Shipbucket

Thank you for the details.

I didn't know the LCS has the range for that. I thought they weren't able to travel both fast and far, but I supposed they could be dispatched all around the world.

But in a what if world (not in ours, due to obvious financial problems), maybe we could imagine US SSK based all around the world (Guam, Naples, etc.) in order to offer faster response.


I admit I'm just trying to find a viable what-if world for Bureaucromancer's design to fit in, as I really enjoy his design.
As far as I'm concerned, I think that the USN does well with SSN only: if one day they need something smaller for littoral survey or light attack, they'll probably go for some kind of UUV.
As you said, your "own" Mediterranean Sea (i.e. the Caribbeans) is not full of strangers SSK

They don't have the fuel for both range and speed, but that's why I added in the support ships.
Oh, as an export boat it's not a bad idea.
Oh I agree. The USN is firmly in the UxV Swarm/Spam camp.

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If the US had never been stupid enough to let go of our post-war 'territories,' and if we hadn't been forced to live the the 'Base Closure and Realignment Committee' years, there would conceivably be enough available 'static support bases' for us to maintain a world-wide SSK fleet... but the question is why would we, even then, do so?

Why build 30 SSK's and spread them out into five bases with a six boat flotilla each, when we could build 20 boats at two bases with ten boats each and still cover the same amount of real estate using less manpower and resources? I mean, prior to the 'nuclear era' the British and US had to maintain such a giant network of bases and massive fleets; today it is unnecessary to have that many ships... and uneconomical no matter what the concern.

I could see only one situation where there would be any SSKs built in the US under any realistic conditions- a more conservative administration with an agenda of more militant support for Taiwan or Israel comes into power, and one of those nations contracts a US yard to build the boats for them. The USN might then operate one of the boats for a time as a 'demo model'... but I doubt that it would keep it long.

Hi Tim

You are quite correct that there is very little strategic value for US operations currently in the warm Caribbean. Aside from keeping Hugo in line (and it doesn't take much to do that) their interests lie mainly abroad. I do however want to point a few things out so everyone works with same assumptions.

* Except for nuclear powered vessels, transit speeds either in surface combatants or submerged rarely exceed 15 knots. Transit speeds are usually conducted at .6% to .65% of displacement speeds for economic and logistic reasons. There has to be a very compelling reason for a nuclear powered carrier to leave its screen behind. There is a number of public disclosure naval studies on this where they actually list the various deployments and mean average transit speeds. Even in deemed dire emergencies on rare occasions did they muster an average 25/28 knots. This of coarse may certainly have been influenced by weather.

* For any vessel operating close to or exceeding maximum displacement speeds, there is an extreme penalty for doing so. The fuel consumption calcs go up almost exponentially. That includes nuke vessels. They just happen to carry a theoretical 20/25 year supply on board. To understand displacement speeds, it is a function of water line length. It is virtually the same calc for subs as it is for surface vessels, except subs cannot exceed it as it is like trying to break the sound barrier. That is the only reason that bigger(longer) SSN's have those higher speeds. The older and smaller French Nuke boats are down by almost 10 knots for this reason. The ultimate speed for a Los Angeles class is almost 10 knots greater than say a Skipjack class. Maximum displacement speed is the square root of the water line length X 1.35. For a surface vessels, at that point you are forcing to climb up hill or climb up on top of it's bow wave and get into a planing mode. Frigates and destroyers are designed with semi planning hulls so they can do this for very short bursts as it requires immense horsepower to do so. An example of this is one of our Halifax Class patrol frigates. It has a single 8500bhp diesel for cruise mode which they typically run at about 50% (4500bhp net). This gives them about 15 knot efficient cruise. They can push over 40 knots (classified in theory) but have 47,000 bhp of turbines to get them there and diesel is on line with turbines at 100% for net 55,500bhp to do so. To compound the problem, the turbines consume fuel at a heat rate of roughly 11,000btu/hp hour vs the diesels down around 6,500btu/hp hour. An aircraft carrier on the other hand at over 1,000 feet of waterline length and is purely a displacement hull. It has a theoretical max displacement speed at over 42 knots so a transit speed of 25 knots is well within reason. Even for a nuke boat however, if it were to spend it's entire time at sea at close to displacement speeds, it would be in dry dock for fuel rod replacement every 5 years or less, so they still rely on efficient transits to theater when able. So I guess what it comes down to is fleet speeds are derived by the most efficient transit speeds of the smallest vessels, and those would be the Frigates. Most vessels of this class have 9,000 to 11,000 mile range at efficient cruise speeds but couldn't cross the Caribbean at max speed.

* To understand that fleet concept one only has to look back at WW11 convoy crossings. The convoys were surrounded by Corvettes and Destroyers that could travel when required at 18/35 knots depending on the type of combatant. The average convoy speed during the war was around 6 knots and that was set by the slowest vessels being some of the older most heavily loaded freighters. In the case of a modern naval fleet, it is the escorts that determine this which makes it around 15/17 knots tops.

