[HN Gopher] Will even the most advanced subs have nowhere to hide?
___________________________________________________________________
Will even the most advanced subs have nowhere to hide?
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 78 points
Date : 2024-12-16 12:11 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| My god the tone in this article is flippant for talking about the
| scariest part of our "eliminate all human life" deterrence
| system.
|
| And stupidly jingoistic in how it scaremongers that the five
| chinese subs could hit the USA while being smug about how the USA
| deploys five times as many of them.
| causal wrote:
| What did you want, more trembling and hand wringing? This was a
| discussion of stealth capabilities, the problem of nukes is
| adjacent but not the focus.
|
| And I believe the article said the US has 167 subs, you made up
| "thousands"
|
| Edit: Actually 67, as gilleain points out
| gilleain wrote:
| Uhm.
|
| > The People's Liberation Army Navy is the largest navy in
| the world, but it currently operates only 12 nuclear-powered
| submarines, a rather small number compared to the 67 attack
| subs and ballistic-missile subs of the U.S. Navy.
|
| Is this the paragraph you are both referring to? So 12 and
| 67, not 5 and (5 * 5) = 25 ... or 167 and thousands?
| causal wrote:
| Yup, will edit to correct
| chasd00 wrote:
| Forget it causal, it's China town.
| bluGill wrote:
| Not all submarines are about eliminating all human life. Some
| are of course, but the majority are about more conventional war
| where you want to eliminate the enemies willingness to fight
| on, but you expect to survive and be okay after the war is
| over. (not as good as if there was no war of course, but you
| don't get to choose when there is war)
| Hayvok wrote:
| I thought the article was pretty level headed. Here's the
| status, here's the future, here's what AUKUS is doing, here's
| what China is doing and is capable of doing. What smugness or
| jingoism were you referring to?
|
| I actually found it refreshing to not have a "journalists'"
| opinions and world-view slathered all over the article. I'm
| smart enough to form my own opinions about things, thanks.
| FjordWarden wrote:
| Active acoustic camouflage.
| mckirk wrote:
| I imagine that to look something like this:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSK3maq8Cyk
| jameskilton wrote:
| Destin from Smarter Every Day got to spend a day on the USS
| Toledo and made multiple videos about this[0].
|
| I mention it because in one of the videos he and the crew talk
| about submarine stealth (the non classified bits) and there's a
| surprising amount of science behind just being in the right part
| of the water, where the water itself (density changes,
| temperature changes, currents, etc) can make it almost impossible
| to see you.
|
| So Betteridge's Law of Headlines still applies: No, they will
| still hide just fine.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXXMJAU6vY8
| ckozlowski wrote:
| "No, they will still hide just fine."
|
| Agreed. And the fact that adversaries are still building them
| even as headlines like this state that "stealth is dead" tells
| you everything.
|
| New threats? Yes. Obsolete, no.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Jive Turkey's old YT videos in which he'd play Cold Waters and
| talk about late-Cold War-era sonar operation were amazing.
|
| And now sadly gone. :(
|
| Word is some of the information was still a little too OPSEC
| accurate (physics doesn't change that fast) + a career change
| to the private defense industry necessitated rebranding.
|
| Shame, as he did an excellent job teaching about thermoclines
| et al. in the context of passive sonar systems.
| ckozlowski wrote:
| He's still around under Sub Brief
| (https://www.youtube.com/@SubBrief) but I wouldn't be
| surprised if some of his videos have since been edited and/or
| removed. Especially the ones where he'd whiteboard things. He
| would state how he couldn't speak to certain things, but
| there were times where he would share some insight and I'd
| cringe a little. A couple come to mind, but I won't repeat
| them here.
|
| He's still interesting to watch though!
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I looked and apparently he nuked the entire whiteboard era
| series of vids. Even the game stuff up now is newer and not
| as detailed.
| SimianSci wrote:
| We tend to see these types of articles popping up any time a new
| American administration moves in. With the defense industry
| commanding government contracts worth trillions there is a lot of
| incentive to spread doubt and uncertainty about the current state
| of the art.
|
| Conveniently, once enough fear, uncertainty, and doubt, have been
| sown amongst the public, the people pushing these stories will
| also push to have their AI/Drone/{insert recent tech} company be
| granted a new defense contract.
|
| This method has been used countless times to waste the current
| defense budget on unproven tech that often goes nowhere.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > This method has been used countless times to waste the
| current defense budget on unproven tech that often goes
| nowhere.
|
| It's time to rework how fundamental / "moonshot" military R&D
| should get done, then. And that's not just true of the US, it's
| also a hot issue for the German military.
|
| We all need to separate "keeping the stuff we have up and
| running, and get new versions every so often to incorporate
| technical developments that happened in the meantime" from
| "let's try and see if we can hide a B2 bomber not just from
| radars but also eyes and ears" or "maybe we can get a Star Wars
| style repulsorlift antigrav system working".
|
| The basic stuff should be done by buying whatever is available
| on the market. No matter if it's Abrams, Leopard, <insert
| whatever South Korea makes in tanks here>, and ideally the US,
| EU, NATO and their major allies (Israel, South Korea, Ukraine)
| should pool their IP and manufacturing resources for a common
| pool where everyone can draw from, and everyone can contribute
| to, alone to keep geographic redundancy.
