US Navy Reacquires Urgency About Anti-Submarine Warfare

The Nav Log ^ | 12/03 | Sherman

[pabianice]

The SP-2H is long gone, but its crews were far sharper at shallow-water ASW than are today’s P-3C crews.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

ping

[DustyMoment]

I was a P-3B sailor and this article makes my blood boil. All through the 'Nam era, we had good control of the sub activities in the ocean. I would love to know the sequence of events that brough the ASW Navy to this level.

This is just unmitigated stupidity.

[Al B.]

ping

[oyez]

Truculent turtle, eh? Neat AC. Never crewed one, bit I always liked the looks of them. They were probably a better MAD platform than P3's as well.

[mylife]

The P3 fleet is in sorry shape.
The airframes are way past their life expectancy and many are so corroded they cant be repaired in a cost effective way.

Cheap dieselsboats have always been a threat.
that MESMA system sounds pretty dangerous in the wrong hands.
Snorkeling is the diesles weak unberbelly.

[Travis McGee]

ASW Ping.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

Look at the erosion of Naval Aviation in general. Nobody wants to admit that there are serious crises in leadership and ingenuity. The military has been taken over by careerists with worthless business school degrees and the politicians care about nothing but getting re-elected and filling their Swiss bank accounts with money made from shady business deals and kickbacks.

I'll give you an example: those dumbasses think that the F-18 SuperHornet is going to effectively replace the F-14 and A-6. The F-18 is a good little short-range fighter as long as it's used for what it was designed for. But the leaders of Naval Aviation think that the Hornet can be effectively used for electronic warfare, reconnaissance, and refueling on par with the A-6 Intruder and can fulfill the interceptor/fleet-defense missions of the F-14 Tomcat. There is no way in hell that it can and, sooner or later, this deluded line of thinking is going to have tragic consequences.

So far, we've gotten away with blundering incompetence at the top and equipment that has degraded far beyong reasonable service life because we're fighting enemies who do not fight conventional wars. Nothing will change until we go into a conventional battle against somebody good like the Chinese in 15-25 years and get our asses handed to us.

[DustyMoment]

Great points. I'll give you an even more eggregious example: look at what they have done to a great aircraft, the EA-6B. It has been reduced to ferrying people around and being used as a bogey for carrier fighter drills.

For too long, the Navy has been allowed its traditions instead of facing reality. Even when I was in, they thought we were still in the days of WWII or the days of the Great White Fleet.

Sadly, they won't realize that those days are long in the Navy's past until, as you said, they get their heads handed to them.

And, that day is likely coming.

[squidly]

This is our peace dividend from the end of the Cold War. Happened at the same time that the Army was cut from 18 divisions to 10. Congress had stuff they were more interested in spending money on. ASW, submarine fleet, and amphibious forces all suffered big cuts. Only the carrier groups were left relatively intact, although the cancellation of the A-12 program will have consequences, as noted elsewhere on this thread.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

Yep. What's really bad, too, is that when reality finally hits those at the top, it won't be just a matter of restarting production to build new F-14s, A-6s, and EA-6Bs. The tooling for the F-14 has already been thrown away as ordered by Dick Cheney, who wanted to eliminate it from competition with his fair-haired boy, the F-18 SuperHornet. This scorched-earth tactic is the order of the day for politicians protecting their pet projects. The same thing will probably happen with the EA-6B if it hasn't already. Correcting these mistakes will require extensive effort, re-engineering, re-tooling, and will cost every bit as much as starting with a brand new design from square-one.

[DustyMoment]

Yeah, you're right. I was alarmed when Clinton began closing all of those military bases and RIF'ing the troops.

The problem is that we have had too many leftist leaders unfamiliar with history. Both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln warned us about complacency and forming lasting allegiances.

And, of course, as we saw in the 20th century between the "War to end all wars" and the war after that, cutting the military as severely as it was caused Army recruits in the late '30s to have to drill with broomsticks because there weren't enough rifles.

In the 90s, under Clinton's military budget slashing, spare parts became so precious that aircraft and tanks were cannabalized down to their frames to keep other weapons systems operational. This type of idiocy serves neither the military, nor the public that is paying for the weapons.

We should demand better.

[csvset]

Fwiw, In other ASW related news....

Press Release Number: EPX200306253 25-Jun-03

Sonobuoy innovation earns DoD recognition
By Karen L. Jensen
Naval Aviation Science & Technology Office

NAVAIR PATUXENT RIVER, MD—A combined Navy, industry and academia team received the 2002 DoD Value Engineering Award June 18 at the Pentagon for their tactical acoustic measurement and decision aid sonobuoy system, known as TAMDA.

The project was initiated in 1998 to solve the problem of where to place tactical sonobuoys in the water, particularly in shallow-water operating areas.

“With sonobuoy costs ranging from $250 to $5,000, you could waste a lot of money if they’re not placed correctly,” said Dan Flynn, TAMDA integrated program team leader.

The Avionics Department went “shopping for technology” among completed NAVAIR Small Business Innovation Research contracts. They found some good matches.

The small companies that eventually signed on were Navmar Applied Sciences, Applied Hydro-Acoustics Research, and Phoenix Science and Technology. Each company had proved its mettle by transitioning technologies to commercialization of their product. Additional partners included Space and Naval War Systems Command, Naval Sea Systems Command and the University of Washington.

The TAMDA team eventually built a new sonobuoy using the SBIR technology along with parts from existing fleet buoys. An underwater microphone, or hydrophone, was borrowed from the AN/SSQ-53F sonobuoy, and a water column temperature sensor from the AN/SSQ-36 sonobuoy.