* This now gets back to the SSK vs SSN debate. You are absolutely correct that an SSN has an absolute transit advantage when operating autonomously. That is only a small part of what they do for a living and are at risk of detection when doing so. You can here them a long, long way off at those speeds and they can't here you because they are essentially deaf when doing so. When they are patrolling they rarely exceed 15 knots and usually run at just over 10 knots. Unless they absolutely have to do a high speed transit, from the time they leave port, till they return on a routine patrol mission, they almost never use those high speed capabilities. To be ultra quite on station they stay well below 10 knots but their plant noise is still an issue. This changes somewhat going forward as they get more of the newer boats in fleet, but not by as much as one thinks. They can be quieter at higher speeds but still struggle to detect other boats at those speeds as the higher speed flow of water over sensor portions of hull or the towed array has a dramatic alteration and dampening effect on incoming pressure wave sources (underwater sounds). These are very basic reasons why the US already has and maintains many foreign bases for all branches, army, navy, and airforce. It just comes down to real world logistics.

Hopefully this advances the debate somewhat.
Cheers
Mike

Mike,
I have no arguments with what you've said there, and I appreciate the depth that you are bringing to this discussion. I was perhaps a bit too aggressive in my earlier posts. While I understand that a nuclear craft can't run at full speed all the time, the fact is that it can make those high-speed transits a whole lot more efficiently than a dino burner can.

I also think I didn't make my general opinion on the fleet clear - I'd love to see all of the carriers escorted with CGNs and DDGNs.

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Well Tim............I use to love all kinds of naval vessels. I even built the Bainbridge as a model when I was a kid. I guess because of what I do for a living, over time I have become more of a strategist and an economical thinker and all things military seem to keep me interested. Probably more so because in my mind I see them routinely make what I personally believe are critical errors in judgment based on what military planners seem to want the world to be like vs what it really is. Of coarse I could be full of caw caw to though. I generally have good access to current naval thinking, and for that matter in all services because I still have friends that joined various services when I did in 1976. I did 5 years, but some of those friends are just coming up on retirement and are now wearing Maple Leafs(Stars if you are American). Here are a few pass along points that as far as naval thinking goes, every navy globally is struggling with from what I am being told and added to that, research I do on my own.

* Every navy on the planet is facing dramatic, if not draconian cuts (except the Chinese and Indians and some Middle East countries).
* Because of recent embarrassing maneuvers and encounters with either European or Chinese SSK's in the last 6 years, everyone has had to take a serious look in the mirror and ask themselves " Are we properly equipping our forces for what lays ahead"?
* Most Larger navies are "very" concerned about the proliferation of these SSKs in all corners of the planet. They are scared sh*#@less of them and not sure how to counter their proliferation.
* The ones that belong to our friends Gotlands and type 212/214 have proven almost imposable to find., even if you know they are operating in the area.
* The Chinese have proven quite adept at acquiring virtually any of our (NATO) technologies, so you have to assume that it is just a matter of time before we are faced with our own capabilities in unfriendly hands.

There is currently a lot of discussion and papers being created that deals with conflicts of all types from SE Asia to the Arctic. There is always the usual debate on surface and subsurface warfare. Generally speaking both sides of the old cold war equation are for the most part happy with one another even though each side posses the capability to wipe one another off the face of the planet. It appears "Glasnost" works generally pretty dam good. Well.......there are a couple of folks out there that we either don't yet have a "Glasnost" relationship with, or worse, really hate our collective guts. The first are the Chinese. For now we really just seem indifferent to one another and for now the relationship appears directionless. At least they know where we are and we know where they are. For now, that is detente. The second group is the world of Islam. That relationship appears to be on bottom and for various reasons, to many to debate on, it won't be improving anytime soon. This one really gives the Western and European military planners the heeby geebies. The Arctic also presents a new problem.

So I guess Tim, over the years, I have become more of a realist. Because of the advanced capability weapons now in any and all navies hands, as much as I like those mid size cruisers you talk about, a modern day Frigate or Destroyer packs the same or more punch than any of those older platforms. In fact, when you look at older naval gun strategies vs a modern Corvette with Harpoons or other equivalent surface attack missiles.............dam. Things have changed a lot in the last 30 to 40 years. So much so that other than aircraft carriers and various sizes of helicopter assault carriers, I am not so sure I would support building any other type of surface vessel these days. Because of IEDs, you don't even want your troops landing in anything else but choppers and it's back to the good ol days of "aircav".

I guess what I am trying to say is I personally believe that navies have to start totally rethinking submarine strategies and capabilities. The US has already started down this pathway making subs that are capable of serving more tasks. Personally I struggle with the whole nuclear thing. Here is really my issues with nuke boats. Aside from the fact that they have really cool range, once two very capable forces start shooting at one another, there will be a mess of nuclear boats and aircraft carriers with lots of nuke warheads sitting at the bottom of all of our oceans. Even in a conventional high density conflict without releasing any nuclear weapons, this will still be the case. One nuclear power plant goes into distress in Japan and look at the mess left over that will have to be dealt with over the next number of decades. Chernobyl was another one. Currently there are only a handful of nuke boats sitting on the bottom, and those theoretically were all from operational accidents. they still have to maintain and check on sites to insure limited leakage but at some point in time will ultimately have to permanently deal with once corrosion makes matters worse.

