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Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies

220 points by smacktoward 7y ago

neurobashing 7y ago
Somewhat related, my uncle was a “Phantom driver” (F4 Phantom II) in Vietnam. Flew a bunch of missions of varying types. So Top Gun comes out, and my mom points out he had graduated Fighter Weapons School - my uncle is a real Top Gun! So I asked him for tales of dogfights, war stories. He had exactly one: “they’d send us out to fight some MiGs, and as soon as we got in range and turned our radar on to start shooting, they’d turn and run.” So not like the movies? “Nope.”
- magicsmoke 7y ago
  The article's description of submarine warfare is surprisingly similar to how modern air combat is supposed to play out, and parallels modern artillery's shoot and scoot philosophy as well. Hide, find, hit, and hide again.
  - dylan604 7y ago
    Long gone are the days of the British soldiers taking a knee in formations to shoot their muskets. Essentially expecting to take turns with the enemy trading shots. Never did understand that mentality at all.
    - magicsmoke 7y ago
      Well, that was when individual muskets were inaccurate and the coordination issues with commanding thousands of men using drums and flags meant a large mass of soldiers firing in sync could scare the opposing side into fleeing and allow calvary to mop up. And before that, you had knights with plate armor that could could shrug off most bladed weapons on a battlefield that would have destroyed peasant conscript without armor. Warfare's evolved from elite units that could tank almost anything you can throw at them, to using masses of men to soak up more damage than the opposing side, to using cover and squad tactics to evade machine gun fire, to trying to be so stealthy that the enemy can't even fire on you at all. This progression has resulted from modern technology making offense superior to defense in every way. Makes you wonder if there will be a technological progression in the future that begins to give defense an edge over offense.
      - smilespray 7y ago
        You're obviously right about this, but I still think of WW1 as "The Stupid War". In terms of defence gaining an edge over defense; I don't really think so. Offence is always cheaper. Think nukes.
        jacobush 7y ago
        As long as M.A.D. holds, nukes is almost a defense. I fear the day they are used in anger.
      - dylan604 7y ago
        Defense vs Offense is the quintessential cat & mouse game. If the offense comes up with a new weapon, the defense is forced to come up with a counter. If the defense comes up with a better shield, offense comes up with a bigger bomb.
    - ip26 7y ago
      In the days before accurate rapid fire weapons, the key to victory was pumping out more lead per second than the other squad. The only way to do that was discipline, training, and keeping cool under fire.
    - Spooky23 7y ago
      It was an innovative approach in the Napoleonic era. French units would form up in columns with the idea of punching through the line with conscripts. The British would spread out and deliver a much higher volume of fire, and do so very quickly.
      - GarvielLoken 7y ago
        Where do these unhistoric French bashing memes come from? Is it taught in school in US and UK? I swear to god Anglosaxons thinks that the English won the 100-year war. They would not form deep columns to punch through, only one nation used solid squares in that age and that was the Prussian army. The French would form battalion columns which are pairs of companys deployed individually in lines after each other. Most of the brittish vs column memes are from ambushes where naturally the ambushed part had not time to deploy to line. http://www.napolun.com/mirror/napoleonistyka.atspace.com/infantry_tactics_4.htm http://www.napolun.com/mirror/napoleonistyka.atspace.com/inf... " The Prussians formed their battalions (4 companies each) rather in closed columns than hollow squares. Their regulations issued in 1812 (Exercir Reglement fur die Infanterie) eliminated the hollow square in favour of a dense column formed from the Angriffscolonne." The french moved to contact in maneuver columns, Just Like Everybody Else Did As Well. The fact that you don't hear the brittish doing it is because they very seldom advanced at all in any battle. This is what we still do, we march manourver battalions in columns on roads and deploy mechanized forced out to a line once we are close to the enemy. " - however, if the enemy kept his cool and opened fire only at close range, the officers instead of tightening the column, they deployed it into line and opened fire. As soon as the enemy began wavering under the fire they charged with bayonets. In 1805 at Austerlitz, French columns advanced with great coolness and at slow pace. The Russian infantry fired at long range but the French continued their march until they were 100 paces away from the enemy. They halted and opened fire, then "formed in several lines" and rapidly moved forward. The enemy fled. Captain Bonnet described similar infantry attack at Borodino; after few minutes the Russian skirmishers arrived in good order a little to the left "... and a dense column to our right. I deploy my battalion and, without firing, march straight at the column. It recoils. When carrying out this movement we were so exposed to grapeshot from the guns in the village that I saw my battalion falling and being breached like a crenellated wall. But still we went on."" And by the way the nation which most frequently deployed "spread out" troops are, wait for it, the French! "Several companies or even battalions could be employed as skirmishers (tirailleurs en grande bande). The tiralleurs en grande bande acted in large numbers, stormed or defended a position, or turned the flank of the enemy. The large skirmish formations were usually supported by columns and artillery. At Friedland General Oudinot had deployed 2 full battalions as skirmishers into the Sortlack Wood. In 1814 at La Rothiere four French battalions were formed in skirmish order by La Giberie to anticipate any attack which might develop in the rear of the wood. The French on occasion deployed even entire divisions [!] in skirmish formations. (Nafziger - "Imperial Bayonets" 1996 p 111) In 1806 at Jena, the French 16th Light Infantry advanced left in front towards the woods: its third battalion advanced en tirailleurs (in skirmish order) towards the wood, the first and second battalion, marching still in column, went past the right of the woods and deployed into line in the plain at musket range from the Prussian battery." "The British well-drilled regulars were humiliated by American farmers, militia and Indians fighting in lose order. The american experience made a profound impact and resulted in tactical and organizational changes in the British army. But still