Posted on 08/31/2007 11:21:11 AM PDT by 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.
Dont be so sure about that, friend. These are quiet machines.
The best defense is a good offense. We should probably make a pre-emptive nuclear strike on China right now.
The Argentinians forced their hand on that one. When the South American fleet split up, the Brits had to make a decision.
Your son is right to be very concerned about Chinese diesels.
The Navy is wrong, IMHO, in not at least having a minimal diesel boat program.
Don’t forget the hand-cranked ‘Turtle’ of the US Revolutionary War... She would have been successful if the inventor had known that the Brits were copper cladding the bottoms of their hulls.
Diesels are great if you’re fighting in your home waters. However, nearly useless if you have to cross half the world to get at your enemies like we do. Thats the real reason we use nukes.
5 Knots? That’s really not much to brag about, and you will never ever make a diesel sub as quiet as a nuke, moving parts make noise, and we can hear you when the pistons pump from so far away it will make you sick to think about it.
>>But I think the authors own bias comes through with the repeated assertions that nuc subs can’t operate effectively in ‘shallow waters’.
>>We’ve been doing that very effectively for half a century in the Med, for just one glaring example of the author’s bias.
For a slightly higher-risk example, the Sea of Okhotsk comes to mind.
You think nucs don’t have moving parts?
Yup. The only reason a nuke ever has to surface ultimately is for food
BTW, 5 knots is irrelevant, if no one knows you’re there.
The famed “catapillar” drive in the hunt for red october is the real shiznit! ;0) L0L
Yes. Some of the article may be correct but, all in all it’s not very credible sounding.
Not really, if trying to keep up with a sub going much faster, V=D/T. It’s really that simple, the only way to trail and attack a nuke sub is to keep up, you just can’t without giving away your position.
Now THAT had no moving parts.
I hear tell that the UK Astute class of Nuke is quieter than - or as quiet as - the top-of-the-range German Diesel Dolphin-class.
With stealth-tech converging between Nuke and Diesel I think the real advantages of Diesel are numbers and price - as opposed to speed, capacity and endurance.
L0L those crafty russkies!
That’s not how DBs operate.....they quietly get on station and wait to attack when a noisier enemy comes into range. It doesn’t matter really how long it takes them to get into position, either. Again, the DB’s greatest advantage is that no one knows it’s there.
IIRC A human powered sub was used, unsuccessfully, in NY harbor against a British warship, during the Revolution.
That would be interesting....
But the greatest vulnerability with any nuc boat will always be that it has a belly FULL of rotating mechanical machinery...hundreds of pumps and motors, just waiting to make a noise transient. Even with the best, most modern sound isolation technology, I don’t see how that can compete with a submerged diesel on battery, where all you have running is the electric motor (very quiet), maybe some pumps for shaft sealing water, and ventillation fans.
Of course all the technology in the world is useless without a highly trained professional crew, and on that level, the US has no equal.
USS Phoenix (CL-46), a Brooklyn-class light cruiser, was the 3rd Phoenix of the United States Navy. After World War II the ship was transferred to Argentina in 1951 and became known as the General Belgrano. General Belgrano was sunk during the Falklands War in 1982 by HMS Conqueror.
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