|
| Unfortunately for moonshot projects though, all the "easy"
| stuff has been done decades ago, and while the startups may
| have fancy ideas (especially the offshoots of university
| research), they lack the funding to get them to real-world
| stage, or they get bought out by one of the big experienced
| government milkers where the project fades into oblivion. And
| the US isn't particularly happy to share their stuff, not even
| with their close-knit FVEY circle.
| liontwist wrote:
| It's larger than military. This is how our democracy works. The
| government seeds ideas in PR articles to media and then
| evaluates if there is enough public support to do it.
|
| The most egregious example I remember is the "Russians are
| putting bounties on Americans in the Middle East" article that
| was well promoted by prominent individuals on this site, and
| then turned out to be fake.
| adolph wrote:
| > Remember the "Russians are putting bounties on Americans in
| the Middle East" article that was well promoted by prominent
| individuals on this site, and then turned out to be fake?
|
| I don't recall that being promoted on this site and in review
| [0] the few times it was claimed, there was solid pushback.
| Maybe you have different examples?
|
| 0. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&
| qu...
| liontwist wrote:
| Paul was personally promoting it on twitter and suggesting
| war (as were other well connected figures).
| toast0 wrote:
| I read posted (by prominent individuals) on this site
| because if we were talking about posted [elsewhere] by
| (prominent individuals on this site), it doesn't seem
| relevant to a discussion that's happening on this site.
| liontwist wrote:
| I am not suggesting HN is a target for the US government,
| but that prominent people are targets of consensus
| forming efforts.
| adolph wrote:
| I don't doubt you and in taking the steps to reproduce
| your finding 'No results for "from:paulg bounty".' Maybe
| was deleted?
| morkalork wrote:
| Your description aptly describes a recent Elon Musk spat on
| twitter regarding F-35s / radar-stealthyness being irrelevant
| in the age of "low light cameras and AI". Where, presumably, a
| LEO constellation of satellites could track aircraft optically.
| Conveniently something he could sell the US government, right?
| teeray wrote:
| I wonder if you could do the opposite with success: spam the
| detection networks with a bunch of cheap noisy autonomous decoy
| subs that are indistinguishable from cheap noisy real subs. Of
| course, the key phrase that might make the difference in this
| strategy is how cheap is "cheap."
| ckozlowski wrote:
| Yup! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_submarine_simulator
| ckozlowski wrote:
| There's a lot to unpack in this article. There's several points
| it gets wrong, and several others in which an assertion is made
| but then fails to mention the compensating factors or later
| negates them in the piece. I'm not in the Navy, but I've worked
| in and studied this space for a long time (and have talked to
| many who do) so I'll share what I know.
|
| - The submarines (boats!) like the USS Minnesota are fast-attack
| submarines. Their primary mission is anti-shipping and sea
| control, not nuclear deterrence. While there's some talk I
| understand of bringing back the nuclear-armed version of the
| Tomahawk which the Virginia-class could then carry; this is not
| their primary mission. The Ohios and follow on Columbias will do
| this. The fast-attack subs will to counter the People's
| Liberation Army Navy (PLAN)
|
| - I've seen a variety of articles over the past several years
| talking about how AI and advanced signal processing will make
| submarines obsolete. This article does the same, but is very
| vague on the details, then proceeds to state how there's things
| that complicate this (drones, other traffic.) When they say "AI",
| what I think they really mean is machine learning, and certainly,
| this helps. But noise is still subject to the inverse square law,
| and so there's no magical detection of everything everywhere even
| if advanced processing makes it a lot easier than before. It's
| also important to point out that this works _in both directions_.
| So if the PLAN is using better sensors and processing, you bet
| the U.S. and other navies are as well.
|
| - Which brings me to this point that the article doesn't address.
| "If not the submarine, then what?" The Chieftain (youtube) did a
| great video on this when there was a lot of talk on the tank
| being obsolete after watching battles in Ukraine. (He disarms
| this pretty well). While there are new threats to submarines, the
| type gives capabilities that aircraft and surface ships cannot
| match, and until such a combination of features comes about that
| fulfills the same roles and provides the same effects as a
| submarine, then it won't be replaced.
|
| - I wanna touch on the AUKUS bit, as this article starts taking
| swipes at it for its expense, states that the submarines will be
| easily detectable, but then says "just get AIP boats (Air
| independent propulsion)." There's a valid debate that can occur
| over what the best bang-for-the-buck is for Australia, and some
| questionable aspects about the deal (like whether we can actually
| build the boats on time). But in my opinion, Australia had a very
| valid reason for going that route that the author glosses over
| when touting AIP boats. They do not even remotely reach the
| capabilities of a nuclear boat. AIP boats are something of a
| misnomer; they do need oxygen, they just carry it with them. It
| allows them to stay submerged longer, but they're still carrying
| a much less energy dense fuel, and now they have to carry even
| more of it underwater. This is fine for Europe's needs, where
| most operations are going to be close to shore and not far from
| their bases such as in the Baltic Sea, North Sea, and
| Mediterranean. AIP is an excellent choice there! But the Pacific
| is _vast_ , Australia is vast, and those boats are too short
| ranged and too slow to get anywhere they need to be within a
| reasonable amount of time in a conflict. Is Australia fights,
| they're going to want to do with their allies north, and that
| means in the South China Sea or Philippine Sea, not outside
| Darwin. The French boats they were originally ordering wouldn't
| give them that ability, and given they were hopelessly late as it
| was, they decided to go with a better option. Does Australia need
| to project that far north? Valid question. If they want a stay-
| at-home navy, go AIP. But they want to be part of the allied
| force, so they need something that can really endure and project,
| and that means 30+ knots sustained for thousands of kilometers.
