Posted on 08/31/2007 11:21:11 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Defense Focus: Diesel sub wonder weapons
Published: Aug. 31, 2007 at 11:10 AM By MARTIN SIEFF UPI Senior News Analyst
WASHINGTON, Aug. 31 (UPI) -- The diesel submarine may be the leading "Cinderella weapon" of the 21st century. It gets no respect in the United States or Russia. But China, India, France, Germany and Israel are all betting on it big time.
The diesel submarine is certainly not a sexy new technology like anti-ballistic missiles, global positioning satellites or lasers. It has been around as long as the submarine itself (British Adm. Lord John "Jackie" Fisher's bizarre experiment in giant steam-powered submarines, the notorious "K" boats of World War I, never got very far).
Diesel submarine technology was perfected more than 60 years ago in the great ocean-worthy U.S. Navy fleet of subs in World War II and in the German Type XXII and XXIII U-boats that became operational towards the end of the war.
However, the development of nuclear submarines, first by the U.S. Navy in the 1950s and then by the Soviet Union, appeared to make the diesel sub as obsolete as the bow and arrow became after the mass production of firearms. Adm. Hyman Rickover, the feisty father of America's nuclear navy, hated them like poison. So did his successor admirals.
Thanks to their procurement policies, there is not a single shipyard left in the entire United States that makes them anymore. But in other major nations, the old diesel sub is making a remarkable comeback.
Israel has already deployed three German-built Dolphin diesel submarines to carry nuclear-armed cruise missiles to provide it with a survivable second-strike capability to deter Iran or other nations from the temptation of carrying out a pre-emptive first strike with nuclear weapons, and it has ordered at least two more -- both also from Germany.
France is doing good business building its Scorpion submarines for export too, and India is planning to deploy Scorpions with cruise missiles as a deterrent against Pakistan similar to the Israeli concept.
But the biggest enthusiast for diesel subs is China, which is building its own: In 2006 it built 14 of them to one U.S. -- nuclear-powered -- new submarine.
China is building a mixed, or balanced, submarine fleet. It has also invested in bigger nuclear-powered strategic submarines to carry a survivable second-strike ballistic missile deterrent primarily aimed at the United States. But it is pouring major resources into its conventional submarine fleet as well. Why?
Diesel subs certainly do not have the limitless range and endurance for long-term operational deployment that nuclear subs do. But in conventional war, they have a lot of advantages as well.
They can operate far more easily in littoral or offshore, shallow waters, and being much smaller than nuclear submarines gives them a potentially huge operational advantage in key enclosed potential combat regions like the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
Also, China's procurement policies and its overwhelming concentration of force in its southeast coastal region leaves no doubt that Chinese operational planners see their most likely conventional enemy as being the U.S. Navy and Air Force in any eventual conflict over the status of Taiwan.
In this context, having a very large conventional diesel submarine fleet makes a lot of sense. Conventional diesel subs can pose a formidable threat to nuclear aircraft carriers operating within operational range of their home ports, as the Chinese sub fleet in the western Pacific and the Taiwan Strait would be doing in such a conflict.
U.S. anti-submarine warfare, or ASW, capabilities are superb, the best in the world. But they were overwhelmingly developed to locate and destroy bigger Soviet or Russian strategic and attack subs that were nuclear powered. A lot of smaller, cheaper diesel subs operating as underwater wolf packs would stand a much better chance of overwhelming the ASW defenses of U.S. carrier battle groups than throwing just two or three nuclear attack subs against them at a time would.
For Israel and India, the calculus is a different one: Israel simply cannot afford to buy nuclear subs, and they would be too big and therefore easy to detect in the relatively shallow Mediterranean anyway.
Nor does it need big nuclear-powered platforms like the U.S. Ohio class strategic subs or the old Soviet-era Typhoons, or even the somewhat smaller new nuclear powered Russian Borei class to carry its second-strike weapons.
Israel can't afford and does not need long-range submarine-launched ICBMs anyway. Iran, Syria and its other potential enemies would all be within range of much smaller intermediate-range cruise missiles that could be launched from a conventional sub. So the Jewish state has sensibly invested in German U-boats as its main line of defense. One wonders what Grand Adm. Karl Doenitz would have thought about it all.