Subsurface is where the capital needs to go. In my new world of navies, I see way more submarines of a number of types and they would have more broad range of capabilities. Surface attack from a submerged position is one of them. I am not talking about something adhock you launch from a torpedo tube either. Now here is where I go weird on you........maybe!! Again, simply as part of my spare time hobby I did a lot of work looking at a number of different weapons primarily out of various US, Canadian and European inventories. Essentially what I came up with is what I like to call a CRV15 LCPK........essentially a 155mm version of a CRV7 with a Kongsberg LCPK section that was modified for vertical launch. With a larger diameter 2 stage motor (launch/flight), dual mode IR/laser guidance seeker and 3P fuse selection, which is quite common these days. You now have a real game changer weapon with 20km range that can engage any smaller surface combatants that don't require or can't be hit by a heavy weight torpedo. This would include any fast patrol vessels and fast Littoral ship not to mention any low performance aircraft. That of coarse would include anti submarine helos and planes. There is nothing stopping you from engaging Frigates and Destroyers either because of being laser guided you could essentially pick out the part of the ship you think disables it the quickest. At 20km+/-, you are also out of range of many if not all surface or air launched ASW torpedoes. The US navy is to this day very big on their 5 inch guns. Well........this out guns them and with precision guidance as well. Gone are the days of carpet bombing as well as artillery barrages. Try over 90% hit probability with first shot with almost any PGMs these days. It used to be kind of fun to be a soldier. Now it just sucks.

The warhead is pretty simple......a 155mm artillery shell. It weighs just over 100 lbs and packs about 22 pounds of HE. That would make short work of any smaller vessel, and if one was not enough launch more of them. A sub with a 20/22 foot diameter (6.5/7 meters) hull and a 6/7 meter added plug into the hull could store between 80 to 100 rounds as well as room for auto loader system. That could also significantly increase your O2 storage for your AIP system as well in lower deck. You would additionally have about a 2 meter sail extension to house launch tube. They would be launched from a vertically extendable re-loadable launch tube containing sealed 4 round canisters. Diameter of the canisters is under 400mm. The additional cool thing is now you can stand off out of plain site and attack any visible shore targets. Even if they know you are there, what are they going to shoot at you with...........a tank, an RPG, artillery? Kongsberg also proposed a GPS guidance unit as well, but then you may want to eliminate solid fuel 2nd stage and go to expendable turbo jet for a stupid cheap 155mm cruise missile that could engage up to 100km. Any research I could do tells me the short range toy is about a $20k weapon and the long range one would be more in the $40/$50k range.

OK. That should get a lot more conversation going on here now. I will also add to this that you rethink how they operate and now run in pairs during any wartime combat missions. If you are the enemy and have detected one of them, you are already dead and just don't know it yet. At under 600 million a pair, I think that in reality they are the new world Corvettes, if not Frigates. In peace time doing coastal patrol, drug interdiction, fisheries patrol etc., they are also way cheaper than surface vessels to operate and far more effective. To date that has been the Canadian experience. In wartime, serving all these dam bushfire engagements we all seem to get into these days, I think they would add a whole new dimension to warfare from a littoral environment all the way to 100km inland.

Look forward to anybody's responses
Cheers
Mike

Hot Damn, Mike, you have hit a nail on the head. Bravo!

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I second this opinion.

I think large nuclear powered hunters are great and all, but a little balance is always necessary when considering something like littoral operations.

As for this design, I really like it. It's small, has a decent armament, though I'd like to know more about it, tech wise.
Radioactive material from most wreck sites is heavier by a large amount than seawater, so even if Uranium escaped from the containment chamber for instance, it'd just sit on the bottom of the sea floor. At least that's what most of the so called "experts" say.

As far as range goes, it's possible use Hydrogen-Test Peroxide to create an SSK with range much greater than conventional SSK's. of course that comes with the risks involved with using HTP in the first place.

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@ catz: and you are not worried about radioactive material because it is submerged? it's still radiactive material. and if my limited knowledge of nuclear stuff is correct, it isn't that good for living things to be close to the cooling water or an nuclear reactor, so being in an sea where the same stuff lies on the bottom.....

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I never stated anything about my own beliefs. I simply stated what one the agencies monitoring it have said.

As for how dangerous, most of these wrecks lie well below the depths where our food stock (fish) are found, so my guess is that the agencies in charge of these things aren't all that worried. I do know that water is a pretty good neutron barrier when speaking of several dozen meters of thickness. Alpha rays are stopped by a sheet of paper. So they aren't an issue. Beta rays can penetrate the skin of a person, but not very far. So they aren't much of an issue (except maybe to deep fish in the immediate area?). Gamma rays...I don't know. They typically don't penetrate as much as neutrons do, but still travel pretty far.

If you wanted to know more, you could probably email a local agency (devoted to public radiation safety) and ask.

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