| AIP boats can't do that.
| _xerces_ wrote:
| The vastness of the Pacific and indeed the planet's oceans is
| something I noticed was missing from the article. I think of it
| in terms of detection, you can have the sophisticated
| technology and perhaps focus it on one area or choke point, but
| in general it will be very hard to search the entire ocean for
| a nuclear ballistic missile sub.
|
| Drop a submarine-sized object at a random location on land (a
| much, much smaller search space) and I bet it would take a long
| time to find despite all the earth observation satellites at
| our disposal. The oceans are much bigger, and have a whole
| other dimension (depth) and the the subs move.
| maxglute wrote:
| > fast attack subs / aukus
|
| IMO (western) subsurface analysis dance around just how stupid
| expensive these platforms are relative to opportunity cost of
| other aquisitions or potential counter measures. Writings will
| acknowledge nuke boats are pricy multi billion dollar
| platforms/programs, but don't go the extra step to show the
| math that each VLS/torpedo tube/cell/unit of fire on a nuke
| boat costs $100m to hull around, approaching $200m on SSNX, and
| that's only with more compact TLAMs/cruise missiles... subsonic
| munitions with very high interception rate - hence gamble on
| stealth shaping, but doesn't really alter physics that slow
| munitions are easy to intercept. Extrapolate to more performant
| but larger prospective hypersonics and you can x2 that
| multiplier. Factor in usually 1/3 or 1/2 are deployed at any
| given time (rest training or maintainence) and value
| proposition gets even more stupid / nonsensical. Then factor in
| multi week round trip (port and back to theatre) for reloads
| unless at sea replenishment gets figured out. A B21 costs
| 700-800m, and can carry much more more ordinances per $ , with
| significantly greater turnaround. Western nuke boats supremely
| expensive platform during war per unit of fire, rationalized by
| increased survivability. But if equation starts biasing toward
| detection, that rationalization breaks down.
|
| > no magical detection of everything everywhere / AI
|
| We may reach point where where detections/sensors can
| functionally prevent nuke boats from operating permissively -
| negating their advantage. Meanwhile quietting has reached
| returns technical floor. PRC throwing out lots claims of better
| / cheaper detection methods as they build out their ASW
| (SQUIDS/ELF waves etc) last few years. Operationally this means
| better sensors with longer detection range maybe able pickup
| subs beyond their torpedo range in fleet, or less # of
| platforms can significantly extend detection bubble/coverage.
| On the extreme end, you have programs like DARPA ACTUV (I'm
| sure PRC has their alternative) which relies on dirt cheap
| surface UVs that just permenantly shadows subs once they leave
| port, costs $10,000 per day to operate vs $500,000-$1,000,000
| for ASW destroyer (US/DARPA estimates, PRC will be lower), i.e.
| if PRC can push ELF detector ranges, they can basically park
| ASW platforms right outisde of 24nm contiguous zone off any
| western sub port (claiming FONAP) and shadow. TLDR is if likely
| future trend since PRC got into ASW game (relatively recent) is
| counter to subs is evolving rapidly, likely getting much
| cheaper, while western subs are getting more expensive, and are
| multi decade programs that locks in strategic capabilities.
|
| Empahsis/caveate on "western" subs - PRC/PLAN just extended
| their nuke boat production lines to 4-8 hulls per year. Meaning
| they see value in nuke boats, but their value proposition per
| hull =/= USN (or AUKUS). Doubt they'll be paying 6-8 billion
| per boat.
|
| >If not the submarine, then what
|
| For sea control, there's always PLA rockeforce / air launch
| AShMs model. 360Billion can buy a lot of mobile IRBM + TELs in
| hardened shelters to take out shipping (and other targets).
| 360B doesn't buy a lot of subs, half of which likely will be
| destroyed in port because they're juicy targets. There's good
| chance SCS will be so packed with PLA ASW going forward that
| SSNs will be operating outside of 1IC, in which case subs will
| stuck in AIP territory off AU coast anyway. There's arguably
| economical/better/future proof alternatives for shit hits fan.
| But AUKUS / nuke boats are "good" peacetime procurements, good
| for photo ops / propaganda / posturing, good for recycling 100s
| of billions into local economies if AU can actually get the
| domestic production / supply chain in place. Hence IMO AUKUS
| will fall through if ends up funnelling 100s of billions into
| US/UK industry instead of AU (which is where things seem to be
| moving towards).
| ckozlowski wrote:
| Thanks for this reply!
|
| You're right to call out just how enormously expensive nuke
| boats are. Anything carrying around a nuclear powerplant for
| that matter. They are the modern day battleships (Just see
| how the US Navy names theirs). For AUKUS, I tried to keep my
| argument to the warfighting value of the boats separate from
| the economics. But there's a whole line of argument there you
| call out, which I think finalizes with the question "Can
| Australia afford to build forces necessary to participate in
| a Pacific conflict away from its shores?" Not off the
| Australian coast, but north of Indonesia where they envision
| defending Taiwan, protecting the Malacca strait, etc. I don't
| think that's an easy question to answer. I don't think their
| previous plan of getting new AIP boats was a good one if that
| was their aim. But it's fair to question if they can afford
| nuke boats either.
