After reading the article, it’s fun to just sort of riff from first principles to guess where things are headed.
I think there are two types of hiding: silence and camouflage. Silence is where you reduce the signal you emit and reflect. Camouflage is where you mask it with something else.
Hiding a gold bar in a basement is camouflage (by this definition). Making your sub reflect sonar to look like a whale is camouflage. Making your sub reflect nothing is silence.
Long term, I think silence is a losing strategy for the hider. You can hide with silence in the ocean because it’s so big. But as sensors become more sensitive, the ocean gets “smaller”. I think you run into basic physical limitations on silence well before you do on detection. Like the article suggested, I think the days of quieter propulsion and better propulsion detection being a big part of the game are numbered.
I can see camouflage going on longer. Seems like the second stage of the game. What happens when you have 10,000 vehicles emitting all sorts of signatures you can’t disambiguate, and 50 of those are nuclear subs? Or worse, a million objects including civilian UUVs and marine life?
That’s essentially the same as non-identification. It’s like using facial identification against a military to find the general, but everyone can change their face at will.
This feels off, though. We may be at the point where it is hard to keep any particular thing quiet, sure. But we are also at the point where it is rather easy to park a ton of things around that are very easy to keep quiet until we want a lot of noise.
That is, if you are going to first principals, I have to ask why you don't have a ton of unmanned drones down there. Literally remove the need to move somewhere for the people on board.
Drones that sound like, act like, or maybe look like whales, might be the answer. If the adversary can't tell if its a whale or drone, likely to force them to waste a lot of resources and/or ammunition.
It's a compelling picture, but it seems like it would be rather harmful for real whales, and if chances are it's a drone rather than a whale, several actors might choose to fire regardless and find out later.
Not that whales are the only option to mimic, but whatever is chosen had better be common enough to make the drones rare by comparison, and stay that way.
Jellyfish might be a nice option when conditions permit...
For VLF you can drag a very long antenna behind you, but most submarines just launch a buoy with a normal antenna to the surface and a fiber connection to allow them to stay below the surface.
I did notice the bit in the Wikipedia article where they mention the US station isn't used for submarine comms anymore. Thanks for the higher quality info.
You presume it has to be incredibly long range? I'd be surprised if that is necessarily the case. Could also flat out do cables to many of them at rest.
Is it fool proof? Almost certainly not. It doesn't have to compete with perfect, though. Just with what we have right now.
EM waves fall off exponentially inside a conductor like saltwater. A 1 kHz wave has a skin depth of 8.75 meters, vs the Virginia class' 10m width. A signal from the front to the back of the submarine would be attenuated by 10 million times.
Note that this is in addition to the normal problems with antennas. Your home router transmits at <100 mW. Say you spent a ton of money and made a super sensitive receiver that could operate from 140m on the low SNR of your router. In order to receive the same power at 140m on 1 kHz, you would need a 1 megawatt transmitter. It would be dumping 60% of its power in the first 8.75 meters of water. Not quite enough to boil it, but not far off.
That's your first problem. The second problem is that the wavelength of a 1 kHz signal is 299.8 km. Antenna effectiveness also falls off exponentially with size, and the smallest antennas are maybe 10% of the wavelength. A 1 km antenna does not work well for 1 km, and even then you have to let out a buoy with a long cable- which is how current submarines do it.
The third problem is that if the drones are 10s of km or less away from the sub, there's no point. That means you know where the sub is. The problem is knowing where to aim active sonar or drop depth charges, not aiming.
This is assuming I think you have to have radio communication with the drones at all times? I'd assume more that you have tethered trenches scattered throughout the ocean that you care about and can dispatch an absurd number of drones at will. No need to keep them moving on a regular basis. My general thought there was more that keeping an absurdly large fleet of mostly inactive drones a bit more hidden is almost certainly easier than keeping anything in motion and constant communication hidden.
Is it necessarily a good idea? Probably not? I was only poking at the "first principals" taking the assumption of constant radio communication as a given. Why? We don't even assume that for submarines with people on them.
Which, yes, we have people there so that they can think and respond with situational awareness to events. And I'm fully agreed that we don't want to jump straight to AI to replace people completely. But I also don't know why you wouldn't build a bit more smarts into deployments? And fully expect some of this to happen. (Realistically, I'm largely describing what science fiction used to imagine mine fields are like in the ocean?)
I assure you, you realize very quickly that most of military procurement are also brainless morons when you have to talk to them.
There's a big disconnect between the military and actual engineering. Yes, that one magic Xilinx part is cool, but you don't need to blow $10k extra on literally everything you buy. They suffer buzzwords and fads the same way everyone in civilian C suite does.
Ha! Fair. I should have scoped my statement largely to arm chair quarterbacks on the internet. With the full understanding and endorsement of what that implies about my contributions! :D
Missed this thread, apologies. I would take "nearly impossible" to be akin to "very expensive." Which is not to say that any of the difficulties just flat go away. But you don't necessarily need long range communication.
I now realize the other thread is taking my point to be that this is trivially doable. That was also not my intent. My point was simply that "reducing to first principals" is a bit silly if you are going to maintain the requirement that you have a big enough vehicle to sustain a crew. Even a minimal crew imposes some massive design constraints that you don't necessarily have if you reduce the problem down. (In general, oddly, I meant my comment mostly as a criticism of "first principals" thinking on this. Too many of those analyses bring in base assumptions that are often invisible to the people arm chairing it.)
