Kilos and Klubs, spiders and flies

Saipan Tribune ^ | January 07, 2011 | Ed Stephens Jr.

[sukhoi-30mki]

Kilos and Klubs, spiders and flies

By Ed Stephens Jr.

Special to the Saipan Tribune

We’re an increasingly important square on the west Pacific chessboard, though a modern chessboard would dispense with rooks and knights and would have submarines and missiles instead. Hey, that might be easier, since I never understood the knights with their hinky L-hook maneuvers. So let’s look at submarines.

Why not? Everybody else is. And some are kicking the tires and cutting checks. If you doubt that our Asia-Pacific neighborhood is in a serious military growth mode, then consider that even tiny and poor Vietnam, which is hardly a ranked naval power, has placed an order for six new submarines at a cost of about $300 million each.

Vietnam’s order is for the Russian Kilo class, a diesel sub known to be cost-effective and reliable. It’s sort of the Toyota Corolla of submarines. No, they’re not as fancy, fast, far-reaching, or potent as nuclear-powered submarines, but with the exception of Russia, nobody in Asia has yet fielded a substantial fleet of nuclear attack submarines, but that’s a story for a different day; suffice it to say that for now, it’s a pretty much a diesel game for Asian navies.

In the military version of a May-September romance, the crusty old diesel technology has been invigorated by pairing with a young and saucy partner, namely, the modern cruise missile.

Remember those WWII movies where the grizzled skipper (cigar stub clenched in his teeth, hat perched atop his head at a jaunty angle) squints into the periscope stalking his prey? You had to get close, real close, in those days, in order to kill a ship. Five miles is about as far as a sub-launched torpedo would go, but hitting something at that range was dicey.

Fast forward to modern times. Consider the Russian-made Klub-S (version 3M-54E1) anti-ship missile, which is commonly deployed on Kilo-class submarines. It’s said to have a range of up to 300 kilometers, which is 162 nautical miles. For the sake of comparison, the distance from Saipan to Guam is only about 112 nautical miles. The missile hauls a monster warhead: 880 pounds. This was obviously designed as a carrier-killer. How they can manage to stuff this sort of range and muscle into something that can be launched from a little diesel boat’s torpedo tubes is beyond me. But if these things can really do what they’re designed to do, they are fearsome weapons indeed.

Moving from the missile back to its platform, I’ll note that diesel submarines are well-suited for close-in coastal areas such as straits, choke points, and bays. In fact, if they’re used correctly, they are very difficult to find in these situations, which can tax even the U.S. Navy’s considerable capabilities.

Here’s why: Diesel subs use batteries and electric motors for propulsion when at operating depth, and this is a very quiet way to operate. Silence is golden with subs. Everything is blind underwater: Even your show-off brother in law’s best best video camera can’t see 100 feet in the drink. But water conducts sound quite well. So navies use electronic ears called "sonar" to detect and track other ships. In the old war movies you’d see sonar operators listening to the audio over headphones, but in modern times the information is presented, stored, and analyzed in visual representations on computer screens.

Anyway, the farther a diesel ventures from the safety of its friendly enclaves, the more often it has to surface to run its diesel engines to recharge its batteries. They are noisy and vulnerable on or near the surface. Also, diesels are really slow. Long-range cruising speed for a submerged diesel is about 3 knots (3.5 mph), and, though they can crank that speed up to 20 knots or whatever, putting the pedal to the metal will drain the batteries in a matter of minutes. This is a good example of how the specs we often read in news stories, such as speeds and ranges for submarines and airplanes and stuff like that, can be unintentionally misleading when they lack operational context.

So the basic way to use a diesel is not to chase other ships all over the doggone ocean, but to already be quietly waiting where those ships are headed. The sub is the spider, the ship is the fly. I’m not saying that other ways aren’t used, though, since submariners are very resourceful professionals. My father served as the executive officer of a diesel sub; these guys live and breathe three-dimensional tactics. Make that four-dimensional, actually, since everything occurs along a time line.

And, when even Vietnam starts packing serious maritime heat, our Pacific neighborhood’s military time line is getting more interesting by the week.

On a broader note, here’s the U.S. terminology for the four basic categories of subs: Diesel powered (SS), nuclear powered fast attack (SSN), nuclear powered ballistic missile (SSBN), and the newest one, nuclear powered guided missile (SSGN). I’ll provide an overview of these in a future column, but at least now we can spiel the terms like a pro.

So now all we need is that jaunty hat thing, and we’ll be all set.

Visit Ed Stephens Jr. at TropicalEd.com. Ed is a pilot, economist, and writer. He holds a degree in economics from UCLA and has been a U.S. naval officer. His column runs every Friday.

[sukhoi-30mki]

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

He could have gone into a lot more detail. So Vietnam buys six subs, what is the regional context to that?

Here is the listing of Chinese submarines:

http://www.strategypage.com/fyeo/howtomakewar/databases/submarine_database/submarines.asp

They are swimming 67 submarines.

The US has 75 submarines.

Other Asia-Oceania submarines. Numbers may or may not be accurate, and may include non-operational boats:

Australia: 6, plans for 12 more.
India: 16, plans for 18 more.
Indonesia: 2, plans for 12 more.
Malaysia: 2, plans for 3 more.
North Korea: 40, plus 30 mini-subs.
Pakistan: 5
ROC (Taiwan): 2, plans for 8 more.
Russia: 26, plans for 6 fewer.
Singapore: 6, plans for 2 more.
Vietnam: plans for 6.