Posted on 08/24/2014 3:04:51 PM PDT by WesternCulture
In 2020, tiny Sweden will dispose of the most lethal weapon ever developed by man; The A26 stealth sub that could go anywhere and destroy whatever it wants without any adversary standing a chance of detecting it..
"The U.S. military is relying on sub-hunting tech that’s decades old. Meanwhile, the targets they’re trying to find are getting quieter and more invisible by the day.
Submarines are getting quieter, stealthier, and better armed. And that could mean major trouble for the U.S. Navy and its aging fleet of sub-hunters. The tactical balance between the surface warship and the submarine has strategic impact. The submarine is not made for a show of force. Its principal weapon is designed not to damage a ship, but to sink it—rapidly and probably with much loss of life. It’s a sure way to shift the trajectory of any conflict in a more violent direction.
The best deterrent against submarine attack is robust defense—but as little as surface sailors like to discuss it, that defense has seldom been less assured.
Modern diesel-electric submarines (SSKs) are very hard to detect. It’s not that SSKs with air-independent propulsion (AIP) systems are much quieter, but they mitigate the SSK’s drawback: lack of speed and endurance on quiet electric power. When the Swedish AIP boat Gotland operated with the U.S. Navy out of San Diego in 2005-07, the Navy’s surface ships turned up all too often in a photo album acquired by the submarine’s mast. The sub was so quiet, that it consistently managed to get within easy torpedo range.
AIP submarines are a high priority in the budgets of nations such as Singapore, Korea and Japan. Russia has struggled with its Lada-class boats, but persisted, and is selling them to China. Sweden, whose Kockums yard developed the AIP technology for Japan’s big 4,100-ton Soryu-class subs, had trouble getting its A26 replacement submarine program started. In an indication of its importance, Saab will buy the Kockums yard back for Sweden from ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems.
AIP—which uses stored liquid oxygen and fuel to generate power underwater—seems to be here to stay, whether it uses the Swedish-developed Stirling-cycle engine (a 19th-century curiosity, but very efficient) or fuel cells, favored by ThyssenKrupp’s German yards and Russia. Lithium-ion batteries will further increase underwater performance. Kockums advertises another step in invisibility called Ghost (genuine holistic stealth) which, like stealth technology on an airplane, involves the careful blending of hull shapes and rubber-like coatings to make the submarine into a weak sonar target.
Other improvements are making the submarine more elusive and lethal. Masts with high-definition cameras are as clear as direct-vision optics—so the mast needs only to break the surface and make a single sweep to provide a full horizon view. Finmeccanica’s WASS division and Atlas Electronik offer modern all-electric torpedoes with multiple guidance modes, from fiber-optic to wake-homing, and back-breaking influence fuzes that work too often for comfort.
Antisubmarine warfare (ASW) has not stagnated, but it shows signs of disarray. After the end of the Cold War stopped the Soviet Union’s push for quieter submarines, the U.S. scrapped improvements to the P-3 sub-hunting plane and the P-3’s replacement. The carrier-based S-3 Viking went the same way, and the U.K., more recently, retired the Nimrod and canceled its deeply flawed MRA4 replacement sub-hunters. ASW assets and crews have been diverted to reconnaissance missions in overland and littoral wars. The Navy’s strategy for the new Boeing P-8A Poseidon is to get the airframes first, because P-3s are wearing out.
The U.S. Navy’s ASW future hinges on two new technologies: multistatic, active, coherent (MAC) acoustic systems, or sonar, and automated radar detection of periscopes. Today, airplanes mainly hunt submarines by para-dropping a pattern of sonobuoys, most of which are passive listening devices. “Active” search nodes depend on noise sources that can be as simple as an explosive squib. Planned for later P-8A models, MAC uses buoys that can transmit tones and sophisticated waveforms that, when they bounce off the sub and are picked up by the other buoys in the network, can accurately pin down its position. MAC is likely to be quite costly to operate—the P-8A carries many more buoys than a P-3, and the buoys are more complex. Testing so far has not been a disaster, but it has been limited. One series of tests last year was truncated so that the test aircraft and crew could go and chase drug-runners. Picking real targets from false targets and clutter is still down to operators.