> Missed this thread, apologies. I would take "nearly impossible" to be akin to "very expensive."
I’m certainly no expert, but I don’t think that’s the case here. Radio waves don’t penetrate water that far. Communicating with an untethered vehicle deep underwater is impossible. At the surface, trivial.
I would include dropping tethers to many places as part of a viable plan?
Though, to your point. Not trying to be an expert or to second guess any expertise out there. I was really only meaning to question the "first principals" idea of reducing it to something that still requires radio waves to penetrate deep into the water. There is no need to keep the idea that it has to remain in radio contact with something far away. You would want it to be able to establish contact, and there will be prioritized methods to do that based on plenty of other variables. Not trivial, mind. But there is already nothing trivial about going underwater.
Trying to do what you’re proposing without being detected (the primary use case for military submersibles) is what is essentially impossible, since communicating via sound is of course doable - and also would entirely compromise their purpose.
Hooking to previously unhooked tethers (or keeping drone like submersibles tethered over long periods of time), or communicating via radio underwater is just not practically useful. Like ‘tens or hundreds of meters’ type limited range, when kilometers is typical ‘close’ range.
The reason why crews are required (except for limited research/investigation use cases), is because of these communication issues.
We are likely comparing different scenarios, then? I'd assume defense has a different set of requirements from infiltration.
To be sure, you need a lot more flexibility for defense that projects farther than you can put a stake in the ground. (Well, tethers in the water, here.) But I would assume you could almost certainly invest in and build both?
If the opponent knows where all the defense equipment is, they can often bypass or destroy it in a first strike too.
And any common tethering point is not only a weak link (since it’s fixed), but a way to find every piece of equipment that interacts with it (since it has a easy to find location).
The exception maybe purely passive equipment, like SOSUS microphones. But drones are going to make noise when operating, and they’ll point to the tethering point - and every other tethered drone even if it’s not yet operating.
The deep ocean is the definition of the ‘dark forest’ problem.
The passive suggestion is basically exactly what I had in my brief imagination. Would have somewhat obvious points of failure that you would have to fortify in somewhat obvious ways. Much like any fence technology on land.
But this discussion is largely silly; as you are arguing against it as being some sort of perfect proposal. I thought it was quite clear I don't even really mean it as a serious proposal. Just as one that goes against "first principals" being some sort of golden blessing that is bound to get good results.
The responses have been to my original comment that the whole idea is silly, essentially. Because these first principles are fundamental physics limitations.
You seem really intent on ignoring these fundamental issues. It’s like trying to argue that habitats on the moon should try to ignore that the moon has no atmosphere.
We can, but why?
And if you didn’t want arguments, well this is obviously the wrong crowd hah.
What is the argument, then? My point is that it seemed off because it was still trying to force a way to find stealth for large containers that have to move. Remove the need for large and movement, and you get different constraints. No need to rely on "fundamental physics limitations" to point out that it will be difficult.
And yes, as you add in more constraints, you get more difficulties. So, if you want completely clandestine deployment, that will be far harder. But nobody would be surprised to learn that a military base has lots of latent defenses. Why would this be any different?
Pretending to be a whale doesn't seem like a sound principle to me. Subs don't follow the migratory paths of whales, as far as I know. Now, we just look for whales that are out of place and send a drone out to check.
Maybe you're right though, that overwhelming the signal pattern, similar to how SDI/Star Wars was deemed moot.
Reminds me of that old joke about then-modern stealth fighters having the radar cross section of a bird, with a reply stating that if they saw a bird going at mach 0.8 they'd fire some missiles at it.
Americas obsession with nuclear propulsion is a large part of the problem. You can’t switch a nuclear power plant off. It’s always making noise and vibrating. These these subs are always noisier than electric units which can be totally off and totally silent, emitting nothing.
It’s politics that demands the glamour of a huge nuclear fleet. For stealth nuclear power which makes noise constantly and is nuts radiation is an inferior choice.
How much of the detection is detecting the affect a large object moving (or holding a stationary position in a current) has on water (displacing it, wake etc) vs the object itself?
This is like spotting soldiers wearing camouflage by following their muddy footprints?
Yes I think decoy drones will be critical to extending the useful lifespan of submarines, and perimeter drone defense critical to deep water.
But I think the Ukraine war has shown that shallow water navies are totally vulnerable to drones. So the purported numerical advantage of the current Chinese navy is basically worthless.
If course it is debatable if our deep water Navy can withstand missile guidance tech from the 1970s.
> But as sensors become more sensitive, the ocean gets “smaller”.
is it not still possible to have 1 submarine and 9000 really annoying "noisemakers"? Smoke is a kind of camouflage. A constant smokescreen of sonar waves probably won't be fun for the whales...
There's another sub-distinction (hah) I'd like to make: Smoke versus decoys.
So instead of 9000 devices to blanket the area with noise so that the movements of the real submarine are hard to discern, you could have 90 decoys which are localized, and the real sub is "hiding in plain sight."
In other words, the difference between obscuring "where" versus "which one."
If they are especially noisy wouldn't that make them incredibly easy to track identify and then disregard in addition to being so expensive that your country can't even afford to have healthcare?
Except, having 1000 subs in Chinese waters (just as an example) doesn't help you. The point isn't just to evade being blown up, or which is the sub with weapons, it's also to evade detecting you were ever there or are there.