the quality of the British skirmishers (except the 60th and 95th Regiment) was below their French counterparts. French General Foy wrote: "Several regiments of the line, such as the [British] 43rd, the 51st, the 52nd etc., are called light infantry regiments. These corps, as well as the light companies of the battalions, have nothing light about them but the name; for they are armed and with some slight change in the decorations, clothed like the rest of the infantry. It was considered that the English soldier did not possess sufficient intelligence and address to combine with the regular duty of the line the service of inspiration of the sharpshooter." A Royal Scots officer wrote after Waterloo, that the French skirmishers were better trained, and on the whole much more effective in this type of fighting than the British skirmishers. (Barbero - "The Battle" p 255) Moyle Sherer of the 34th Foot wrote on the British skirmishers: "Not a soul….was in the village, but a wood a few hundred yards to its left, and the ravines above it, were filled with French light infantry. I, with my company, was soon engaged in smart skirmishing among the ravines, and lost about 11 men, killed and wounded, out of thirty-eight. The English do not skirmish so well as the Germans or the French; and it is really hard work to make them preserve their proper extended order, cover themselves, and not throw away their fire; and in the performance of this duty, an officer is, I think, far more exposed that in line fighting." (Rory Muir- "Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon")"
    - AngryData 7y ago
      Because if they split up they would be easily overwhelmed from a concentrated charge from the other side and split apart and sent running, especially if they had any horsemen. And during a rout is when the majority of casualties would happen. Also being in formation helps stop people from running. If all your guys are spread out in the woods, more than a few might take that chance to 'disappear' from the battle if not from the entire military. It is a lot harder to do that in a tight formation and you would easily get called out, or even potentially shot in the back, for deserting.
  - dddddaviddddd 7y ago
    Recently read this blog post that discusses the focus on concealment and cover and why fixed weapons platforms can be difficult to rely on in a modern context: https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/ https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...
- badrabbit 7y ago
  Wow, I read your comment just as the movie top gun started on my TV. I really wonder what air-to-air unmanned dog fight would look like. Are drone swarms a thing yet? a sky filled with drones would be terrifying. I would hope modern jets deploy drone like missiles manned by ground crew for dogfights,but if I learned anything about F22 and F35, they spend trillions to basically let middle parties steal the money and the tech is something designed decades ago. If I was china I would pop out hundreds of thousands of cheap drones to augment radar capabilities all the stealth tech would be useless if the adversary has millions of eyes at different altitudes each capabale of visual/infrared/lidar detection of fast moving objects. US intel seems spread thin, I wonder if they do enough spying to know what their enemies are capable of. Chinese R&D has been catching up fast these last few years.
  - NikolaeVarius 7y ago
    Missiles are drones that are not supposed to come back.
    - beckingz 7y ago
      Some missiles even have longer endurance than small drones.
      - StavrosK 7y ago
        Per kilometer, all of them do.
    - badrabbit 7y ago
      Missiles have a target and they use a guidance system. What I meant was piloted without a predefined target to make evasion difficult.
  - nradov 7y ago
    The weapons and tactics you describe might be possible in a few years but today they're science fiction.
- redis_mlc 7y ago
  Well. The Vietnamese pilots were using Soviet tactics, mainly Ground Control vectors. Most Vietnamese pilots were rookies, but they did have some aces who would dogfight, like Colonel Toon, who was shot down by Randy Cunningham: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Cunningham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Cunningham But largely the tactics were to surprise the Americans with first MiG-17's, then have a MiG-21 at high speed do an ambush pass from the clouds through lower-flying Americans. The Vietnamese could have done a lot more damage had they known how worthless the US air-air missiles were at the time. There were all kinds of problems with taking too long to arm (around 4 seconds) and vibration from takeoffs and landings inerting the missiles. And that no gun thing. Additionally, US pilots were expected to have up to a dozen radio channels active, causing pilot workload problems until they turned off like 11 of them.
  - neurobashing 7y ago
    He told me he didn’t have a lot of confidence in the Sparrow. They eventually got some aircraft with guns but never used them; despite Top Gun school something like 90% Of his flights were ground attack missions.
    - kitteh 7y ago
      Highly recommend folks who are into aircraft warfare pick up a book about how the AIM-9 Sidewinder was developed as a side project at China Lake by the Navy that had to be done under the radar due to politics. It's a great story about engineers driven by a real customer need fought bureaucracy, politics and some interesting technical challenges to build a missile and get it in the hands of pilots. They were up against a military contractor (Hughes) pushing the AIM-4 Falcon which had horrible numbers in the field. The Falcon required like 3 people and 4 racks worth of equipment to troubleshoot it while the Sidewinder required a screwdriver and a voltmeter. The Sparrow had its own challenges from what I've read. Specifically issues with the acquisition radar being able to track a fast moving target and the missiles ability to receive the reflected signal and apply the right amount of correction. Got to remember that the time when these missiles were being developed it was to target slow moving bombers - not tight turning bandits.
- HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
  There's a really good, really old (like 25+ years old) episode of Nova called "TopGun and Beyond" where a Viet Nam era fighter pilot said exactly that. Then he goes on to describe an engagement where the MiG didn't :-) Found it on YouTube. Yay!! Now I don't have to watch my poorly-recorded-from-broadcast-TV VHS version. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol-1vPWfHy8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol-1vPWfHy8
  - eitland 7y ago
    Wow, this is great. I read a lot about aviation history when I was younger but it was amazing to watch it and much more in depth about certain topics.