“The SBIR innovations were the glue that pulled everything together and allowed us to shrink the technology down into one buoy,” Flynn said. “We also made it modular so we could take things out and put other things in, always keeping in mind our maximum allowable weight of 39 pounds.”

The team tested the new sonobouy in the Gulf of Mexico in April. NAVAIR 38, a converted offshore support vessel modified to accommodate advanced research projects, was pressed into service. Trailer laboratories were transported from Patuxent River and set up in the back of the boat.

The team had to generate sound to probe the ocean bottom. In addition to the buoy’s design architecture, Navmar created sound waves by crushing Christmas balls and light bulbs in the water to probe the ocean bottom. The pressure of the ocean holds the ball intact until it drops a few hundred feet, where it breaks, creating a loud noise the sonobuoy can then measure.

Phoenix came up with a competing sound source using an electrical circuit similar to a spark plug. The spark creates a gas bubble, which when collapsed by the ocean pressure, also creates a loud noise.

Applied Hydro-Acoustic Research is developing the system that processes the buoy’s data. The design architecture consists of ingesting buoy data and merging it with historical climatologic ocean data into a spatially and temporally variant ocean model. This model can then be used by air ASW decision aid systems in a manner that is tactically relevant.

The University of Washington verified the operational concepts of the buoy, data collection, and bottom parameter calculations made on site.

“We tested the data transmission by sending it via a small satellite telephone in the sonobuoy to the university labs in Seattle,” Flynn said. “You can take these telephones anywhere, and just make a regular call to get the data from the buoy.”

The ultimate goal is to send data back to NAVOCEANO d, atabases and to the tactical environmental data server at SPAWAR.

TAMDA will provide previously unavailable data on sound waves interacting with the bottom of the ocean. Real-time measurement of ocean sound speed, ambient noise, reverberation and water depth provides critical data to an air ASW mission, particularly in shallow-water operating areas.

“These measurements are important because they allow us to optimize the placement of the sonobuoys,” Flynn said. “The primary things we need to find out are the temperature of the water, the sounds in the ocean, how sound bounces from the bottom to the surface. In the ocean, the sounds are absorbed, reflected or scattered, depending on the makeup of the bottom, whether it’s mud, sand, rock or corals.”

One TAMDA goal is to eliminate explosives in the water and the need for a P-3 aircraft to fly around and constantly collect measurement data. The new sonobuoy can be left in the ocean for unattended measurements, allowing any aircraft or ship to tap into the data as needed. This contributes to efficient net-centric operations, curbs the amount of noise in the water, and leaves the habitats of ocean mammals undisturbed.

The new sonobuoy will do the job, in a single buoy, that currently requires six buoys.

“I nominated the TAMDA team for the DoD award because their work fit the criteria of yielding value engineering savings,” Signal Processing branch head Dr. Mary Eileen Farrell said. “Not only will TAMDA reduce the number of sonobuoys that need to be deployed, but it will help with environmental impacts.”

TAMDA, now in the concept exploration phase, is on target to meet milestone B by the end of fiscal year 2005. The new technology will primarily enhance P-3 and MH-60 operations, but is a net-centric, platform-independent system that can be connected to other ASW units for immediate use.

—USN—

Photo by Dan Flynn Aboard NAVAIR 38, the NAVAIR TAMDA team harvests oceanographic parameters in the Gulf of Mexico. The team deployed in April to validate TAMDA prototype design concepts. Left to right, NAVAIR 38 boat master Mike Clem, Seaward Service, Phoenix Science & Technology scientist John Gallagher, NAVAIR engineer Eric Thiel, Advanced Avionics engineer Don Scott, and Navmar engineer Carl Calianno.

[squidly]

In the 90s, under Clinton's military budget slashing, spare parts became so precious that aircraft and tanks were cannabalized down to their frames to keep other weapons systems operational.

I got to see that firsthand. On our ship, spare parts and tech support dried up big time.

[squidly]

Meant to say it dried up around '96, at least where I was.

[RocketWolf]

Flown in some SP-2hs and sailed ( in diesel boats) a lot against them. Much better (for the VPrs) and much worse ( for us DBFs) radars than any P3 (which I also spent quite a bit of time in.) And just looking out the window helps a LOT when working shallow subs.Also, if you want to put the fear of allah in a shallow sub with limited speed put up a f,,t sack with good optics a lot of fuel.

[Jeff Head]

Always has been a major threat...and the most dangerous threat to our CBG's. It remains so today despite the premature rejoicing and resulting budget cuts and SOP changes due to the collapse of the Soviets.

As you know, in my fictional series about WW III, it is the submerged threat theat the Chicomms hit and capitalize on in the opening surprise attacks against the 7th fleet with a modern, opeartional and very effectve supercavitating wepaon system.

I pray we are finally waking up.

THE DRAGON'S FURY SERIES
A techno-thriller series about the next World War

[Long Cut]

Check out # 13...

[Travis McGee]

Even a POS Kilo laying low around the Straits of Hormuz on battery power could wreck a CBG, with suicidal jihadists in charge. 8 or 10 torpedos launced point blank.....

[Jeff Head]

Any of the modern diesel/electrics can pose a deadly threat in litoral waters, and the cost of those is relatively cheap compared to what they might hunt, and their numbers are increasing.

Still, in order to strategically counter us and our carrier battle groups, the potential adversaires are going to have to get in the blue water and somehow prevent the CBG's from getting close. That's much more difficult for the diesel/electrics in terms of speed (ability to intercept) and staying power...but they are improving.

To date, no one has been able to crack that nut yet...but they are trying, and not just with the smaller diesel/electric boats...and our current policies, particularly as respects Red China, are funding their efforts.