When a sub is submerged, by definition it is buoyant and therefore has the same average density as the surrounding water. Unless your gravity sensor is so sensitive it can detect the different densities on a per-cubic meter basis (or smaller).
I don't know about all the potential noise sources and how well any of them could be compensated for, but the raw sensory capacity of the best systems is at least enough to be worth considering the question.
Related fact: the first Goodyear blimp was a repurposed ex-Navy submarine hunter, that likely had a MAD device fitted. You can see the restored gondola from it in the New England Air Museum.
MAD has fallen out of favor. Detection range is very short so it really only works when the aircraft is low and the submarine is shallow. There are techniques to greatly reduce a submarine's magnetic signature. The P-8A doesn't even have a MAD built in.
Reflecting nothing can be as bad as reflecting a big bright 'ping'. Once you get to a certain level of stealth you have to essentially camouflage against an 'empty' background or you become a conspicuous absence.
Edit: I'm thinking more about visual camouflage here, though - maybe for sound underwater there's no point at which being quieter becomes a liability?
I really wish publications like IEEE spectrum would call that machine learning. For all intents and purposes "AI" has become a marketing term for "consumer grade chat bots". It has a semi-magical / science fiction aura, and it's bordering on click bait. "Machine learning" is what this kind of signal processing based on training from large data sets. Next thing you know we'll start seeing anything that implements Dijkstra as "AI".
Also, we need to be more specific about what ML actually means. I see a lot of people thinking that Kalman filters/CFAR/wavelet transforms/super-res/DSP correlation/whatever are all just magic AI bullshit that can find any signal regardless of how far below the noise floor it is.
I wish we'd go back to referring to things by their core algorithm like "Neural Nets for DSP filtering". I guess that just doesn't get the ultra wealthy dumb fuck class to open their wallet fast enough...
We tend to see these types of articles popping up any time a new American administration moves in.
With the defense industry commanding government contracts worth trillions there is a lot of incentive to spread doubt and uncertainty about the current state of the art.
Conveniently, once enough fear, uncertainty, and doubt, have been sown amongst the public, the people pushing these stories will also push to have their AI/Drone/{insert recent tech} company be granted a new defense contract.
This method has been used countless times to waste the current defense budget on unproven tech that often goes nowhere.
It’s larger than military. This is how our democracy works. The government seeds ideas in PR articles to media and then evaluates if there is enough public support to do it.
The most egregious example I remember is the “Russians are putting bounties on Americans in the Middle East” article that was well promoted by prominent individuals on this site, and then turned out to be fake.
> Remember the “Russians are putting bounties on Americans in the Middle East” article that was well promoted by prominent individuals on this site, and then turned out to be fake?
I don't recall that being promoted on this site and in review [0] the few times it was claimed, there was solid pushback. Maybe you have different examples?
I read posted (by prominent individuals) on this site because if we were talking about posted [elsewhere] by (prominent individuals on this site), it doesn't seem relevant to a discussion that's happening on this site.
I would be incredibly surprised if HN is NOT a target for the US government, given not only the power of people frequenting it but also the deep link between silicon valley and the military industrial "defence" complex.
> This method has been used countless times to waste the current defense budget on unproven tech that often goes nowhere.
It's time to rework how fundamental / "moonshot" military R&D should get done, then. And that's not just true of the US, it's also a hot issue for the German military.
We all need to separate "keeping the stuff we have up and running, and get new versions every so often to incorporate technical developments that happened in the meantime" from "let's try and see if we can hide a B2 bomber not just from radars but also eyes and ears" or "maybe we can get a Star Wars style repulsorlift antigrav system working".
The basic stuff should be done by buying whatever is available on the market. No matter if it's Abrams, Leopard, <insert whatever South Korea makes in tanks here>, and ideally the US, EU, NATO and their major allies (Israel, South Korea, Ukraine) should pool their IP and manufacturing resources for a common pool where everyone can draw from, and everyone can contribute to, alone to keep geographic redundancy.
Unfortunately for moonshot projects though, all the "easy" stuff has been done decades ago, and while the startups may have fancy ideas (especially the offshoots of university research), they lack the funding to get them to real-world stage, or they get bought out by one of the big experienced government milkers where the project fades into oblivion. And the US isn't particularly happy to share their stuff, not even with their close-knit FVEY circle.
Your description aptly describes a recent Elon Musk spat on twitter regarding F-35s / radar-stealthyness being irrelevant in the age of "low light cameras and AI". Where, presumably, a LEO constellation of satellites could track aircraft optically. Conveniently something he could sell the US government, right?
The underwater drone technology being developed could drastically cut military expenditures by making aircraft carrier-centric naval strategies obsolete. Look at this Orca XLUUV developed by the US Navy and Boeing - it can carry an eight ton payload, travel thousands of miles, and doesn't have to surface for extended periods (although it is diesel-electric, a hybrid of sorts). The depth limit is certainly classified but it could probably sit well below surface ship detection limits, and even be outfitted with nuclear payloads.
Note this thing could also be equipped with autonomous drones, eg it could surface, release a swarm of aerial attack drones, and submerge. This sort of makes aircraft-carrier centric battle groups obsolete, and it's far cheaper too.
Notably, US shipyards are mostly building military ships these days; a more rational policy would return these shipyards to building cargo ships, an area where China currently dominates. This highlights why an economy that revolves around the military-industrial sector will always lag behind economically in comparison to countries that invest in more productive enterprises; eg a tank, once build, can only destroy; building large cranes instead means you are set up for big infrastructure projects.