  - duxup 7y ago
    Duke Cunningham is in there. Too bad he went the corruption route later in life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Cunningham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Cunningham
- phkahler 7y ago
  Recently saw an old video on youtube about that. Top Gun was created in response to heavy losses in Vietnam. It was very small and they had trouble even finding space for classes. A turning point came when a Mig was captured and they trained with it to find weaknesses. After that everything changed. The kill ratio inverted and they did start to run when engaged in some cases. Your uncle was lucky to go after the strategy was worked out, or he probably wouldn't have come back!
  - kitteh 7y ago
    Have Doughnut and Have Drill were the govt programs (which have been declassified) where we used acquired MiGs to learn their weaknesses. There are some great videos on YouTube and books from people who were directly involved in the Red Eagles.
    - erentz 7y ago
      Any history on the use of the word “Have” in project names like this? I’m thinking of “Have Blue” also but didn’t realize it seems to be a theme. It’s always sounded weird as hell to me. Edit: oh I found something to answer my own question: https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-missing.htm https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-m...
    - themodelplumber 7y ago
      It appears that "Have" was used by assignment of the Joint Staff to a specific organization. Still random of course, but interesting that its provenance and scope of application is not quite so super secret, at least not anymore. https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/meaning-of-have-in-code-names-have-blue-and-have-glass.2965719/#post-14997685 https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/meaning-of-have-in-c...
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    The FW-190 was cutting Allied aircraft to pieces in WW2, until the Allies captured one intact, learned its weaknesses, and turned the tables. To get extra range, the P-51s had a large fuel tank installed just behind the pilot (where the passenger seat goes if you've ever gotten a ride). Unfortunately, full of fuel caused a large imbalance in the airplane, making it nearly unmaneuverable. Naturally, the pilots would burn that tank off first. The Germans never realized this - if they did, an attack on the P-51 squadrons soon after they took off would have caught them helpless. Source: my dad was a P-51 pilot
- umvi 7y ago
  My grandfather flew F-86s in Korea, and his experience was similar - the MiGs always ran most of the time. From his personal history: "In September 1952, I was made an instructor pilot in the F-86 and, in early November, I was made a flight commander and an engineering test pilot. It was also in November that we had one of our most frustrating experiences while I was at Kimpo. One day we were called into a hush hush briefing and told that the State Department had cleared us for a one time crossing of the Yalu River—and, as I remember, the only restriction placed on us was that we could not attack any aircraft on the ground, and that may have been because most of those people were not proficient in air-to-ground operations, I don’t know. Anyway, we anticipated some real aerial combat for a change since we would be able to catch the Migs with no place to run to—it sounded like the mission of a lifetime!! Imagine our disappointment, then, at going up to the Yalu River and not finding a single Mig anywhere—we went right on across the river into China and circled the big airfield complex at Antung and, looking down, there wasn’t a single aircraft anywhere on any of those three airfields! Apparently, the State Department had given the Chinese the same information they had given us and all the aircraft had been moved north to Mukden, Manchuria. Well, as luck would have it, from our position at 40,000’, I spotted a single aircraft, on final approach to one of the Antung airfields, about a mile and a half from the end of the runway, one of the 10% that never gets the word, I guess. I really felt frustrated about the entire situation and was desperate to get a shot at one of those guys in their own back yard—I called the bogie out to #3 and said I was going after him. Number 3 called back and bet me a milk shake (to be repaid in the States) that I’d never reach him before he touched down, and then, of course, he was home free. I rolled over into a split-s maneuver, left full power on and was shortly exceeding Mach 1 (the speed of sound)—I completed one 360 degree diving turn and came out the bottom of that dive at about 1300 feet. I was really moving, and I just had time to rapidly reverse the bank, acquire the Mig in the gunsight and squeeze off a quick burst—he was about six feet in the air over the end of the runway at that time and that burst of gunfire caught him squarely in the center of the fuselage, lighting it up like a Christmas tree. I just saw his aircraft slam into the ground and go careening off the runway and then I shot past him and had to direct my attention elsewhere. I whistled past the control tower and under a bunch of electric wires, and all the time I could hear automatic weapons firing so I must have been very close to them. An aircraft going directly away from enemy guns is an easy shot so I stayed on the deck (close to the ground) for a couple of miles and then made a steep climb out. Maybe getting that guy was a dumb thing to do but it sure was satisfying!"
- c3534l 7y ago
  I knew a guy who was a chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons guy in the army. He took bomb diffusal training, studied old soviet missiles, the lot. What did he do on a day to day basis? Mostly blew up grenades that didn't blow up on their own. Apparently it was super boring.
  - _jal 7y ago
    That's the sort of job you want to be super boring.
    - LilBytes 7y ago
      Likely because it has the chance to be super exciting _once_.
      - Sharlin 7y ago
        This brought to mind this Schlock Mercenary strip[1]. [1] https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2010-08-29 https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2010-08-29
  - tren-hard 7y ago
    bomb guys are EOD SW, they made a movie about them a while back, Hurt Locker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive_Ordnance_Disposal_Badge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive_Ordnance_Disposal_Ba...
- kitteh 7y ago
  Eh. There are documented dogfights out there that are dramatic, they even made a show about it with the actual pilots: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogfights_(TV_series) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogfights_(TV_series) That said, there are countless stories about US pilots locking up a bandit who has a RWR system that scares them into turning around (they'd see/hear that they were receiving high PRF - being locked on). That happened a lot more in the 70s and after as US air to air radar got better (look down shoot down radar didn't exist until the 70s too).
