much smaller, maybe none if they can't strike & destroy hostile C&C and launch sites. It is already a very small window of time that boomers are most useful for in a hot war. SLBM's utility in peacetime/pre-war is contingent upon people not knowing where they are. OTOH, relying on ICMB's is contingent on enough people…

Huh? The advantage of SLBMs is that they are enormously survivable. It doesn't matter where they are as long as they can't be taken out in a first strike, so they provide robust, highly credible retaliatory strike capability at all times. Modern SLBMs have more than enough range to maintain that from the middle of the ocean.

Re: Are Submarines About to Become Obsolete?

#48

Post by brudgers »

hga wrote: post #42
brudgers wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To extend this, the US attack submarine has seen mission creep from suppressing the opponent's missile submarine; directly engaging the opponent's attack submarines to protect friendly boomers; and harrying the opponent's capital naval and merchant fleets. With the end of the Cold War, US attack submarines have been increasingly deployed out of blue-water roles for which they are truly suited. Industrial inertia more…

I've always considered them to be a "trump-card" against any developments that negate surface craft. Suppose in a future "Battle of the Taiwan Straight" the PRC makes it sufficiently unhealthy that our carriers can't support the ROC? And things are marginal for the destroyers we can spare? If they can't also negate the attack subs.... I would cut the carrier force before I'd cut the attack subs.

At the danger of starting something political, I don't think the US can win a war with China in the Taiwan straight regardless of fleet composition. China is not Iraq in terms of signals intelligence, electronic warfare capability, and nuclear arsenal. Never mind financial and political wherewithal.

The Chinese were more than a match sixty years ago to the point that MacArthur was fired over wanting to go hot with the nukes. Their strength relative to that of the US has only increased in the interim. In addition the US's interests are less aligned with those of 中國國民黨 with each passing year. The Koumintang lost the civil war and communism has been replaced by other bogeymen.

The reality is that the US is at best in position to broker a reasonably peaceful solution along the lines of the British transfer of Hong Kong.

Re: Are Submarines About to Become Obsolete?

#49

Post by tomjen3 »

gaius wrote: post #19
tjradcliffe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The model of "subs as aircraft carriers" for UUVs seems less likely, though. UUVs are arguably better deployed like satellites than aircraft. This is the way underwater mines are deployed today: seed an area well in advance of hostilities with mines that dig themselves into the bottom, and activate them remotely at need. If you posit that submarines are going to be highly detectable (which is reasonable, and has been…

The submarine aircraft carrier has already been tried http://www.divernet.com/Wrecks/wreck_tours/159473/wreck_tour... It's a good dive :-)

And we tried how many times to make an airplane before we did it? This is just attempt number one.
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