At the end of the day the aircraft carrier is basically a huge truck. If the warfare is now drones thats great you have this huge truck you can load to the brim with them and park or deliver around the world.
As I was reading about submarine stealth techniques, I saw the map and had trouble visualizing it at first, as they colored the land in blue and the water in white.
Destin from Smarter Every Day got to spend a day on the USS Toledo and made multiple videos about this[0].
I mention it because in one of the videos he and the crew talk about submarine stealth (the non classified bits) and there's a surprising amount of science behind just being in the right part of the water, where the water itself (density changes, temperature changes, currents, etc) can make it almost impossible to see you.
So Betteridge's Law of Headlines still applies: No, they will still hide just fine.
Jive Turkey's old YT videos in which he'd play Cold Waters and talk about late-Cold War-era sonar operation were amazing.
And now sadly gone. :(
Word is some of the information was still a little too OPSEC accurate (physics doesn't change that fast) + a career change to the private defense industry necessitated rebranding.
Shame, as he did an excellent job teaching about thermoclines et al. in the context of passive sonar systems.
He's still around under Sub Brief (https://www.youtube.com/@SubBrief) but I wouldn't be surprised if some of his videos have since been edited and/or removed. Especially the ones where he'd whiteboard things. He would state how he couldn't speak to certain things, but there were times where he would share some insight and I'd cringe a little. A couple come to mind, but I won't repeat them here.
There's a lot to unpack in this article. There's several points it gets wrong, and several others in which an assertion is made but then fails to mention the compensating factors or later negates them in the piece. I'm not in the Navy, but I've worked in and studied this space for a long time (and have talked to many who do) so I'll share what I know.
- The submarines (boats!) like the USS Minnesota are fast-attack submarines. Their primary mission is anti-shipping and sea control, not nuclear deterrence. While there's some talk I understand of bringing back the nuclear-armed version of the Tomahawk which the Virginia-class could then carry; this is not their primary mission. The Ohios and follow on Columbias will do this. The fast-attack subs will to counter the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN)
- I've seen a variety of articles over the past several years talking about how AI and advanced signal processing will make submarines obsolete. This article does the same, but is very vague on the details, then proceeds to state how there's things that complicate this (drones, other traffic.) When they say "AI", what I think they really mean is machine learning, and certainly, this helps. But noise is still subject to the inverse square law, and so there's no magical detection of everything everywhere even if advanced processing makes it a lot easier than before. It's also important to point out that this works in both directions. So if the PLAN is using better sensors and processing, you bet the U.S. and other navies are as well.
- Which brings me to this point that the article doesn't address. "If not the submarine, then what?" The Chieftain (youtube) did a great video on this when there was a lot of talk on the tank being obsolete after watching battles in Ukraine. (He disarms this pretty well). While there are new threats to submarines, the type gives capabilities that aircraft and surface ships cannot match, and until such a combination of features comes about that fulfills the same roles and provides the same effects as a submarine, then it won't be replaced.
- I wanna touch on the AUKUS bit, as this article starts taking swipes at it for its expense, states that the submarines will be easily detectable, but then says "just get AIP boats (Air independent propulsion)." There's a valid debate that can occur over what the best bang-for-the-buck is for Australia, and some questionable aspects about the deal (like whether we can actually build the boats on time). But in my opinion, Australia had a very valid reason for going that route that the author glosses over when touting AIP boats.
They do not even remotely reach the capabilities of a nuclear boat. AIP boats are something of a misnomer; they do need oxygen, they just carry it with them. It allows them to stay submerged longer, but they're still carrying a much less energy dense fuel, and now they have to carry even more of it underwater. This is fine for Europe's needs, where most operations are going to be close to shore and not far from their bases such as in the Baltic Sea, North Sea, and Mediterranean. AIP is an excellent choice there! But the Pacific is vast, Australia is vast, and those boats are too short ranged and too slow to get anywhere they need to be within a reasonable amount of time in a conflict. Is Australia fights, they're going to want to do with their allies north, and that means in the South China Sea or Philippine Sea, not outside Darwin. The French boats they were originally ordering wouldn't give them that ability, and given they were hopelessly late as it was, they decided to go with a better option.
Does Australia need to project that far north? Valid question. If they want a stay-at-home navy, go AIP. But they want to be part of the allied force, so they need something that can really endure and project, and that means 30+ knots sustained for thousands of kilometers. AIP boats can't do that.
The vastness of the Pacific and indeed the planet's oceans is something I noticed was missing from the article. I think of it in terms of detection, you can have the sophisticated technology and perhaps focus it on one area or choke point, but in general it will be very hard to search the entire ocean for a nuclear ballistic missile sub.
Drop a submarine-sized object at a random location on land (a much, much smaller search space) and I bet it would take a long time to find despite all the earth observation satellites at our disposal. The oceans are much bigger, and have a whole other dimension (depth) and the the subs move.