  - sandworm101 7y ago
    >> a bandit who has a RWR system that scares them into turning around They weren't necessarily scared. Such maneuvers are stock counters to potential radar-guided missiles. (1) Missile ranges depend on closing speed. You can launch against something coming towards you sooner than something heading away. By turning around, or just sideways, the mig can instantly get outside of missile range. (2) Doppler radar measures relative velocity. Turning around/sideways reduces relative velocity. That can break a radar lock. If you can hear the American jet coming via the RWR, turning sideways may allow you to disappear from radar and draw your enemy closer. It would be wrong to assume that such maneuvers are done out of fear.
    - ARandomerDude 7y ago
      Ah, Falcon 4.0, I miss you so much. This "beaming" maneuver was in the manual, along with all kinds of other goodies. Most fun a 13 year old could have.
    - kitteh 7y ago
      I'm well familiar with Doppler notching and missile evasion. However in the accounts I was speaking about it was cases where they turned around and departed the area. Follow up conversations with some of these crews (which included Iraqi pilots, Libyan pilots to name a few) said that once they had seen the transition from being hit from search radar to acquisition radar they didn't want to provoke any further and chose to exit the engagement. Remember that during the 1980s the Phoenix AIM-54 had a scary reputation for it's range as well as the later AIM-120.
- ckozlowski 7y ago
  There's a fantastic book, "Clashes" by Marshall Michell all about this subject, which I can highly recommend. All about the air war in Vietnam. https://www.amazon.com/Clashes-Combat-North-Vietnam-1965-1972/dp/1591145198 https://www.amazon.com/Clashes-Combat-North-Vietnam-1965-197...
moron4hire 7y ago
Yaaaay, warporn
cafard 7y ago
Has any ship been torpedoed by a submarine since the Admiral Belgrano in 1982?
- NikolaeVarius 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROKS_Cheonan_sinking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROKS_Cheonan_sinking
- nradov 7y ago
  Unclear. The ROKS Cheonan was supposedly sunk by a torpedo fired from a North Korean submarine in 2010. But that has never been conclusively proven.
- PhantomGremlin 7y ago
  In 1999 the USS Bremerton torpedoed the New Carissa. One Mark 48 did the trick. That was after 69 rounds from a 127 mm deck gun on the USS David R. Ray couldn't sink it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Carissa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Carissa
- mhh__ 7y ago
  Minor Nitpick, it was the General Belgrano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARA_General_Belgrano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARA_General_Belgrano
  - cafard 7y ago
    I just upvoted you. I can only say it has been a while...
redis_mlc 7y ago
Favorite article comment: "I love these deep dives on a topic."
1123581321 7y ago
“A torpedo cannot be ‘command-detonated’ as seen in the movie Hunt for Red October.” Why is this so? The wire controls seem sufficient.
- karatestomp 7y ago
  If true, my guess: little need for the feature, and an understandable reluctance to make the fuze any more complicated than necessary, especially as failures or inadequacies in various sorts of fuze or triggering device have repeatedly caused serious problems with naval ordnance. See: early-war American WWII torpedos basically just not working, British AP shells in the WWI Battle of Jutland detonating too early and so being far less effective than they should have been.
- jdjrirkfkfk 7y ago
  Probably some sort of safety reason .
- zyang 7y ago
  My guess it's to prevent accidents by using kill boxes, especially when they fight in groups.
- hangonhn 7y ago
  I think it just means it's unnecessary. Just disarm the warhead (or inert it) and shut off the torpedo like they describe in the article. The donating part is pointless.
- reddog 7y ago
  That is odd. I know that during the war in the Pacific the Japanese were extremely careful to avoid having the vastly superior longlance torpedoes fall into the hands of the Allies. They would go to great lengths to search for and recover lost, unexploded torpedos that were in shallow water. It seems like a command-detonation options would be very useful in this regard.
  - dbcurtis 7y ago
    Well, I can guess at a few reasons. 1. As mentioned elsewhere, the radio signal path loss through salt water is astoundingly high -- I did the math once. 2. WW II era radio technology was bulky, and did not work well on batteries -- vacuum tube filaments eat a lot of power and the plate supply requires a high voltage battery. 3. WW II era radio technology did not have encryption built-in -- it would have been pretty easy for the enemy to signal the torpedo to blow up before you launched it, which would kind of ruin your afternoon.
tra3 7y ago
Never occurred to me that torpedoes can be battery powered. Any idea what kind of cells they have? I got confused by the dual units here: > 65cm torpedoes have enough fuel to travel in excess of 100 kilometers at 50 knots for just over an hour. Turns out 1 knot/hr is nearly 2km/h so that checks out. Weird nautical units.
- extrapickles 7y ago
  Probably some form of lithium primary cell as they have high energy densities and good shelf life.
  - variaga 7y ago
    The article says Zinc-Oxide
- jdjrirkfkfk 7y ago
  From linked reference: Silver oxide-aluminium (AgO-Al) Silver oxide-zinc (AgO-Zn) Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) Lithium-polymer Lithium-iron phosphate (LiFePO4) 1,040 Wh/kg 490 Wh/kg 600 Wh/kg 600 Wh/kg 520 Wh/kg The F21 is powered by a new generation of silver oxide-aluminium (AgO-Al) sea-water primary battery using dissolved sodium dioxide powder as electrolyte and incorporating a new electronic closed loop electrolyte circulation system. In comparison with silverzinc and other technologies, AgO-Al energy density is unrivalled. It ensures both maximum speed beyond 50 knots and endurance around 1 hour without compromising safety. TIL: A silver-oxide battery (IEC code: S) is a primary cell with a very high energy-to-weight ratio. They are available in small sizes as button cells, where the amount of silver used is minimal and not a significant contributor to the product cost.
