O/T Drones hunting subs

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Encircled
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O/T Drones hunting subs

Post by Encircled »

I have no military experience apart from a spell in the cadets in my youth (put me off for life!)

Just how feasible is likely to be that the SSBNs of the world could be hunted down and destroyed/tracked by underwater drones?
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RE: O/T Drones hunting subs

Post by BBfanboy »

Some SSBNs already carry their own decoy drones. I imagine it will not be long before they carry their own anti-drone drones.
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RE: O/T Drones hunting subs

Post by Bullwinkle58 »

ORIGINAL: Encircled

I have no military experience apart from a spell in the cadets in my youth (put me off for life!)

Just how feasible is likely to be that the SSBNs of the world could be hunted down and destroyed/tracked by underwater drones?

Consider the "use it or lose it" concept and re-ask the question.

It's a big ocean. Boomers move every day and patrol areas vary month to month. A drone sophisticated enough to search with passive sensors is a big, expensive drone. And you're going to need a whole lot of them.

And, considering my first line, do you really want to put the fate of your nation in the hands of a machine with no crew?

So fess up--you reading Popular Mechanics again? [:)]
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RE: O/T Drones hunting subs

Post by Encircled »

Ha! No, over here its suddenly surfaced as a reason not to renew Trident and I thought this community might know a bit more about it than me!
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RE: O/T Drones hunting subs

Post by Bullwinkle58 »

ORIGINAL: Encircled

Ha! No, over here its suddenly surfaced as a reason not to renew Trident and I thought this community might know a bit more about it than me!

There are good arguments for the UK to not replace Trident, but drones ain't them.
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RE: O/T Drones hunting subs

Post by tiemanjw »

There are good arguments for the UK to not replace Trident, but drones ain't them.

Is it that they want to replace boomers with robots (bad idea), or that they think robots will follow their boomers, and if necessary (war) attack them (robot attacks boomers)? In other words what's the point of spending the money if the enemy can find them so easily? This seems potentially plausible (10-20 years from now), though there are several traps one could fall into. It is a non-trivial problem to track a sub and if the following H/W is unmanned... well, what is the risk in "attacking" it using some creative means (ie not kinetic weapons).
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RE: O/T Drones hunting subs

Post by GetAssista »

Flying drones with sonar capabilities provided by some airdropped bots look more effective to me. Moving in water fast enough to search vast spaces is hard. On the other hand, one might go the other way and saturate the oceans with noize-pickup nanobots at some point =)
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RE: O/T Drones hunting subs

Post by tiemanjw »

ORIGINAL: GetAssista

Flying drones with sonar capabilities provided by some airdropped bots look more effective to me. Moving in water fast enough to search vast spaces is hard. On the other hand, one might go the other way and saturate the oceans with noize-pickup nanobots at some point =)

I would think you would have to acquire at a known choke point (such as coming out of port).

I know we did saturate the oceans (or at least checkpoints) with sonar in the past (GIUK gap), though I am way to young to know if it was any good.

Airplanes hunting subs (at least subs whos job it is to be nothing more than a hole in the ocean until doomsday arrives) are very difficult to find with A/C. Even then, you have short legs and everyone knows you are there. Certainly could be useful (if done right) for suppressing a SSN (or SS) and prosecuting one after it has shot at you, but if a boomers birds have flow, everybody has already failed in their mission and not much else matters any more.
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RE: O/T Drones hunting subs

Post by BBfanboy »

ORIGINAL: GetAssista

Flying drones with sonar capabilities provided by some airdropped bots look more effective to me. Moving in water fast enough to search vast spaces is hard. On the other hand, one might go the other way and saturate the oceans with noize-pickup nanobots at some point =)

Naval mines that can rest on the bottom for months and rise (via propulsion) to attack a recognized sonar signature have already been developed, but I do not know if any nation has produced them.
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RE: O/T Drones hunting subs

Post by BBfanboy »

ORIGINAL: tiemanj



I would think you would have to acquire at a known choke point (such as coming out of port).

