Defense Focus: Diesel sub wonder weapons

United Press International ^ | Aug. 31, 2007 | MARTIN SIEFF

[sukhoi-30mki]

Defense Focus: Diesel sub wonder weapons

Published: Aug. 31, 2007 at 11:10 AM By MARTIN SIEFF UPI Senior News Analyst

WASHINGTON, Aug. 31 (UPI) -- The diesel submarine may be the leading "Cinderella weapon" of the 21st century. It gets no respect in the United States or Russia. But China, India, France, Germany and Israel are all betting on it big time.

The diesel submarine is certainly not a sexy new technology like anti-ballistic missiles, global positioning satellites or lasers. It has been around as long as the submarine itself (British Adm. Lord John "Jackie" Fisher's bizarre experiment in giant steam-powered submarines, the notorious "K" boats of World War I, never got very far).

Diesel submarine technology was perfected more than 60 years ago in the great ocean-worthy U.S. Navy fleet of subs in World War II and in the German Type XXII and XXIII U-boats that became operational towards the end of the war.

However, the development of nuclear submarines, first by the U.S. Navy in the 1950s and then by the Soviet Union, appeared to make the diesel sub as obsolete as the bow and arrow became after the mass production of firearms. Adm. Hyman Rickover, the feisty father of America's nuclear navy, hated them like poison. So did his successor admirals.

Thanks to their procurement policies, there is not a single shipyard left in the entire United States that makes them anymore. But in other major nations, the old diesel sub is making a remarkable comeback.

Israel has already deployed three German-built Dolphin diesel submarines to carry nuclear-armed cruise missiles to provide it with a survivable second-strike capability to deter Iran or other nations from the temptation of carrying out a pre-emptive first strike with nuclear weapons, and it has ordered at least two more -- both also from Germany.

France is doing good business building its Scorpion submarines for export too, and India is planning to deploy Scorpions with cruise missiles as a deterrent against Pakistan similar to the Israeli concept.

But the biggest enthusiast for diesel subs is China, which is building its own: In 2006 it built 14 of them to one U.S. -- nuclear-powered -- new submarine.

China is building a mixed, or balanced, submarine fleet. It has also invested in bigger nuclear-powered strategic submarines to carry a survivable second-strike ballistic missile deterrent primarily aimed at the United States. But it is pouring major resources into its conventional submarine fleet as well. Why?

Diesel subs certainly do not have the limitless range and endurance for long-term operational deployment that nuclear subs do. But in conventional war, they have a lot of advantages as well.

They can operate far more easily in littoral or offshore, shallow waters, and being much smaller than nuclear submarines gives them a potentially huge operational advantage in key enclosed potential combat regions like the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.

Also, China's procurement policies and its overwhelming concentration of force in its southeast coastal region leaves no doubt that Chinese operational planners see their most likely conventional enemy as being the U.S. Navy and Air Force in any eventual conflict over the status of Taiwan.

In this context, having a very large conventional diesel submarine fleet makes a lot of sense. Conventional diesel subs can pose a formidable threat to nuclear aircraft carriers operating within operational range of their home ports, as the Chinese sub fleet in the western Pacific and the Taiwan Strait would be doing in such a conflict.

U.S. anti-submarine warfare, or ASW, capabilities are superb, the best in the world. But they were overwhelmingly developed to locate and destroy bigger Soviet or Russian strategic and attack subs that were nuclear powered. A lot of smaller, cheaper diesel subs operating as underwater wolf packs would stand a much better chance of overwhelming the ASW defenses of U.S. carrier battle groups than throwing just two or three nuclear attack subs against them at a time would.

For Israel and India, the calculus is a different one: Israel simply cannot afford to buy nuclear subs, and they would be too big and therefore easy to detect in the relatively shallow Mediterranean anyway.

Nor does it need big nuclear-powered platforms like the U.S. Ohio class strategic subs or the old Soviet-era Typhoons, or even the somewhat smaller new nuclear powered Russian Borei class to carry its second-strike weapons.

Israel can't afford and does not need long-range submarine-launched ICBMs anyway. Iran, Syria and its other potential enemies would all be within range of much smaller intermediate-range cruise missiles that could be launched from a conventional sub. So the Jewish state has sensibly invested in German U-boats as its main line of defense. One wonders what Grand Adm. Karl Doenitz would have thought about it all.

In 1982 the British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror proved the conventional operational potency of the nuclear attack submarine by sinking the Argentine heavy cruiser General Belgrano during the Falklands, or Malvinas, War. Future wars, however, may see that dynamic reversed with enormous nuclear surface ships hunted by fleets of a weapon employed in both world wars that was supposed to have been superseded half a century ago: the non-nuclear diesel submarine.

[sukhoi-30mki]

Developed during the 2nd world war.

[antisocial]

DBF BTTT

[dennisw]

I’s the RPG effect. Smaller and poorer militaries and guerrillas have better and better ways to render ineffective the armor and tanks of advanced nations. What is an aircraft carrier but a colossal armored personnel carrier that conveys men and weaponry (airplanes) to distant places to project American power

So todays anti tank missiles will kill tanks and todays smaller diesel subs will swarm to kill our huge billion dollar naval ships which become sitting ducks

[Camel Joe]

While you completely ignore logistics please inform me as to how you would intend to resupply the fuel required to run both the diesel and the fuel cell. I would presume the fuel for the fuel cells would also be diesel, so tell me by what means you could resupply. If it is a surface ship tell me how you will extract the fuel from the wreck I’ve sent to the bottom of the sea? As a US force I WILL have air superiority and absolutely control the above sea lanes, you will have no surface supply whatsoever, NONE! I suppose you could attempt to supply in port but that would severely hamper the range at which you could operate. I don’t care how you slice it, they won’t stack up.

[Badeye]

Yep.

Its just ridiculous, and undermines the author with those of us that actually understand ‘how things work’ in this area.

[Badeye]

‘So, let me see here. The med sea, which is don’t know how many cubits wide and how many deep, but a bunch of them, can easily hide a deisel sub because of the size, but larger nuclear sub is easy to locate?? I seriously question the relative ease with which nuclear subs are located in the med sea, and not the deisel counterpart.’

Yep.

[Badeye]

‘I was thinking the same thing. Does the author know of the Virginia or the latest mods to 688 boats?’

If he does, he’s intentionally misleading.

If he doesn’t, he isn’t qualified to write the article in the first place.

[Camel Joe]

Why would we elect to sail through the Taiwan Straights? We could anchor our carrier fleet in the Sea of Japan and inflict pure devastation upon the Chi-com fleet of surface ships or subs from there. For coastal subs I guess they are OK.

[Little Ray]

That, too. Most of the modern AIP and diesel/electric subs are pretty fast. The streamlined hull subs use now were first tested on a D/E - the Albacore.
But they’re only fast for a little while. Then the fuel or juice runs out. A nuke can run at top speed for years