  - user5994461 7y ago
    And here we are on Hacker News with other threads on how battery density is peaking with Lithium and there is nothing better in sight. Turns out there are silver based battery that can do almost double. So what's the catch as to why it's not being adopted by phones?
AtlasBarfed 7y ago
I rip on surface fleets as being floating reef fodder that would be sunk almost immediately against any modern power, either because of the sophistication of submarines, the rise of cheap drones winning the economic exchange, or death-from-above missles and ICBMs that are basically undefendable. But against subs I'm surprised there aren't plans for a drone-net that surrounds a fleet or high value ship that can detect incoming underwater threats via some mesh networking.
- magicsmoke 7y ago
  Smaller drones have weaker propulsion and can't keep up with the ship its supposed to provide a detection bubble around. Being underwater and having to deal with additional drag also doesn't help. The large size of an aircraft carrier belies the fact that it is the fastest ship in the carrier group and can outrun all of its escorts. Larger ship = more space to pack powerful engines. That's also a major issue for a lot of other drone swarm schemes such as using drone swarms to counter fighter aircraft. Smaller drones don't have the propulsion to keep up with fighters, and once you make drones large enough to hold the engines that would let them keep up with a fighter you might as well build a fighter instead.
  - jfnixon 7y ago
    If by fighter you mean "manned fighter" there are several reasons to build large, fast drones; no life support overhead, much better maneuverability (tolerance for high g), no worries about pilots flying highly dangerous missions, can use impact kills.
  - contingencies 7y ago
    There were networks of deployable remote surveillance buoys being developed by the 1990s. Source: Public research reports of military research organizations. Presumably removing the propulsion expectation simplifies the problem domain.
    - AtlasBarfed 7y ago
      So they were deployed but then abandoned? I wonder if you could have a flotilla of heli-drones that drop in sampling microphones/active sonar. Wind might be hard to deal with in storms or heck even typical conditions.
deanCommie 7y ago
Outstanding article, very informative, but the tense and tone is slightly amusing to me: > Actual underwater combat occurs silently with very little reaction time to fend off an impending attack. Does it occur? Do we have any examples of "actual underwater combat" occurring? I don't believe we have any real life examples of nations withs submarine capabilities in combat. War games probably don't count...
- angry_octet 7y ago
  RIPLEY How may drops is this for you, Lieutenant? GORMAN Thirty-eight...simulated. VASQUEZ How many combat drops? GORMAN Well...two. Three, including this one.
- giardini 7y ago
  None that anyone can talk about.
kragen 7y ago
How is there an article entitled "modern submarine torpedo attacks" apparently written in 2020 that doesn't contain the word "supercavitating"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VA-111_Shkval https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VA-111_Shkval
- Arubis 7y ago
  Somewhat cynical take: because the West doesn’t have superiority in this space.
  - ckozlowski 7y ago
    These got a lot of attention a while back. But their use case is limited because they're really short-ranged. These things go all out soon after leaving the tube, make a hell of a lot of noise, and are good only really close in. They're sort of a last resort weapon, a snapshot provided that the enemy shooting at you is even within range. A modern US Mark 48 can swim out quietly under wire guidance and emit no noise or sensor emissions, steered on an intercept course, then revved up to top speed once it's in close. A torpedo like the Shkval can't close the distance, and that's assuming the enemy even knows where they're being shot from. Just because a Mark 48 suddenly goes active on your stern doesn't mean it was fired from there. According to the wiki article, this was for intercepting incoming torpedoes. I suppose that could work, though again, the noise I'd imagine would be troublesome. It might mask for you a bit, but your attacker would know where this thing was shot from. Meanwhile, your own sonar is only going to hear this thing, meaning you've lost a solution on the guy shooting you, leaving him to set up again. I highly suspect the reason we haven't seen an equivalent is because the tactical doctrine doesn't call for one. My armchair two-cents.
    - jacobush 7y ago
      My personal theory is that a big use case for Shkval is in the littoral and shallow waters of the Baltic Sea where there is fantastic opportunity to play hide and seek. Especially sub to sub. I think the Soviet command expected enemy subs to successfully sneak up on them and then have something up their sleeve to raise hell right back.
m4rtink 7y ago
You mean like how torpedoes actually detonate when they hit a target in a movie ? ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo Or how in the movies they don't run in circles and sink the submarine that launched them ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_18_torpedo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_18_torpedo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Tang_(SS-306) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Tang_(SS-306)
- chiph 7y ago
  Or they sink a truck? https://youtu.be/GpEcU0OEzhc?t=120 https://youtu.be/GpEcU0OEzhc?t=120
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  To be fair, the article title does say "Modern", which, argueably, neither of those two are.