|
| I disagree that rocket forces can be a stand-in for
| submarines. They're great defense weapons: certainly for
| shore defense, questionable for longer distances that that
| (I'm making an obligatory nod to China's ballistic anti-ship
| efforts), and of course, air-launched AShMs were a primary
| threat during the Cold War. But these all lack persistence,
| and require a lot of effort to target the thing on the other
| end; something made much more difficult the further away it
| is. And that's the thing a submarine VLS cell gives you that
| an air-launched or shore launched missile doesn't; _It's
| right there_. I don't think the subsonic speed is much of an
| issue when it pops up 10km from your task force. It's the
| persistence, the endurance, that gives submarines (and
| surface ships for that matter) their role that land and air
| based missiles can't. The latter can make things painful, but
| they can't truly control a body of water for duration in the
| way those platforms can.
|
| But you're right to point out that China's math is likely
| different than that of say, the U.S., because the latter has
| to come across the Pacific to do so. Force projection is
| _expensive_ , and this is the challenge facing Australia. The
| U.S. can afford to do it (though I think it's slipping in
| this regard), other major militaries such as the U.K. are
| facing hard questions about just how global they want to be.
| Australia is far enough away that if they want to help in
| those aforementioned scenarios, they need to bring the fight
| north, and that's an expensive prospect for a country of just
| 24 million.
|
| The last thing I'll mention is while I think your points
| about the challenges of operating in the South and East China
| Sea would be very difficult in the face of enemy ASW, those
| submarines would not be operating alone. They operate as part
| of a whole (land, sea, air). It's not the pacific submarine
| campaigns of WWII and lone wolves hitting shipping. Though if
| it turns into that, we're in real trouble.
| maxglute wrote:
| Value of ships/projection platforms is how it mediates
| geography and technology and economy. Pacific/Atlantic
| ocean offering US 10,000km+ buffer on each side means
| historically, US HAS to rely on mobile platforms (and
| forward basing) to hull sufficient munitions in theatre
| across the pond due to both technologic and economic
| limitations, i.e. there technologically was no accurate
| long range fire, no sufficient ISR (pre space / gps) that
| would enable medium / long range strikes, and economically
| to deliver accurate munitions at scale, shooters needed to
| be close / right there.
|
| But being "right there" is a consequence, of HAVING to be
| right there. Cruise missiles extended "right there" to
| standoff ranges of 1000-2000km, but we're also in age of
| meter level CEP 5000km IRBMs/AShMs, shooters don't have to
| be "right there" anymore. IMO important not to conflate
| with being able to shoot something, for needing to be
| "right there" to shoot something. If anything you want to
| be no where near where the shooting happens. Words like
| "persistence", "presence", "projection" gets abused as
| proxy for (sea) control, especially useful
| propaganda/signalling tool during peacetime (look, we're
| right there), but the actual coercive power during
| peacetime or control during shooting war is done by the
| munitions (and sensors to direct them). Modern day rocketry
| + persistent space ISR can like cover what historically
| needed carriers/subs to cover, especially for AU
| considerations (IRBM range) hence value proposition of
| SSGNs is different, which is why I question the AUKUS sales
| pitch from warfighting capability perspective. Land based
| rocketry also much more flexible than committing to SSGNs +
| cheaper shorter range cruise missiles ... that requires
| subs to operate closer to their target, using likely
| interceptable / defeatable munitions (since the subsurface
| gamble is stealth lets you shiv with ~100 smaller cruise
| missiles up close vs ~20 hypersonics from far away), but if
| munitions doesn't measure up, might as well not be in
| theatre in the first place, and chance of retrofitting subs
| around larger extended range munitions unlikely, so it's
| multi decade gamble. This is not to mention the complexity
| of subsurface kill chain / communicating underwater.
|
| Meanwhile a PLARF TEL popping out of a tunnel in Hainan to
| launch a mach10 missile can reach Darwin in 20 minutes. AKA
| no defense/offense dichotomy, rocketforce can also do anti
| area/access denial, i.e. when targetting Guam, forward
| bases in 1IC. 360B buys a lot of irbms, i.e. everything up
| to 1-2IC/Australia north coast might as well as be "right
| there" from PRC theatre/IRBM perspective. Recipriocally AU
| can also do this from upside down land. Is AU better served
| with risking forward positioned SSGN with 100 x 2000 km
| cruise missile sized cells or for same price, 400 x 5000km
| land based hypersonics that can cover the theatre, plus
| distributed for more survivablity. IMO Australia has
| options other than SSGN to bring the fight north 5000km
| versus US trying to bring the fight west 10000km.
| Especially considering the maritime choke points across
| 1IC.
|
| Question is: which options better for AU to spend 360B to
| have some sort of medium / long range fires into SCS /
| IndoPac theatre. Considering SSGNs will lock in procurement
| for 50+ years. Especially considering hulls won't be in
| water in meaningful numbers for 20+ years while PRC ASW
| capablities are growing. Meanwhile, PLA is also
| coordinating land, sea, air at likely greater relative
| scale than what US+co are projected to bring in theatre,
| which increases challenges of subsurface survivability with
| time. IMO all the trendlines are against locking in on eggs
| in basket of expensive subsurface. It's gamble on purely
| warfighting value, which cannot be seperated from
| procurement economics, as in opportunity cost of what other
| warfighting capabilities that 360B can buy, and sustainment
| economics, as in SSGNs are such big investments that it
| will constrain future procurement options. Decommissioning
| nuclear will make even divestment hard.
|
| My feeling is AU better off with some IAPs for near shore
| defense, and missiles / B21s for long range fires / cheaper
| per unit procurements that enables future pivot. But as
| expensive as AUKUS is, on paper it has more domestic $$$
| potential, but strategically bad gamble.