IMO (western) subsurface analysis dance around just how stupid expensive these platforms are relative to opportunity cost of other aquisitions or potential counter measures. Writings will acknowledge nuke boats are pricy multi billion dollar platforms/programs, but don't go the extra step to show the math that each VLS/torpedo tube/cell/unit of fire on a nuke boat costs $100m to hull around, approaching $200m on SSNX, and that's only with more compact TLAMs/cruise missiles... subsonic munitions with very high interception rate - hence gamble on stealth shaping, but doesn't really alter physics that slow munitions are easy to intercept. Extrapolate to more performant but larger prospective hypersonics and you can x2 that multiplier. Factor in usually 1/3 or 1/2 are deployed at any given time (rest training or maintainence) and value proposition gets even more stupid / nonsensical. Then factor in multi week round trip (port and back to theatre) for reloads unless at sea replenishment gets figured out. A B21 costs 700-800m, and can carry much more more ordinances per $ , with significantly greater turnaround. Western nuke boats supremely expensive platform during war per unit of fire, rationalized by increased survivability. But if equation starts biasing toward detection, that rationalization breaks down.
> no magical detection of everything everywhere / AI
We may reach point where where detections/sensors can functionally prevent nuke boats from operating permissively - negating their advantage. Meanwhile quietting has reached returns technical floor. PRC throwing out lots claims of better / cheaper detection methods as they build out their ASW (SQUIDS/ELF waves etc) last few years. Operationally this means better sensors with longer detection range maybe able pickup subs beyond their torpedo range in fleet, or less # of platforms can significantly extend detection bubble/coverage. On the extreme end, you have programs like DARPA ACTUV (I'm sure PRC has their alternative) which relies on dirt cheap surface UVs that just permenantly shadows subs once they leave port, costs $10,000 per day to operate vs $500,000-$1,000,000 for ASW destroyer (US/DARPA estimates, PRC will be lower), i.e. if PRC can push ELF detector ranges, they can basically park ASW platforms right outisde of 24nm contiguous zone off any western sub port (claiming FONAP) and shadow. TLDR is if likely future trend since PRC got into ASW game (relatively recent) is counter to subs is evolving rapidly, likely getting much cheaper, while western subs are getting more expensive, and are multi decade programs that locks in strategic capabilities.
Empahsis/caveate on "western" subs - PRC/PLAN just extended their nuke boat production lines to 4-8 hulls per year. Meaning they see value in nuke boats, but their value proposition per hull =/= USN (or AUKUS). Doubt they'll be paying 6-8 billion per boat.
>If not the submarine, then what
For sea control, there's always PLA rockeforce / air launch AShMs model. 360Billion can buy a lot of mobile IRBM + TELs in hardened shelters to take out shipping (and other targets). 360B doesn't buy a lot of subs, half of which likely will be destroyed in port because they're juicy targets. There's good chance SCS will be so packed with PLA ASW going forward that SSNs will be operating outside of 1IC, in which case subs will stuck in AIP territory off AU coast anyway. There's arguably economical/better/future proof alternatives for shit hits fan. But AUKUS / nuke boats are "good" peacetime procurements, good for photo ops / propaganda / posturing, good for recycling 100s of billions into local economies if AU can actually get the domestic production / supply chain in place. Hence IMO AUKUS will fall through if ends up funnelling 100s of billions into US/UK industry instead of AU (which is where things seem to be moving towards).
You’re right to call out just how enormously expensive nuke boats are. Anything carrying around a nuclear powerplant for that matter. They are the modern day battleships (Just see how the US Navy names theirs). For AUKUS, I tried to keep my argument to the warfighting value of the boats separate from the economics. But there’s a whole line of argument there you call out, which I think finalizes with the question “Can Australia afford to build forces necessary to participate in a Pacific conflict away from its shores?” Not off the Australian coast, but north of Indonesia where they envision defending Taiwan, protecting the Malacca strait, etc. I don’t think that’s an easy question to answer. I don’t think their previous plan of getting new AIP boats was a good one if that was their aim. But it’s fair to question if they can afford nuke boats either.
I disagree that rocket forces can be a stand-in for submarines. They’re great defense weapons: certainly for shore defense, questionable for longer distances that that (I’m making an obligatory nod to China’s ballistic anti-ship efforts), and of course, air-launched AShMs were a primary threat during the Cold War. But these all lack persistence, and require a lot of effort to target the thing on the other end; something made much more difficult the further away it is. And that’s the thing a submarine VLS cell gives you that an air-launched or shore launched missile doesn’t; It’s right there. I don’t think the subsonic speed is much of an issue when it pops up 10km from your task force. It’s the persistence, the endurance, that gives submarines (and surface ships for that matter) their role that land and air based missiles can’t. The latter can make things painful, but they can’t truly control a body of water for duration in the way those platforms can.
But you’re right to point out that China’s math is likely different than that of say, the U.S., because the latter has to come across the Pacific to do so. Force projection is expensive, and this is the challenge facing Australia. The U.S. can afford to do it (though I think it’s slipping in this regard), other major militaries such as the U.K. are facing hard questions about just how global they want to be. Australia is far enough away that if they want to help in those aforementioned scenarios, they need to bring the fight north, and that’s an expensive prospect for a country of just 24 million.
The last thing I’ll mention is while I think your points about the challenges of operating in the South and East China Sea would be very difficult in the face of enemy ASW, those submarines would not be operating alone. They operate as part of a whole (land, sea, air). It's not the pacific submarine campaigns of WWII and lone wolves hitting shipping. Though if it turns into that, we’re in real trouble.
I’m just a lay person in this, but aren’t we in an era where you can image anything on the surface of the earth and hit it with a missile? Seems like if you are going to use a sub to find a ship to shoot it with a torpedo, you might as well use a satellite to find a ship and have something hit the ship from orbit and not have to send out a sub with 200 people on it to do so. Could do it all from a bunker on shore. Or maybe I misunderstand how easy it is to fire arbitrary missiles or scan the sea with satellites.