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  What do 70-75 year old torpedoes (look at the manufacturing dates in the articles you cited) have to do with modern torpedoes?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
sandworm101 7y ago
Take EVERYTHING in that article with a giant tub of salt. The specifics of torpedo combat are some of the most closely guarded military secrets. Take the following: "These high-torque, permanent magnet electric motor torpedoes ramp up to speed in under a second. They go from sitting in a torpedo tube to 50 knots in a near-instant because they don’t have the mechanical lag and inertia thermal torpedoes must overcome during startup. " So much of that is totally wrong. The torpedo has nothing to do with how it gets out of the tube. Its propulsor (not a propeller) wont work from the back of a torpedo tube. Starting it up in the tube, INSIDE the sub, sounds horribly dangerous. The torp is ejected by force from the sub and then starts its engine. Electric or thermal, it's doing 50+ whether it wants to or not. Once out of the tube, further acceleration potential is limited by depth/pressure. All torps have more than enough torque to start cavitating their propulsor in shallow water. To continue to automotive analogy, it doesn't matter whether your car is electric or turbine powered, acceleration is limited by how much power your tires can handle before spinning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjoholiW1ho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjoholiW1ho And this is why you don't want that engine running prior to the torp leaving the tube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoElLaLcfOc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoElLaLcfOc
- smabie 7y ago
  "Aaron Amick is a retired U.S. Navy submarine sonarman. He served in both Atlantic and Pacific Oceans on 688 Los Angles Class Fast Attack and Ohio class ballistic missile submarines. He has published two audiobooks on Cold War-era submarines, Akula SSN Project 971 Sub Brief and USS Nautilus SSN-571 Sub Brief." I dunno, the author's bio suggests that he knows that he's talking about.
- rudyfink 7y ago
  Apparently, there are things called "swim out" torpedoes? https://www.reddit.com/r/submarines/comments/at5nt4/silent_launch_torpedo/ https://www.reddit.com/r/submarines/comments/at5nt4/silent_l... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbeQmfXE0ws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbeQmfXE0ws - discussed in this video (from in the parent article)
  - 7y ago
tzs 7y ago
> The batteries are connected in series allowing each weapon to have 2, 3, or 4 batteries. More batteries give the weapon more range. Fewer batteries make the weapon much lighter and more agile, but at the cost of range. This sounds wrong. Shouldn't they be connected in parallel?
- angry_octet 7y ago
  I think we can take this as an explanation for generalists, rather than a problem set from basic EE.
- 2rsf 7y ago
  Not necessarily (answering as an Electrical Engineer with zero submarine knowledge), batteries in series give more voltage while batteries in parallel allow more current drawn. Now it depends on what and how your propulsion is.
- _archon_ 7y ago
  I would assume that we're talking about the physical location being sequential, like stages on a rocket.
supernova87a 7y ago
Side question -- do submarines really have the ability to ping, like in Hunt for Red October, do they ever use it, and does it actually use the frequency range of human hearing like that? Do torpedoes? Or are they ultrasonic (given that depth gauges I know are ultrasonic). I assume that subs once did use such pings historically given how common that sound effect is associated with them. Maybe not any more I guess?
- dylan604 7y ago
  The thing about the ping is that everyone that can hear it gets the benefit of that ping. So you are 100% giving away your position with a ping. Nowadays, you want to stay silent, so you use passive sonar. A very long tail is trailed behind the sub with lots of microphones listening. They've done it so long, they know what all sorts of things sound like. Man made objects likes subs and surface ships, airplanes flying above the water, rocks sliding, crabs crawling, etc.
  - waste_monk 7y ago
    My (admittedly very armchair) understanding is the ping is a lot worse for the hunter than the target - the distance you can hear the ping is roughly 2x the distance* you'll get a useful return from it, so if the target is beyond that range you'll effectively lose all stealth and confer a huge advantage to the enemy. * this is complicated by thermal layers, geography, etc. but very approximately 2x is the figure I've heard.
  - supernova87a 7y ago
    Yes, I understand, though my question was more whether subs actually have the ability to issue an audible ping like in that movie -- and why they would ever do it.
mothsonasloth 7y ago
The article misses out on other forms of submarine attacks, like anti ship missiles (harpoon) and ballistic missiles.
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
I think it would be more interesting to have a list of things that are like in the movies, as I assume it would be a lot shorter than the list of things unlike, and rarity is in many things considered more important than the common.
alanbernstein 7y ago
A misconception I had was that submarines fight each other under water. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-864 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-864 "It is the only documented instance in the history of naval warfare where one submarine intentionally sank another while both were submerged."
- ubermonkey 7y ago
  Not for nothing, but have there BEEN many submarine engagements since WWII? Is current doctrine that, say, fast attack subs would shoot at opposing boomers from underwater? I mean, it seems likely, right?
  - jki275 7y ago
    Not a submariner, but I always thought that was the essence of the existence of the fast attack.
  - HideousKojima 7y ago
    There are some suspected ones during the Cold War (the USS Scorpion and the Soviet K-129)
hoseja 7y ago
Wonder how much of this will translate to space combat.
nabla9 7y ago
When you store unguided torpedo inside capsule in the bottom of the ocean, or allow it to float in some predetermined depth, you have Torpedo mine, like CAPTOR. You don't need expensive submarines, if you want to protect narrow points or specific areas. You just drop torpedo mines underwater.
qwerty456127 7y ago
Does anybody even attack submarines nowadays? Isn't the sole purpose of a torpedo - to make the opponent believe they better avoid attacking you?
vanderZwan 7y ago
> With command wire capabilities, the weapon can change its attack geometry or even shut down if directed by the fire control operator. Detected targets can be changed, depth and range limitations can be set, and countermeasures, such as decoys and jammers, can be ignored using the submarine’s sonar data instead of the torpedo's lower-fidelity onboard sonar data. If the data link is lost, the weapon will follow its last given command and execute pre-programmed countermeasure defeating profiles, if necessary. This somehow reminded me of the final scene from John Carpenter's Dark Star (spoilers, obviously) where a smart bomb wants to blow up (yes, you read that right), and the crew has to talk it into not doing so by using philosophy to give it an existential crisis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h73PsFKtIck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h73PsFKtIck
tim333 7y ago
The most in recent serious submarine attack, the sinking of the Blegrano they decided to skip the fancy homing missiles due to unreliability and fired three non-guided torpedoes so it was a bit like the WW2 movies.
bregma 7y ago
OK, so modern submarine attacks are not like in the movies. Everything else in the movies is realistic, though, right?