I know we did saturate the oceans (or at least checkpoints) with sonar in the past (GIUK gap), though I am way to young to know if it was any good.

Airplanes hunting subs (at least subs whos job it is to be nothing more than a hole in the ocean until doomsday arrives) are very difficult to find with A/C. Even then, you have short legs and everyone knows you are there. Certainly could be useful (if done right) for suppressing a SSN (or SS) and prosecuting one after it has shot at you, but if a boomers birds have flow, everybody has already failed in their mission and not much else matters any more.
SOSUS has hydrophones all over the world's oceans, not just in the GIUK gap. It seems to be very good against the older Russian subs which were noisy, but I don't know how well it picks up current technology. Certainly the computer processing to filter out normal ocean noise would be better now than 30 years ago.

A remarkable story about SOSUS that has ties to the Titanic (IIRC all the details from a television doc). When the SSN Thresher (or Scorpion) disappeared the USN asked oceanographer Dr. Ballard to help them find her with his deep water research sub.

After combing through SOSUS data his team found an anomaly on one of the hydrophones data printouts. They calculated the distance from the area the missing sub should have been in and using the speed of sound through water got an approximate time of the anomaly. Then they went to the data from other sonarphones at around the same time and found the same anomaly, in varying strengths. From there they were able to triangulate the position of the sound source, and there they found the wreckage of the missing sub.

It should be pointed out that the sonarphones were all hundreds of miles away from the location of the sub wreckage. I think the SOSUS net was made more dense with hydrophones since then.

The Titanic connection? Ballard would only assist the USN in locating the missing sub if the USN would fund his search for Titanic for several more months. It was just before he ran out of funding that he discovered Titanic's wreck.
No matter how bad a situation is, you can always make it worse. - Chris Hadfield : An Astronaut's Guide To Life On Earth
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RE: O/T Drones hunting subs

Post by catwhoorg »

Sure the UK could have autonomous sub hunting drones, controlled by there military communications set-up, called Skynet

What could possibly go wrong ?
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RE: O/T Drones hunting subs

Post by BBfanboy »

ORIGINAL: catwhoorg

Sure the UK could have autonomous sub hunting drones, controlled by there military communications set-up, called Skynet

What could possibly go wrong ?
I will refer you to Ahnold S. when I can find his phone number.
No matter how bad a situation is, you can always make it worse. - Chris Hadfield : An Astronaut's Guide To Life On Earth
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RE: O/T Drones hunting subs

Post by wdolson »

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy
SOSUS has hydrophones all over the world's oceans, not just in the GIUK gap. It seems to be very good against the older Russian subs which were noisy, but I don't know how well it picks up current technology. Certainly the computer processing to filter out normal ocean noise would be better now than 30 years ago.

A remarkable story about SOSUS that has ties to the Titanic (IIRC all the details from a television doc). When the SSN Thresher (or Scorpion) disappeared the USN asked oceanographer Dr. Ballard to help them find her with his deep water research sub.

After combing through SOSUS data his team found an anomaly on one of the hydrophones data printouts. They calculated the distance from the area the missing sub should have been in and using the speed of sound through water got an approximate time of the anomaly. Then they went to the data from other sonarphones at around the same time and found the same anomaly, in varying strengths. From there they were able to triangulate the position of the sound source, and there they found the wreckage of the missing sub.

It should be pointed out that the sonarphones were all hundreds of miles away from the location of the sub wreckage. I think the SOSUS net was made more dense with hydrophones since then.

The Titanic connection? Ballard would only assist the USN in locating the missing sub if the USN would fund his search for Titanic for several more months. It was just before he ran out of funding that he discovered Titanic's wreck.

I have a friend who's first duty station in the USN was SOSUS. He couldn't tell anyone what he did there for many decades. In a weird coincidence, my sister's SO was an officer in the same SOSUS center around the same time, though they didn't remember one another.

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RE: O/T Drones hunting subs

Post by Bullwinkle58 »

ORIGINAL: tiemanj
There are good arguments for the UK to not replace Trident, but drones ain't them.