Value of ships/projection platforms is how it mediates geography and technology and economy. Pacific/Atlantic ocean offering US 10,000km+ buffer on each side means historically, US HAS to rely on mobile platforms (and forward basing) to hull sufficient munitions in theatre across the pond due to both technologic and economic limitations, i.e. there technologically was no accurate long range fire, no sufficient ISR (pre space / gps) that would enable medium / long range strikes, and economically to deliver accurate munitions at scale, shooters needed to be close / right there.
But being "right there" is a consequence, of HAVING to be right there. Cruise missiles extended "right there" to standoff ranges of 1000-2000km, but we're also in age of meter level CEP 5000km IRBMs/AShMs, shooters don't have to be "right there" anymore. IMO important not to conflate with being able to shoot something, for needing to be "right there" to shoot something. If anything you want to be no where near where the shooting happens. Words like "persistence", "presence", "projection" gets abused as proxy for (sea) control, especially useful propaganda/signalling tool during peacetime (look, we're right there), but the actual coercive power during peacetime or control during shooting war is done by the munitions (and sensors to direct them). Modern day rocketry + persistent space ISR can like cover what historically needed carriers/subs to cover, especially for AU considerations (IRBM range) hence value proposition of SSGNs is different, which is why I question the AUKUS sales pitch from warfighting capability perspective. Land based rocketry also much more flexible than committing to SSGNs + cheaper shorter range cruise missiles ... that requires subs to operate closer to their target, using likely interceptable / defeatable munitions (since the subsurface gamble is stealth lets you shiv with ~100 smaller cruise missiles up close vs ~20 hypersonics from far away), but if munitions doesn't measure up, might as well not be in theatre in the first place, and chance of retrofitting subs around larger extended range munitions unlikely, so it's multi decade gamble. This is not to mention the complexity of subsurface kill chain / communicating underwater.
Meanwhile a PLARF TEL popping out of a tunnel in Hainan to launch a mach10 missile can reach Darwin in 20 minutes. AKA no defense/offense dichotomy, rocketforce can also do anti area/access denial, i.e. when targetting Guam, forward bases in 1IC. 360B buys a lot of irbms, i.e. everything up to 1-2IC/Australia north coast might as well as be "right there" from PRC theatre/IRBM perspective. Recipriocally AU can also do this from upside down land. Is AU better served with risking forward positioned SSGN with 100 x 2000 km cruise missile sized cells or for same price, 400 x 5000km land based hypersonics that can cover the theatre, plus distributed for more survivablity. IMO Australia has options other than SSGN to bring the fight north 5000km versus US trying to bring the fight west 10000km. Especially considering the maritime choke points across 1IC.
Question is: which options better for AU to spend 360B to have some sort of medium / long range fires into SCS / IndoPac theatre. Considering SSGNs will lock in procurement for 50+ years. Especially considering hulls won't be in water in meaningful numbers for 20+ years while PRC ASW capablities are growing. Meanwhile, PLA is also coordinating land, sea, air at likely greater relative scale than what US+co are projected to bring in theatre, which increases challenges of subsurface survivability with time. IMO all the trendlines are against locking in on eggs in basket of expensive subsurface. It's gamble on purely warfighting value, which cannot be seperated from procurement economics, as in opportunity cost of what other warfighting capabilities that 360B can buy, and sustainment economics, as in SSGNs are such big investments that it will constrain future procurement options. Decommissioning nuclear will make even divestment hard.
My feeling is AU better off with some IAPs for near shore defense, and missiles / B21s for long range fires / cheaper per unit procurements that enables future pivot. But as expensive as AUKUS is, on paper it has more domestic $$$ potential, but strategically bad gamble.
I don't discount that long-range fires won't be useful, but I don't follow how on one hand, the complexity of a "subsurface kill chain" (which is limited to...the boat?) is a hindrance, but planning a fire mission across tens of thousands of kilometers against moving targets isn't a mention. Even hypersonics still take time to reach their target, and surface ship can cover a lot of distance in that time. That's why I'm still of the opinion that IRBMs/AShMs, while deserving of respect, are not a stand-in for an actual ship (or submarine) present on location. It takes time to go from detection (orbital, aircraft, other sensor) to command, to launcher, to waiting for the munition to get downrange and hoping that the thing you're shooting at is still there. If it isn't, they have to maintain contact, keep up communications with the munition in flight to steer it back on target, etc. That's a lot to juggle and quite challenge even for the U.S., and against an adversary who will be trying to disrupt anything along that path. (Something the U.S. has pointed out to "the carrier is dead" naysayers that they are actively planning.)
Subsonic missiles are in theory (and I do think it's theory) harder to hit than hypersonic, but the killchain there can be far simpler and shorter, and much less able to be disrupted. This is more lethal the closer I can get before launch. Sure, there's 2000km cruise missiles from B21s, but if I have the option to get in to say, 200km, I'm going to take it and give my adversary far less time to detect and respond.
That's the crux of my argument why persistent platforms won't be going away. To be clear, I don't think these long range (I'll call them strategic? theater?) fires don't have their place. Both sides are investing in them. But the need for being "there" remains.