220 points by smacktoward 7y ago

Somewhat related, my uncle was a “Phantom driver” (F4 Phantom II) in Vietnam. Flew a bunch of missions of varying types. So Top Gun comes out, and my mom points out he had graduated Fighter Weapons School - my uncle is a real Top Gun! So I asked him for tales of dogfights, war stories. He had exactly one: “they’d send us out to fight some MiGs, and as soon as we got in range and turned our radar on to start shooting, they’d turn and run.” So not like the movies? “Nope.”

magicsmoke 7y ago
The article's description of submarine warfare is surprisingly similar to how modern air combat is supposed to play out, and parallels modern artillery's shoot and scoot philosophy as well. Hide, find, hit, and hide again.
- dylan604 7y ago
  Long gone are the days of the British soldiers taking a knee in formations to shoot their muskets. Essentially expecting to take turns with the enemy trading shots. Never did understand that mentality at all.
  - magicsmoke 7y ago
    Well, that was when individual muskets were inaccurate and the coordination issues with commanding thousands of men using drums and flags meant a large mass of soldiers firing in sync could scare the opposing side into fleeing and allow calvary to mop up. And before that, you had knights with plate armor that could could shrug off most bladed weapons on a battlefield that would have destroyed peasant conscript without armor. Warfare's evolved from elite units that could tank almost anything you can throw at them, to using masses of men to soak up more damage than the opposing side, to using cover and squad tactics to evade machine gun fire, to trying to be so stealthy that the enemy can't even fire on you at all. This progression has resulted from modern technology making offense superior to defense in every way. Makes you wonder if there will be a technological progression in the future that begins to give defense an edge over offense.
    - smilespray 7y ago
      You're obviously right about this, but I still think of WW1 as "The Stupid War". In terms of defence gaining an edge over defense; I don't really think so. Offence is always cheaper. Think nukes.
      - jacobush 7y ago
        As long as M.A.D. holds, nukes is almost a defense. I fear the day they are used in anger.
    - dylan604 7y ago
      Defense vs Offense is the quintessential cat & mouse game. If the offense comes up with a new weapon, the defense is forced to come up with a counter. If the defense comes up with a better shield, offense comes up with a bigger bomb.
  - ip26 7y ago
    In the days before accurate rapid fire weapons, the key to victory was pumping out more lead per second than the other squad. The only way to do that was discipline, training, and keeping cool under fire.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    It was an innovative approach in the Napoleonic era. French units would form up in columns with the idea of punching through the line with conscripts. The British would spread out and deliver a much higher volume of fire, and do so very quickly.
    - GarvielLoken 7y ago
      Where do these unhistoric French bashing memes come from? Is it taught in school in US and UK? I swear to god Anglosaxons thinks that the English won the 100-year war. They would not form deep columns to punch through, only one nation used solid squares in that age and that was the Prussian army. The French would form battalion columns which are pairs of companys deployed individually in lines after each other. Most of the brittish vs column memes are from ambushes where naturally the ambushed part had not time to deploy to line. http://www.napolun.com/mirror/napoleonistyka.atspace.com/infantry_tactics_4.htm http://www.napolun.com/mirror/napoleonistyka.atspace.com/inf... " The Prussians formed their battalions (4 companies each) rather in closed columns than hollow squares. Their regulations issued in 1812 (Exercir Reglement fur die Infanterie) eliminated the hollow square in favour of a dense column formed from the Angriffscolonne." The french moved to contact in maneuver columns, Just Like Everybody Else Did As Well. The fact that you don't hear the brittish doing it is because they very seldom advanced at all in any battle. This is what we still do, we march manourver battalions in columns on roads and deploy mechanized forced out to a line once we are close to the enemy. " - however, if the enemy kept his cool and opened fire only at close range, the officers instead of tightening the column, they deployed it into line and opened fire. As soon as the enemy began wavering under the fire they charged with bayonets. In 1805 at Austerlitz, French columns advanced with great coolness and at slow pace. The Russian infantry fired at long range but the French continued their march until they were 100 paces away from the enemy. They halted and opened fire, then "formed in several lines" and rapidly moved forward. The enemy fled. Captain Bonnet described similar infantry attack at Borodino; after few minutes the Russian skirmishers arrived in good order a little to the left "... and a dense column to our right. I deploy my battalion and, without firing, march straight at the column. It recoils. When carrying out this movement we were so exposed to grapeshot from the guns in the village that I saw my battalion falling and being breached like a crenellated wall. But still we went on."" And by the way the nation which most frequently deployed "spread out" troops are, wait for it, the French! "Several companies or even battalions could be employed as skirmishers (tirailleurs en grande bande). The tiralleurs en grande bande acted in large numbers, stormed or defended a position, or turned the flank of the enemy. The large skirmish formations were usually supported by columns and artillery. At Friedland General Oudinot had deployed 2 full battalions as skirmishers into the Sortlack Wood. In 1814 at La Rothiere four French battalions were formed in skirmish order by La Giberie to anticipate any attack which might develop in the rear of the wood. The French on occasion deployed even entire divisions [!] in skirmish formations. (Nafziger - "Imperial Bayonets" 1996 p 111) In 1806 at Jena, the French 16th Light Infantry advanced left in front towards the woods: its third battalion advanced en tirailleurs (in skirmish order) towards the wood, the first and second battalion, marching still in column, went past the right of the woods and deployed into line in the plain at musket range from the Prussian battery." "The British well-drilled regulars were humiliated by American farmers, militia and Indians fighting in lose order. The american experience made a profound impact and resulted in tactical and organizational changes in the British army. But still the quality of the British