Collins class boat
Posted on 05/06/2007 5:16:35 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Collins class boat
Submarines at sea?
Where will it all end? With airplanes aloft? Soldiers in uniform? Democrats in prison?
Some things just seem so natural.
When down under, do submarines surface to dive and dive to surface?
Read the story. The Australian Navy is finding that they’re losing sub crews because of the amount of at sea time. Lose too many crew members and suddenly submarines aren’t at sea any more.
The Collins are D/E subs,while the 2 US subs are Nuclear boats.The N-boats carry far more weaponry,can stay underwater for months & can sustain speeds of 30+ knots.The Collins,are probably quieter underwater when running on their batteries,but they can do so only for upto 2 or 3 days before needing to surface & also at very low speeds(5 knots or so).
Ping.
Sorry, the headline fake me out.
It is my underingstanding that U.S. Submarines have two crews, since the ships are more tolerant of long deployments than sailors. Thunder boomers are almost continuously at sea, something like 90% availability. The sailors spend 55% of their time on shore-duty lite, (some training, maintenance and a lot of liberty) which makes submarining an attractive career path for people who are good at delayed gratification and can amuse themselves without getting into trouble.
sounds like it's gettin kinda crowed around there...
Boomers yes, but not fast attacks. The divorce rate among their crews is very high.
IIRC, there used to be a wealth of submarine knowledge on FR. I wonder what happened?
heard that...
I suspect that in the future, because of the proliferation of submarines, more efforts will be made on early detection and tracking.
The first of these, SOSUS, a Cold War relic, was instrumental in helping us detect new and quieter Soviet subs. And now, with the advent of very quiet diesel subs, we may need to do SOSUS one better.
In addition, there may be a need for other underwater assets, that could be unmanned and just sit on the bottom until needed. When given a signal, they release their ballast and float to the surface for whatever purpose.
btt
The US resolved that with two crews for most of it’s submarines. That way you get 6 months of training and at home time. Most US Merchant Marine sailors also have an enforced 6 months off a year too.
A few of the West Pack Widows were reputed to have had a hot bunk /”Paint Your Wagon” status with members of different crews of the same ship.
I withhold judgement on the practice. Mark Twain’s “Letters from the Earth” suggests that arrangement wouldn’t be much of a problem in a rational world, but Twain was a humorist.
Been operational over 20 years, it’s called SURTASS.
That potential was exposed last October, when a Chinese attack submarine shadowed, undetected, the US aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk in the East China Sea near Okinawa. The Chinese sub then effectively declared “Gotcha!” by surfacing eight kilometres from the carrier. For a modern submarine, eight kilometres is as good as point blank range.
I don’t suppose we will ever know the whole truth, but during some prior post it was suggested it surfaced because it WAS detected.
If it sufaced after it was detected, question is did it surface directly after being detected ?
If so, then it still got to within 8km of a carrier, far too close for comfort.
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