You ask if it's better for Australia to spend money on having medium/long range fires into the IndoPac theater, or a submarine. I'll agree with you in part that a nuclear sub, which would meet their aims to do so, might be out of their financial reach. But considering that those long-range fires require complex targeting and communications (note the killchain above!), that may not be cost effective either. The latter requires some pretty robust aerospace capabilities to detect and track targets that they do not possess and would be exorbitantly expensive to obtain. They can use the U.S.'s capabilities, and many NATO nations do so. But so goes their ability to fight independently then. And I'd argue, it can perform less missions than a submarine can.
At the end of the day, I think Australia is hobbled by the fact that they want to project power that their current budget is going to be at pains to provide. I think nuclear fast-attack might indeed be their best option out of a host of painful options, short of ceding the field.
* Addendum: There's a lot of noise made about hypersonics, and I think they're to some extent overblown. Not irrelevant, but overemphasized. For one, subsonic isn't dead. They can be relatively cheap, have long range, and stealthy. Launched low and flying low, they're hidden by the curvature of the earth. If their launch site can be hidden or hard to pinpoint prior (be it aircraft, mobile site, or submarine) then they can still be very effective. The challenge comes when they're launched from far away. Just because it has a 2000km range or so doesn't mean that's advantageous, as the target can move really far in that intervening time. (This is where submarines are dangerous, because they can potentially bring those fires in much closer without being detected than a surface ship or aircraft can, AI-powered ASW or not.)
So hypersonics are attractive here. Just speed them up! Now that potential radius the target moved is much smaller. But it brings it own challenges. Engineering a vehicle to fly at that speed and at low level and deal with the effects on targeting and communications mach 5+ travel creates is no small feat.
"But hypersonics are used today!" I hear some say. Yes. Anything traveling Mach 5+ is hypersonic. So that Iskander SRBM that the Russians bolt to the underside of a Sukhoi and release from 30k is technically a hypersonic missile. But in reality it's ballistic missile they dropped instead of launching from the ground, using internal guidance to hit a fixed target on the ground. Effective for that role perhaps, but not groundbreaking and certainly not going to hit a ship.
So I think hypersonics are another possible weapon in the quiver, but part of a mix, not a replacement. They bring their own tradeoffs.
Last reply, but appreciate your responses. From what I read, underwater/subsurface kill chain much more difficult of problem, comparison of it being more difficult than space. Especially compared to space-land targetting loop.
>surface ship can cover a lot of distance
Realistically we're talking about within 5000km range (not 10,000s), about 20 minute hypersonic travel, during which time a ship won't travel far. The VERY wrong lesson from carriers/surface fleet are "fast" argument is surface ships that can travel 50km per hour is fast, relative to hypersonic travelling at 10,000+. Ships obviously very slow in comparison. That actual argument is: US adversaries did not (emphasis on past tense) have the OODA loop to coordinate a fire mission rapidly, i.e. in the multiple hours it took to plan a counter mission when PRC lacked sufficient satellite coverage, carrier fleet could travel 100s of kms away. But in age of persistent, redundant ISR (i.e. PRC launching 100s of ISR satellites since, megaconstellation ISR in horizon), the ability to execute counter fire approaching immediate, and ships steaming at full speed simply can't cover meaningful distance within the 20 minutes it takes to get a mach5-10 munition downrange where course correction for account for distrance travelled is minute. Slow carriers are "fast" relative to slow brains that gives carriers lots of time to run away. But surface ships are cripplingly slow against a fast thinker with a fast trigger.
>Subsonic missiles are in theory
At 200km+ away = ~10-15 response time for subsonic, i.e. comparable to hypersonic launhced from 4000km away. But actual interception is more function of supersonic interceptor performance, slow missiles are easier to intercept. We also have a lot of reality, i.e. recent wars, subsonics (non stealth) have very, very high interception rate, like basically all of the 200+ drones and cruise from Iran vs higher % of ballistics slipping through. Both UKR and RU hitting each others subsonics regularly. I would almost argue intercepting subsonics is a solved problem. Except stealth optimized ones. I don't think those have been operational in the wild.
>want to project power
The more I think of AUKUS subs, the more I think the security aspect of AUKUS subsurface is borderline security theatre. Australia wants show (continued) commitment to US security architecture, it gets rewarded by sharing of US SSN tech, you don't really say no to that, especially if part of deal is you can recycle 100s of billions into domestic industry. Sell to public as projecting power, long endurance etc, but really US wants to known you're aligned for X decades, and continued / expanded access (pinegap, exmouth, geraldton, more airstrips in northwest AU for future USAF B21s). I don't think AU is really serious about projecting power, because IMO you really can't with handful of boats over 50 years when PRC has capacity to build 6-8 per year.
>hypersonics / subsonic
Subsonics still has place since most of US adversaries, i.e. targets they'll regularly shotting at every year (not value judgement) don't have capabilities to shoot down subsonics at scale. Syria using decades old RU anti air allegedly intercepted many US TLAMs a few years ago, but TLAMs are cheap and proven enough that weaponeers can simply afford to lob a bunch of them in calculations, so defenses eventually satuated and targets hit. IMO very different calculations once up against a modern surface vessel with lots of modern interceptors. The value proposition may change from 8B SSGN can sink multiple 500M PLAN surface combatants, to maybe 1-2 before getting sunk by ASW. Meanwhile 20-40million IRBM can sink that ship just as well (if AU piggy backs on US ISR).