| ckozlowski wrote:
| I don't discount that long-range fires won't be useful,
| but I don't follow how on one hand, the complexity of a
| "subsurface kill chain" (which is limited to...the boat?)
| is a hindrance, but planning a fire mission across tens
| of thousands of kilometers against moving targets isn't a
| mention. Even hypersonics still take time to reach their
| target, and surface ship can cover a lot of distance in
| that time. That's why I'm still of the opinion that
| IRBMs/AShMs, while deserving of respect, are not a stand-
| in for an actual ship (or submarine) present on location.
| It takes time to go from detection (orbital, aircraft,
| other sensor) to command, to launcher, to waiting for the
| munition to get downrange and hoping that the thing
| you're shooting at is still there. If it isn't, they have
| to maintain contact, keep up communications with the
| munition in flight to steer it back on target, etc.
| That's a lot to juggle and quite challenge even for the
| U.S., and against an adversary who will be trying to
| disrupt anything along that path. (Something the U.S. has
| pointed out to "the carrier is dead" naysayers that they
| are actively planning.)
|
| Subsonic missiles are in theory (and I do think it's
| theory) harder to hit than hypersonic, but the killchain
| there can be far simpler and shorter, and much less able
| to be disrupted. This is more lethal the closer I can get
| before launch. Sure, there's 2000km cruise missiles from
| B21s, but if I have the option to get in to say, 200km,
| I'm going to take it and give my adversary far less time
| to detect and respond.
|
| That's the crux of my argument why persistent platforms
| won't be going away. To be clear, I don't think these
| long range (I'll call them strategic? theater?) fires
| don't have their place. Both sides are investing in them.
| But the need for being "there" remains.
|
| You ask if it's better for Australia to spend money on
| having medium/long range fires into the IndoPac theater,
| or a submarine. I'll agree with you in part that a
| nuclear sub, which would meet their aims to do so, might
| be out of their financial reach. But considering that
| those long-range fires require complex targeting and
| communications (note the killchain above!), that may not
| be cost effective either. The latter requires some pretty
| robust aerospace capabilities to detect and track targets
| that they do not possess and would be exorbitantly
| expensive to obtain. They can use the U.S.'s
| capabilities, and many NATO nations do so. But so goes
| their ability to fight independently then. And I'd argue,
| it can perform less missions than a submarine can.
|
| At the end of the day, I think Australia is hobbled by
| the fact that they want to project power that their
| current budget is going to be at pains to provide. I
| think nuclear fast-attack might indeed be their best
| option out of a host of painful options, short of ceding
| the field.
|
| * Addendum: There's a lot of noise made about
| hypersonics, and I think they're to some extent
| overblown. Not irrelevant, but overemphasized. For one,
| subsonic isn't dead. They can be relatively cheap, have
| long range, and stealthy. Launched low and flying low,
| they're hidden by the curvature of the earth. If their
| launch site can be hidden or hard to pinpoint prior (be
| it aircraft, mobile site, or submarine) then they can
| still be very effective. The challenge comes when they're
| launched from far away. Just because it has a 2000km
| range or so doesn't mean that's advantageous, as the
| target can move really far in that intervening time.
| (This is where submarines are dangerous, because they can
| potentially bring those fires in much closer without
| being detected than a surface ship or aircraft can, AI-
| powered ASW or not.)
|
| So hypersonics are attractive here. Just speed them up!
| Now that potential radius the target moved is much
| smaller. But it brings it own challenges. Engineering a
| vehicle to fly at that speed and at low level and deal
| with the effects on targeting and communications mach 5+
| travel creates is no small feat.
|
| "But hypersonics are used today!" I hear some say. Yes.
| Anything traveling Mach 5+ is hypersonic. So that
| Iskander SRBM that the Russians bolt to the underside of
| a Sukhoi and release from 30k is technically a hypersonic
| missile. But in reality it's ballistic missile they
| dropped instead of launching from the ground, using
| internal guidance to hit a fixed target on the ground.
| Effective for that role perhaps, but not groundbreaking
| and certainly not going to hit a ship.
|
| So I think hypersonics are another possible weapon in the
| quiver, but part of a mix, not a replacement. They bring
| their own tradeoffs.
| indigoabstract wrote:
| As I was reading about submarine stealth techniques, I saw the
| map and had trouble visualizing it at first, as they colored the
| land in blue and the water in white.
|
| Pretty strange choice for coloring a map.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Not if your domain is the water. White is the best background
| color for details.
|
| That said, maybe the ground should have been brown or green.
| indigoabstract wrote:
| Ah, I see, I hadn't thought of that. I guess it makes sense
| that the Navy people would focus on the sea instead of the
| land.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Same problem. Glad somebody else said it, I always assume I'm
| the only one who's bothered by this stuff.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| After reading the article, it's fun to just sort of riff from
| first principles to guess where things are headed.
|
| I think there are two types of hiding: silence and camouflage.
| Silence is where you reduce the signal you emit and reflect.
| Camouflage is where you mask it with something else.
|
| Hiding a gold bar in a basement is camouflage (by this
| definition). Making your sub reflect sonar to look like a whale
| is camouflage. Making your sub reflect nothing is silence.
|
| Long term, I think silence is a losing strategy for the hider.
| You can hide with silence in the ocean because it's so big. But
| as sensors become more sensitive, the ocean gets "smaller". I
| think you run into basic physical limitations on silence well
| before you do on detection. Like the article suggested, I think
| the days of quieter propulsion and better propulsion detection
| being a big part of the game are numbered.