Is it that they want to replace boomers with robots (bad idea), or that they think robots will follow their boomers, and if necessary (war) attack them (robot attacks boomers)? In other words what's the point of spending the money if the enemy can find them so easily? This seems potentially plausible (10-20 years from now), though there are several traps one could fall into. It is a non-trivial problem to track a sub and if the following H/W is unmanned... well, what is the risk in "attacking" it using some creative means (ie not kinetic weapons).

Finding Ohio-class SSBNs, which are updated 1970s tech, is really non-trivial with manned SSNs. The follow-on class is in early development now. I don't know where they're going, but there have been big advances in submerged stealth since the 70s and we have far better modeling tools than the engineers did then. So speculating on unmanned vehicles that could do what manned SSNs really can't is sci fi right now.

But say you do develop drones (or whatever you want to call them) that can easily find and attack boomers. Would you want to? IMO, no. Tremendously destabilizing. SSBNs operate in a different realm than any other weapon system. Their only benefit, as they are WAY more costly than burying ICBMs in dirt silos, is their invulnerability. If they lose that you create an incentive to use their weapons before they are destroyed. Boomers have worked for circa 50 years because they were available as a revenge response to an attack. A response that can't be countered and thus the initial attack becomes less likely. Take that away and the math changes in a bad way.
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RE: O/T Drones hunting subs

Post by Bullwinkle58 »

ORIGINAL: GetAssista

Flying drones with sonar capabilities provided by some airdropped bots look more effective to me. Moving in water fast enough to search vast spaces is hard. On the other hand, one might go the other way and saturate the oceans with noize-pickup nanobots at some point =)

If you have such nanobots why try to use them in the vast oceans? Unleash them on the enemy economy and be done.
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RE: O/T Drones hunting subs

Post by Bullwinkle58 »

ORIGINAL: tiemanj

ORIGINAL: GetAssista

Flying drones with sonar capabilities provided by some airdropped bots look more effective to me. Moving in water fast enough to search vast spaces is hard. On the other hand, one might go the other way and saturate the oceans with noize-pickup nanobots at some point =)

I would think you would have to acquire at a known choke point (such as coming out of port).

I know we did saturate the oceans (or at least checkpoints) with sonar in the past (GIUK gap), though I am way to young to know if it was any good.

Airplanes hunting subs (at least subs whos job it is to be nothing more than a hole in the ocean until doomsday arrives) are very difficult to find with A/C. Even then, you have short legs and everyone knows you are there. Certainly could be useful (if done right) for suppressing a SSN (or SS) and prosecuting one after it has shot at you, but if a boomers birds have flow, everybody has already failed in their mission and not much else matters any more.

The two USN boomer bases are not really choke points. West Coast is a bit worse, but still a lot of water and a lot of available courses. When we came out of Kings Bay we were on the surface for a number of hours running for the continental shelf at speeds where a pursuing SSN would be cavitating. (Shallow water works both ways.) We dove at different points each time, on different headings, and did different things immediately after the dive. And there may (not saying) have been "sanitation" efforts by the rest of the USN to make sure we were all by our lonesome.

If you've never been to sea it's hard to explain how big the oceans of the world are. Modern SLBMs have the range to allow patrol zones far, far away from targets. No navy in the world has the funding or the assets to patrol it all.
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RE: O/T Drones hunting subs

Post by Bullwinkle58 »

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

ORIGINAL: GetAssista

Flying drones with sonar capabilities provided by some airdropped bots look more effective to me. Moving in water fast enough to search vast spaces is hard. On the other hand, one might go the other way and saturate the oceans with noize-pickup nanobots at some point =)

Naval mines that can rest on the bottom for months and rise (via propulsion) to attack a recognized sonar signature have already been developed, but I do not know if any nation has produced them.