In this context hypersonics I mean PRC ones - former Pac fleet deputy chief of intel Fanell confirmed PLARF launched tandem missiles from different sites a couple years ago across 2000km+ to hit moving target at sea, and later Teixeria leaks suggested they were moving at mach 8+. Meanwhile the really shit tier Iranian ballistics with bad CEP as missing barns, but huge % slipping through the densest and most advanced ABM network in the world. Indicators point to modern hypersonics can hit moving targets, while shit ballistics can penetrate modern missile defense.
IMO extrapolate both trends, and future between peer powers is fast missiles and fast interceptors at least when targetting each other's high end platforms. There is place for low mix, i.e. PRC building a cruise missile factory that can make 1000 components a day, they're absolutely doubling down on spamming cheap subsonics as well. But that's in combination of attriting away advesaries high end interceptors or used for mass mop up "economical" fires. US still uses a lot of guided bombs, cruise missiles because, bluntly it's cheap and sufficient against adversaires who can't intercept them. Meanwhile adversaries throwing 100k rockets at US hardware gets 1-2 million dollar interceptors i.e. SM6. Against PRC hypersonics that could be 3-4 20m+ SM3s for each hypersonic AShM. Subsonics will continue breaking forces that can't even deal with subsonics. Hypersonics is designed to break forces that can. Not just physically but economically... at some point spending 100s of billions to procure platforms vs hypersonics maybe unwise. IMO one big value of hyperosnics is asymmetrical disruptiveness against legacy force compositions, the 5 carriers parked outside Persian Gulf to stomp Iraq, might not get within 4000km of PRC coast... where none of the carrier aviation has range + tanking + standoff to deliver more than a few munitions to PRC targets. It's like pulling a sniper rifle from your quiver of arrows, and watch everyone change behaviour in response.
No expertise here, but wouldn't another strategy be to attack the sensors? Ideally subtly, but.
And another strategy be to overwhelm the sensors? Have a million dummy subs that give off sensor readings suggesting they are real, when in fact they are cheaper drones? Kind of the way prey overwhelm predators by all hatching at the same time.
Yeah, article is full of shit. It's just another evolution in The Game. You'll probably see subs get slightly smaller and more automated though, also probably able to control larger formations of unmanned systems.
We see this with stealth aircraft. You can hunt them from the comfort of your living room with <$1000 in equipment. They're not invisible, I have yet to see a picture of an empty parking space unironically labeled "stealth aircraft". They're optimized to prevent categorization (NCTR) and precision fire control (X band specifically) so actually prioritizing and engaging them is difficult, especially at range. So now we see them moving towards being drone motherships so they can stay at the ranges where their stealth is useful.
Keeping that in mind, subs are also now packing much longer range weapons now and even if you can vaguely locate them with a variety of methods, you still need to go over there and kill the damn thing. We aren't seeing anyone investing in ballistic missile launched torpedos yet because these methods aren't necessarily able to provide a firing solution for such a weapon, just that "there's something weird in this square mile, maybe go investigate"
I wonder if you could do the opposite with success: spam the detection networks with a bunch of cheap noisy autonomous decoy subs that are indistinguishable from cheap noisy real subs. Of course, the key phrase that might make the difference in this strategy is how cheap is “cheap.”
My god the tone in this article is flippant for talking about the scariest part of our “eliminate all human life” deterrence system.
And stupidly jingoistic in how it scaremongers that the five chinese subs could hit the USA while being smug about how the USA deploys five times as many of them.
I thought the article was pretty level headed. Here’s the status, here’s the future, here’s what AUKUS is doing, here’s what China is doing and is capable of doing. What smugness or jingoism were you referring to?
I actually found it refreshing to not have a “journalists’” opinions and world-view slathered all over the article. I’m smart enough to form my own opinions about things, thanks.
Not all submarines are about eliminating all human life. Some are of course, but the majority are about more conventional war where you want to eliminate the enemies willingness to fight on, but you expect to survive and be okay after the war is over. (not as good as if there was no war of course, but you don't get to choose when there is war)
What did you want, more trembling and hand wringing? This was a discussion of stealth capabilities, the problem of nukes is adjacent but not the focus.
And I believe the article said the US has 167 subs, you made up "thousands"
> The People’s Liberation Army Navy is the largest navy in the world, but it currently operates only 12 nuclear-powered submarines, a rather small number compared to the 67 attack subs and ballistic-missile subs of the U.S. Navy.
Is this the paragraph you are both referring to? So 12 and 67, not 5 and (5 * 5) = 25 ... or 167 and thousands?
I think there are two types of hiding: silence and camouflage. Silence is where you reduce the signal you emit and reflect. Camouflage is where you mask it with something else.
Hiding a gold bar in a basement is camouflage (by this definition). Making your sub reflect sonar to look like a whale is camouflage. Making your sub reflect nothing is silence.
Long term, I think silence is a losing strategy for the hider. You can hide with silence in the ocean because it’s so big. But as sensors become more sensitive, the ocean gets “smaller”. I think you run into basic physical limitations on silence well before you do on detection. Like the article suggested, I think the days of quieter propulsion and better propulsion detection being a big part of the game are numbered.
I can see camouflage going on longer. Seems like the second stage of the game. What happens when you have 10,000 vehicles emitting all sorts of signatures you can’t disambiguate, and 50 of those are nuclear subs? Or worse, a million objects including civilian UUVs and marine life?
That’s essentially the same as non-identification. It’s like using facial identification against a military to find the general, but everyone can change their face at will.