|
| I can see camouflage going on longer. Seems like the second stage
| of the game. What happens when you have 10,000 vehicles emitting
| all sorts of signatures you can't disambiguate, and 50 of those
| are nuclear subs? Or worse, a million objects including civilian
| UUVs and marine life?
|
| That's essentially the same as non-identification. It's like
| using facial identification against a military to find the
| general, but everyone can change their face at will.
| adolph wrote:
| > Long term, I think silence is a losing strategy for the
| hider. You can hide with silence in the ocean because it's so
| big.
|
| This would also apply to low observability strategies for the
| atmosphere, no?
|
| Perhaps lower observable atmospheric vehicles in general,
| autonomous or not, would mitigate mass freak-outs like NJ.
| HPsquared wrote:
| The sky has a very dark background though when it's clear out
| and you're looking up. Whereas the ocean is more "messy" and
| noisy.
| taneq wrote:
| Reflecting _nothing_ can be as bad as reflecting a big bright
| 'ping'. Once you get to a certain level of stealth you have to
| essentially camouflage against an 'empty' background or you
| become a conspicuous absence.
|
| Edit: I'm thinking more about visual camouflage here, though -
| maybe for sound underwater there's no point at which being
| quieter becomes a liability?
| late2part wrote:
| Pretending to be a whale doesn't seem like a sound principle to
| me. Subs don't follow the migratory paths of whales, as far as
| I know. Now, we just look for whales that are out of place and
| send a drone out to check.
|
| Maybe you're right though, that overwhelming the signal
| pattern, similar to how SDI/Star Wars was deemed moot.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Reminds me of that old joke about then-modern stealth
| fighters having the radar cross section of a bird, with a
| reply stating that if they saw a bird going at mach 0.8
| they'd fire some missiles at it.
| ben_w wrote:
| I have a vague memory that nobody knew how high some birds
| flew until military radar got good enough to see them.
|
| They sent up an interceptor aircraft to check out what was
| flying up there, rather than missiles.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_by_flight_heigh
| t...
| taeric wrote:
| This feels off, though. We may be at the point where it is hard
| to keep any particular thing quiet, sure. But we are also at
| the point where it is rather easy to park a ton of things
| around that are very easy to keep quiet until we want a lot of
| noise.
|
| That is, if you are going to first principals, I have to ask
| why you don't have a ton of unmanned drones down there.
| Literally remove the need to move somewhere for the people on
| board.
| lazide wrote:
| Communicating with the drones is nearly impossible.
| taeric wrote:
| Missed this thread, apologies. I would take "nearly
| impossible" to be akin to "very expensive." Which is not to
| say that any of the difficulties just flat go away. But you
| don't necessarily need long range communication.
|
| I now realize the other thread is taking my point to be
| that this is trivially doable. That was also not my intent.
| My point was simply that "reducing to first principals" is
| a bit silly if you are going to maintain the requirement
| that you have a big enough vehicle to sustain a crew. Even
| a minimal crew imposes some massive design constraints that
| you don't necessarily have if you reduce the problem down.
| (In general, oddly, I meant my comment mostly as a
| criticism of "first principals" thinking on this. Too many
| of those analyses bring in base assumptions that are often
| invisible to the people arm chairing it.)
| travisjungroth wrote:
| > Missed this thread, apologies. I would take "nearly
| impossible" to be akin to "very expensive."
|
| I'm certainly no expert, but I don't think that's the
| case here. Radio waves don't penetrate water that far.
| Communicating with an untethered vehicle deep underwater
| is impossible. At the surface, trivial.
| taeric wrote:
| I would include dropping tethers to many places as part
| of a viable plan?
|
| Though, to your point. Not trying to be an expert or to
| second guess any expertise out there. I was really only
| meaning to question the "first principals" idea of
| reducing it to something that still requires radio waves
| to penetrate deep into the water. There is no need to
| keep the idea that it has to remain in radio contact with
| something far away. You would want it to be able to
| establish contact, and there will be prioritized methods
| to do that based on plenty of other variables. Not
| trivial, mind. But there is already nothing trivial about
| going underwater.
| masklinn wrote:
| > I have to ask why you don't have a ton of unmanned drones
| down there. Literally remove the need to move somewhere for
| the people on board.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_absorption_by_.
| ..
|
| It's extremely hard to communicate long distance underwater,
| especially to do so discreetly.
| taeric wrote:
| You presume it has to be incredibly long range? I'd be
| surprised if that is necessarily the case. Could also flat
| out do cables to many of them at rest.
|
| Is it fool proof? Almost certainly not. It doesn't have to
| compete with perfect, though. Just with what we have right
| now.
| masklinn wrote:
| > You presume it has to be incredibly long range?
|
| No. But you seem to presume engineers working on
| underwater communication are brainless morons.
| taeric wrote:
| No, I presume most of the press is brainless morons when
| it comes to talking about what the military is likely
| doing.