In 1982 the British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror proved the conventional operational potency of the nuclear attack submarine by sinking the Argentine heavy cruiser General Belgrano during the Falklands, or Malvinas, War. Future wars, however, may see that dynamic reversed with enormous nuclear surface ships hunted by fleets of a weapon employed in both world wars that was supposed to have been superseded half a century ago: the non-nuclear diesel submarine.
There was one as far back as 1620 that worked. The byline says this is a senior writer too. Imagine if they had one of the writers who didn’t know what they’re talking about.
“The diesel submarine may be the leading “Cinderella weapon” of the 21st century. It gets no respect in the United States or Russia”
Sarcasm aside, this is a stupidly, wildly unrealistic comment by the article’s author.
Don’t the Brits have a locally-produced variant of the Mk 48?
These Nuke boats will be deploying underwater RPV's to hunt mines & presumably diesel SSK's. Coordinating the attack of diesel SSK's would be difficult given current technology. German & US wolfpack attacks relied on the subs communicating with eachother & a central command via surface radio.
Err,a sub’s diesel operates when she’s on the surface or when she’s snorkelling.It’s batteries run when it’s down there & they are always quieter than your average nuke boat.An average battery can go upto 3 days at slow speed & virtually be undetected.Enough to give any opposing commander sleepless nights.
The 5 Knots I mentioned is to get the maximum endurance,which for a new German sub would be ,
around 25+ days ~ 5 knots.& This endurance is just based on it’s fuel cells,leaving out it’s diesel-battery arrangement.
Well neither of the 2 sub variants the cutaways of which I posted have 8 tubes-they both have 6 each.Both have salvo launch capability & there combat system can handle the guidance/update of upto 8 systems reportedly(torpedo & missile).
They have a torpedo called the Spearfish which has a speed in excess of 60 knots at short range-very similar to the MK-48.Don’t see why they should produce the MK-48.
It’s hard to count tubes from those cut-aways, especially for the ignorant.
6 or 8 in the water at once...that’s a frightening prospect!
Diesel boats, at least engine wise, are far quieter than nucs because submerged they run on their battery, An electric propulsion system produces virtually no machine noise, except the screws, and technology has provided for very quiet propellors.
ASIDE: one of the secrets sent by John Walker to the Soviets was the make up of American subs’ props and screws. The Reds got the Swedes to machine copies and produces what US submariners called the “Walker” class boats.
This worry over diesel boats was the plot of Kelsey Grammer's silly movie Down Periscope. Where he was tasked with penetrating Norfolk with an unmodified WWII fleet boat, still carried deck guns. Silly as the movie was, the premise of alarm about the stealth of diesel electrics was and is real.
Why did the Soviets need the Swedes to do that????I presume they had adequate tech themselves if you are talking about equipment.Besides,wasn’t Sweden wary of the Soviets??
The huge volume of air and space needed for the crew, the air recycling, food, sewage, and other necessities of a manned submarine are a huge impediment.
An "Autonomous Undewater Vehicle" or "Unmanned Undewater Vehicle" can be much more efficient.
See also Unmanned Gliders, which navigate almost silently.
http://www.onr.navy.mil/media/extra/fact_sheets/advanced_underwater_glider.pdf
The tolerances required for the silent props were beyond the crude means of Soviet industry. The Swedes, though they be socialists, will make anyone anything for $$$. The tungsten steel on the 88mm at rounds used by the Wehrmacht came from Sweden. The Bofors 40mm that shot down planes on all sides in WWII made Swedish socialism possible with the payments for its licenses to build.
Well those instances are 60 years old.I have yet to see anything which shows that the Swedes helped the Soviets with their technology,directly or otherwise.Are you referring to Toshiba selling milling equipment to the Soviets in the 80s?
A wire guided torpedo from ~20 miles
I’d heard from some Brit sources that one of the Brit torpedoes was a Mk48 variant, using the proprietary pump drive.
Every ASW guy I've spoken to over the past 20 some years has said D/E's are extremely difficult to detect once they go electric.
been there & done that. in one exercise many, many years ago a canadian D/E captain was giving us fits trying to find him before he got a clear shot. he got us first...
The Taiwan Strait is only 100 miles wide. A dozen D/E's loitering about submerged in such a tight space just waiting for something to come sailing through could present a real problem in a conflict with Taiwan.
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