Better ways to detect periscopes—with the radar cross-section of a floating Coke can—have been under study since the early 1990s, but the Navy has vacillated on deployment plans. The new Automatic Radar Periscope Detection and Discrimination (ARPDD) technology—which uses very fast scanning and a lot of signal processing to tell a slow-moving scope from drifting debris—was to be used on upgraded P-3 radars. But in 2005—after the Gotland tests started, which may not have been a coincidence—the plans changed to stress close-in defense of the aircraft carrier, with ARPDD used first on MH-60R helicopters and on a radar mounted on the carrier itself. ARPDD disappeared from the P-8 radar requirement, then returned. More recently, the carrier-mounted radar has been discontinued and surface combatants will have ARPDD.
But the key to telling the periscope and the Coke can apart is that one of them is moving purposefully, and an electronic mast that surfaces intermittently makes an even less obvious track than a direct-view periscope that has to stay up to function. That change was not in sight when ARPDD was conceived.
Surface warfare may be heading for a strategic dilemma. The surface combatant is vital for many missions—but its utility could be drastically limited if a submarine threat imposes a no-go area. And as more new AIP subs enter service, denying the problem is less and less of an option."
There won’t be a navy by the time Obama gets done with the military
Solid magnesium is indeed flammable. I have seen a video of an F-8U Crusader being shot off the #4 cat when the starboard side wheel came off. The magnesium landing gear strut against the high friction landing deck surface lit up. Fortunately the pilot was able to punt.
“Wanna feel your family is protected and safe while driving down the freeway?
- Buy a Volvo.”
Just don’t hit any car made before 1970, or you car will be totaled and you will go out on a stretcher, while the other guy scratches his head contemplating the small dent in his vintage car.
===I actually saw this happen.====
>The Vikings - We know war!<
.
Yeah right.
Your women are being raped by bearded barbarians and Sweden is being eaten alive by Islam like any other western country.
Hey, they’re busy driving their little Volvo-badged Ford station wagons to their ‘second homes’ (in Minnesota they’re called ice fishing shacks)!
Alexandria redux.
By 2020 Sweden will be a Muslim state.
I guess you have never, ever put water on a magnesium fire? :)
Yes, it burns.
Yes, it burns even better when we does it with water !!!
Since God made it. Check this video out.
Magnesium Explosion During FD Car Fire Training
2 large magnesium bell housings were placed in the drivers seat. The explosion occurs about 5 minutes into the vehicle burning. No water was applied to create the explosion.
Novacool UEF works on Class D Fires as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D8ZqWUgxM4
Uploaded on Sep 1, 2011
This indecent occurred 5-16-2011 after midnight. Engine 103 responded to a report of an auto fire in the Montpelier area of Laurel. Ambulance 109 was on the air at the time, and responded to make up staffing. Ambulance 109 was first on the scene, with an Auto well off; Engine 103 arrived soon thereafter.
Lots of things will burn when they get hot enough, Ask a firefighter. BTW, Some are tough to put out.
http://www.firehouse.com/forums/t108983/
1. Carrier fleet is now down to 11.
2. S-3B Viking (dedicated carrier based sub hunter) has been retired without replacement.
3. MH-60R Seahawk helicopter is supposed to fill in for ASW missions.
4. DD-963 dedicated ASW destroyers are retired without replacement.
5. FFG-7 frigates are going away without replacement.
6. Early boats of the SSN-688 Los Angeles class are being retired and fewer replacements of the Seawolf class and Virginia class aren't replacing the boats retiring or headed for service life extension programs.
7. The P-3C Orion ASW fleet is shrinking and the replacement P-8A Poseidon (and its BAMS drone) won't come close to replacing the numbers of aircraft retired. Also, P-8A and BAMS drone numbers have been scaled back.
Last but not least, the USN ran a year long series of ASW tests out of San Diego against the Swedish Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) submarine HMS Gotland. The tests lasted from March 2005 through July 2007. Test results remain classified, but the USN did not do well against the advanced diesel-electric boat.
“The Vikings - We know war!”
The Vikings did, your lousy cowardly country doesn’t. You wouldn’t even fight the Nazi, instead you sided with them and helped them. Pussy.
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