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| I assure you, you realize very quickly that most of
| military procurement are also brainless morons when you
| have to talk to them.
|
| There's a big disconnect between the military and actual
| engineering. Yes, that one magic Xilinx part is cool, but
| you don't need to blow $10k extra on literally everything
| you buy. They suffer buzzwords and fads the same way
| everyone in civilian C suite does.
| taeric wrote:
| Ha! Fair. I should have scoped my statement largely to
| arm chair quarterbacks on the internet. With the full
| understanding and endorsement of what that implies about
| my contributions! :D
| hwillis wrote:
| > You presume it has to be incredibly long range?
|
| EM waves fall off exponentially inside a conductor like
| saltwater. A 1 kHz wave has a skin depth of 8.75 meters,
| vs the Virginia class' 10m width. A signal from the front
| to the back of the submarine would be attenuated by 10
| million times.
|
| Note that this is _in addition_ to the normal problems
| with antennas. Your home router transmits at <100 mW.
| Say you spent a ton of money and made a super sensitive
| receiver that could operate from 140m on the low SNR of
| your router. In order to receive the same power at 140m
| on 1 kHz, you would need a 1 megawatt transmitter. It
| would be dumping 60% of its power in the first 8.75
| meters of water. Not quite enough to boil it, but not far
| off.
|
| That's your first problem. The second problem is that the
| wavelength of a 1 kHz signal is 299.8 km. Antenna
| effectiveness also falls off exponentially with size, and
| the smallest antennas are maybe 10% of the wavelength. A
| 1 km antenna does not work well for 1 km, and even then
| you have to let out a buoy with a long cable- which is
| how current submarines do it.
|
| The third problem is that if the drones are 10s of km or
| less away from the sub, there's no point. That means you
| know where the sub is. The problem is knowing where to
| aim active sonar or drop depth charges, not _aiming_.
| taeric wrote:
| This is assuming I think you have to have radio
| communication with the drones at all times? I'd assume
| more that you have tethered trenches scattered throughout
| the ocean that you care about and can dispatch an absurd
| number of drones at will. No need to keep them moving on
| a regular basis. My general thought there was more that
| keeping an absurdly large fleet of mostly inactive drones
| a bit more hidden is almost certainly easier than keeping
| anything in motion and constant communication hidden.
|
| Is it necessarily a good idea? Probably not? I was only
| poking at the "first principals" taking the assumption of
| constant radio communication as a given. Why? We don't
| even assume that for submarines with people on them.
|
| Which, yes, we have people there so that they can think
| and respond with situational awareness to events. And I'm
| fully agreed that we don't want to jump straight to AI to
| replace people completely. But I also don't know why you
| wouldn't build a bit more smarts into deployments? And
| fully expect some of this to happen. (Realistically, I'm
| largely describing what science fiction used to imagine
| mine fields are like in the ocean?)
| robocat wrote:
| > It's extremely hard to communicate long distance
| underwater, especially to do so discreetly.
|
| How does existing submarine cable infrastructure carry
| communications to subs?
|
| Low-frequency AC current in the shield, data picked up
| magnetically?
| 0_____0 wrote:
| ELF
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_low_frequency
| hwillis wrote:
| Sound waves. Acoustic waves travel much farther and there
| are transmitting stations underwater.
|
| Contrary to the other reply, ELF is _not_ used and is
| impractical:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Sanguine
|
| For VLF you can drag a very long antenna behind you, but
| most submarines just launch a buoy with a normal antenna
| to the surface and a fiber connection to allow them to
| stay below the surface.
|
| https://www.navalnews.com/naval-
| news/2022/04/communication-a...
| 0_____0 wrote:
| I did notice the bit in the Wikipedia article where they
| mention the US station isn't used for submarine comms
| anymore. Thanks for the higher quality info.
| evoke4908 wrote:
| If you're launching a fleet of drones, discretion is
| probably not a major concern.
|
| A coded sonic pulse could have exceptionally long range.
| Sure your enemies would detect it, about half a second
| before they detect the drones.
|
| A more practical concern is simply temperature and how long
| the drone's power supply can survive in the cold ocean.
| rokhayakebe wrote:
| Why not have thousands of sea drones that send fake signals.
| simonsarris wrote:
| > But as sensors become more sensitive, the ocean gets
| "smaller".
|
| is it not still possible to have 1 submarine and 9000 really
| annoying "noisemakers"? Smoke is a kind of camouflage. A
| constant smokescreen of sonar waves probably won't be fun for
| the whales...
| pfdietz wrote:
| The more sensitive detectors are, the more subject they are
| to spoofing, I'd think, since less noise is needed to look
| real.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| If they are especially noisy wouldn't that make them
| incredibly easy to track identify and then disregard in
| addition to being so expensive that your country can't even
| afford to have healthcare?
| Terr_ wrote:
| There's another sub-distinction (hah) I'd like to make: Smoke
| versus decoys.
|
| So instead of 9000 devices to blanket the area with noise so
| that the movements of the real submarine are hard to discern,
| you could have 90 decoys which are localized, and the real
| sub is "hiding in plain sight."
|
| In other words, the difference between obscuring "where"
| versus "which one."
| willvarfar wrote:
| How much of the detection is detecting the affect a large
| object moving (or holding a stationary position in a current)
| has on water (displacing it, wake etc) vs the object itself?
|
| This is like spotting soldiers wearing camouflage by following
| their muddy footprints?
| ben_w wrote:
| If I had to guess, it would be gravity sensors that render
| submarines obsolete.
|
| Can't hide mass.
| Retric wrote:
| Subs float in the water column by having the same mass as the
| water they displace.
| variadix wrote:
| The same density _overall_ but locally the density varies.
| Maybe there's some way to use this for detection but I
| don't see it.
| ben_w wrote:
| Aye. Dipole and similar gross asymmetries.