Look up MK 60 CAPTOR. Huge development problems (begun in early 60s, initial procurement in limited numbers not until the 1980s), many false alarms, troubled program management. It's a very, very tough engineering problem.
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RE: O/T Drones hunting subs

Post by Bullwinkle58 »

ORIGINAL: wdolson

I have a friend who's first duty station in the USN was SOSUS. He couldn't tell anyone what he did there for many decades. In a weird coincidence, my sister's SO was an officer in the same SOSUS center around the same time, though they didn't remember one another.

Bill

There is/was a facility on the Oregon coast I had orders to for about five minutes as I was coming off sea duty. Then my relief flunked out of sub school and I had to do another patrol. I ended up with orders ashore to Hawaii.

I had a garden-variety TS clearance. The detailer warned me that although I would be the supply officer for the whole command, I would not be allowed into most of the facility's spaces. At sea we got some SOSUS dope now and then, and all I can say is . . . wow.
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RE: O/T Drones hunting subs

Post by tiemanjw »

The two USN boomer bases are not really choke points. West Coast is a bit worse, but still a lot of water and a lot of available courses. When we came out of Kings Bay we were on the surface for a number of hours running for the continental shelf at speeds where a pursuing SSN would be cavitating. (Shallow water works both ways.) We dove at different points each time, on different headings, and did different things immediately after the dive. And there may (not saying) have been "sanitation" efforts by the rest of the USN to make sure we were all by our lonesome. If you've never been to sea it's hard to explain how big the oceans of the world are. Modern SLBMs have the range to allow patrol zones far, far away from targets. No navy in the world has the funding or the assets to patrol it all.

Interesting about Kings Bay, and kind of puts an exclamation point on the point I was trying to make.
Acquiring and following a boomer is HARD. I think we did pick up near the port and follow Russian boomers in the cold war, but it is not easy. And once you lose it, it's gone.
And as moose points out, there are easy steps you can take to check your tail. If it is an unmanned thing trying to chase you, there is even more steps you can take. Have him follow you into 12nm of the shore and have the coast guard seize it as a "navigation hazard" (or just say it was within 12nm). Or noise maker decoys, or overload its sensor and burn it out. Catch it accidently in a fishing net.

point is, the UK should not not build SSBNs because it is concerned that a drone may follow it.
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RE: O/T Drones hunting subs

Post by AW1Steve »

With all due respect , a boomer is not impossible to find. I say that from 23 years of finding them. Although I've not done it for a while , I stay very closely with friends of mine who do still. It requires a skilled crew, either that of a maritime patrol aircraft , or a submarine. That skill is very perishable. But it's still very much do-able.

The United States Navy has been spending less and less money on airborne ASW , and diverting funds to "green fuel initiatives" and other projects that are currently politically popular. (I'm not commenting on this in any way , merely saying where some of the money goes. That's a political decision , and well outside my purvey and that of this forum). The UK and the Netherlands have completely abolished MPA aircraft (but at the least the UK is considering ordering American P-8's). The USN has completely abandoned CV based ASW fixed wing aircraft.

There are many , many ways to protect Boomers. Covering them with SSN's and SS's , surface fleets and Land based air. The Soviets developed the "Bastion concept" that was very effective...so effective that the USN/RN was forced to in theory deal with them by sending in SSN's , overwhelming their SSN's , then attacking the SSBN's all the while under attack by USSR aircraft and surface craft (in essence the entire USSR fleet).

So the counter question I must ask is "If boomers are so useless why is the PRC and other countries involved in programs to build them?". Are the Chinese stupid? Not in my opinion.

The primary reason for the UK NOT to have SSBN's is the same reason they have in the past declared CV's , bombers , land based missiles and maritime patrol aircraft to be unnecessary , the expense. Especially when a large part of the political class feel "why build them? The Yanks will cover us". The French did not even consider that option , spending a great deal of time creating , maintaining and updating their independent SSBN program (part of the French Nuclear triad ---forgive my "non-French speaking ability" , I believe is the "force de frappe".

It simply amounts to a matter of national will. And a judgment that such vessels are required. Personally , I feel that they are.
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