|
| I don't know about all the potential noise sources and
| how well any of them could be compensated for, but the
| raw sensory capacity of the best systems is at least
| enough to be worth considering the question.
| nickff wrote:
| Submarines have roughly neutral buoyancy when submerged; how
| will you detect the mass?
| connicpu wrote:
| When a sub is submerged, by definition it is buoyant and
| therefore has the same average density as the surrounding
| water. Unless your gravity sensor is so sensitive it can
| detect the different densities on a per-cubic meter basis (or
| smaller).
| dingnuts wrote:
| just convert it from space and into time, duh. can't weigh
| time
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Easier to detect the ferrous metal, given the size/strength
| requirements mean steel.
|
| Magnetic anomaly detectors have been used since the WWII
| airship days.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_anomaly_detector
|
| Related fact: the first Goodyear blimp was a repurposed ex-
| Navy submarine hunter, that likely had a MAD device fitted.
| You can see the restored gondola from it in the New England
| Air Museum.
| dingaling wrote:
| > given the size/strength requirements mean steel
|
| The Soviet Alpha, Mike and Sierra classes were built from
| titanium. Incredibly expensive but very deep-diving and
| invisible to MAD.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Except, having 1000 subs in Chinese waters (just as an example)
| doesn't help you. The point isn't just to evade being blown up,
| or which is the sub with weapons, it's also to evade detecting
| you were ever there or are there.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Of submarine missions, only one of them (special operations
| support) requires complete secrecy.
|
| Subs with SLB/CMs or attack subs are perfectly fine with
| being known-in-AO but untargetable.
|
| Which mirrors air, where MALDs/EW are a critical part of any
| mission in hostile airspace.
| ziknard wrote:
| >map in the article
|
| "Obviously this blue part here is the land."
| xnx wrote:
| Buster?
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| This color scheme broke my brain for a minute as I tried to
| figure out what landmass the white was.
| charles_f wrote:
| > AI-enabled systems that analyze sensor data
|
| I really wish publications like IEEE spectrum would call that
| machine learning. For all intents and purposes "AI" has become a
| marketing term for "consumer grade chat bots". It has a semi-
| magical / science fiction aura, and it's bordering on click bait.
| "Machine learning" is what this kind of signal processing based
| on training from large data sets. Next thing you know we'll start
| seeing anything that implements Dijkstra as "AI".
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| Also, we need to be more specific about what ML actually means.
| I see a lot of people thinking that Kalman filters/CFAR/wavelet
| transforms/super-res/DSP correlation/whatever are all just
| magic AI bullshit that can find any signal regardless of how
| far below the noise floor it is.
|
| I wish we'd go back to referring to things by their core
| algorithm like "Neural Nets for DSP filtering". I guess that
| just doesn't get the ultra wealthy dumb fuck class to open
| their wallet fast enough...
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _... just magic AI bullshit..._
|
| Given how many have grown up with the phrase, "Computer,
| enhance!" - I expect a lot of people treat it exactly like
| that!
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The underwater drone technology being developed could drastically
| cut military expenditures by making aircraft carrier-centric
| naval strategies obsolete. Look at this Orca XLUUV developed by
| the US Navy and Boeing - it can carry an eight ton payload,
| travel thousands of miles, and doesn't have to surface for
| extended periods (although it is diesel-electric, a hybrid of
| sorts). The depth limit is certainly classified but it could
| probably sit well below surface ship detection limits, and even
| be outfitted with nuclear payloads.
|
| https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2024/06/our-first-look-...
|
| Note this thing could also be equipped with autonomous drones, eg
| it could surface, release a swarm of aerial attack drones, and
| submerge. This sort of makes aircraft-carrier centric battle
| groups obsolete, and it's far cheaper too.
|
| Notably, US shipyards are mostly building military ships these
| days; a more rational policy would return these shipyards to
| building cargo ships, an area where China currently dominates.
| This highlights why an economy that revolves around the military-
| industrial sector will always lag behind economically in
| comparison to countries that invest in more productive
| enterprises; eg a tank, once build, can only destroy; building
| large cranes instead means you are set up for big infrastructure
| projects.
| adamc wrote:
| No expertise here, but wouldn't another strategy be to attack the
| sensors? Ideally subtly, but.
|
| And another strategy be to overwhelm the sensors? Have a million
| dummy subs that give off sensor readings suggesting they are
| real, when in fact they are cheaper drones? Kind of the way prey
| overwhelm predators by all hatching at the same time.
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| Yeah, article is full of shit. It's just another evolution in
| _The Game_. You 'll probably see subs get slightly smaller and
| more automated though, also probably able to control larger
| formations of unmanned systems.
|
| We see this with stealth aircraft. You can hunt them from the
| comfort of your living room with <$1000 in equipment. They're
| not invisible, I have yet to see a picture of an empty parking
| space unironically labeled "stealth aircraft". They're
| optimized to prevent categorization (NCTR) and precision fire
| control (X band specifically) so actually prioritizing and
| engaging them is difficult, especially at range. So now we see
| them moving towards being drone motherships so they can stay at
| the ranges where their stealth is useful.
|
| Keeping that in mind, subs are also now packing much longer
| range weapons now and even if you can vaguely locate them with
| a variety of methods, you still need to go over there and kill
| the damn thing. We aren't seeing anyone investing in ballistic
| missile launched torpedos yet because these methods aren't
| necessarily able to provide a firing solution for such a
| weapon, just that "there's something weird in this square mile,
| maybe go investigate"
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-12-16 23:01 UTC)