skirmishers (except the 60th and 95th Regiment) was below their French counterparts. French General Foy wrote: "Several regiments of the line, such as the [British] 43rd, the 51st, the 52nd etc., are called light infantry regiments. These corps, as well as the light companies of the battalions, have nothing light about them but the name; for they are armed and with some slight change in the decorations, clothed like the rest of the infantry. It was considered that the English soldier did not possess sufficient intelligence and address to combine with the regular duty of the line the service of inspiration of the sharpshooter." A Royal Scots officer wrote after Waterloo, that the French skirmishers were better trained, and on the whole much more effective in this type of fighting than the British skirmishers. (Barbero - "The Battle" p 255) Moyle Sherer of the 34th Foot wrote on the British skirmishers: "Not a soul….was in the village, but a wood a few hundred yards to its left, and the ravines above it, were filled with French light infantry. I, with my company, was soon engaged in smart skirmishing among the ravines, and lost about 11 men, killed and wounded, out of thirty-eight. The English do not skirmish so well as the Germans or the French; and it is really hard work to make them preserve their proper extended order, cover themselves, and not throw away their fire; and in the performance of this duty, an officer is, I think, far more exposed that in line fighting." (Rory Muir- "Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon")"
  - AngryData 7y ago
    Because if they split up they would be easily overwhelmed from a concentrated charge from the other side and split apart and sent running, especially if they had any horsemen. And during a rout is when the majority of casualties would happen. Also being in formation helps stop people from running. If all your guys are spread out in the woods, more than a few might take that chance to 'disappear' from the battle if not from the entire military. It is a lot harder to do that in a tight formation and you would easily get called out, or even potentially shot in the back, for deserting.
- dddddaviddddd 7y ago
  Recently read this blog post that discusses the focus on concealment and cover and why fixed weapons platforms can be difficult to rely on in a modern context: https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/ https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...
badrabbit 7y ago
Wow, I read your comment just as the movie top gun started on my TV. I really wonder what air-to-air unmanned dog fight would look like. Are drone swarms a thing yet? a sky filled with drones would be terrifying. I would hope modern jets deploy drone like missiles manned by ground crew for dogfights,but if I learned anything about F22 and F35, they spend trillions to basically let middle parties steal the money and the tech is something designed decades ago. If I was china I would pop out hundreds of thousands of cheap drones to augment radar capabilities all the stealth tech would be useless if the adversary has millions of eyes at different altitudes each capabale of visual/infrared/lidar detection of fast moving objects. US intel seems spread thin, I wonder if they do enough spying to know what their enemies are capable of. Chinese R&D has been catching up fast these last few years.
- NikolaeVarius 7y ago
  Missiles are drones that are not supposed to come back.
  - beckingz 7y ago
    Some missiles even have longer endurance than small drones.
    - StavrosK 7y ago
      Per kilometer, all of them do.
  - badrabbit 7y ago
    Missiles have a target and they use a guidance system. What I meant was piloted without a predefined target to make evasion difficult.
- nradov 7y ago
  The weapons and tactics you describe might be possible in a few years but today they're science fiction.
redis_mlc 7y ago
Well. The Vietnamese pilots were using Soviet tactics, mainly Ground Control vectors. Most Vietnamese pilots were rookies, but they did have some aces who would dogfight, like Colonel Toon, who was shot down by Randy Cunningham: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Cunningham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Cunningham But largely the tactics were to surprise the Americans with first MiG-17's, then have a MiG-21 at high speed do an ambush pass from the clouds through lower-flying Americans. The Vietnamese could have done a lot more damage had they known how worthless the US air-air missiles were at the time. There were all kinds of problems with taking too long to arm (around 4 seconds) and vibration from takeoffs and landings inerting the missiles. And that no gun thing. Additionally, US pilots were expected to have up to a dozen radio channels active, causing pilot workload problems until they turned off like 11 of them.
- neurobashing 7y ago
  He told me he didn’t have a lot of confidence in the Sparrow. They eventually got some aircraft with guns but never used them; despite Top Gun school something like 90% Of his flights were ground attack missions.
  - kitteh 7y ago
    Highly recommend folks who are into aircraft warfare pick up a book about how the AIM-9 Sidewinder was developed as a side project at China Lake by the Navy that had to be done under the radar due to politics. It's a great story about engineers driven by a real customer need fought bureaucracy, politics and some interesting technical challenges to build a missile and get it in the hands of pilots. They were up against a military contractor (Hughes) pushing the AIM-4 Falcon which had horrible numbers in the field. The Falcon required like 3 people and 4 racks worth of equipment to troubleshoot it while the Sidewinder required a screwdriver and a voltmeter. The Sparrow had its own challenges from what I've read. Specifically issues with the acquisition radar being able to track a fast moving target and the missiles ability to receive the reflected signal and apply the right amount of correction. Got to remember that the time when these missiles were being developed it was to target slow moving bombers - not tight turning bandits.
HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
There's a really good, really old (like 25+ years old) episode of Nova called "TopGun and Beyond" where a Viet Nam era fighter pilot said exactly that. Then he goes on to describe an engagement where the MiG didn't :-) Found it on YouTube. Yay!! Now I don't have to watch my poorly-recorded-from-broadcast-TV VHS version. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol-1vPWfHy8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol-1vPWfHy8
- eitland 7y ago
  Wow, this is great. I read a lot about aviation history when I was younger but it was amazing to watch it and much more in depth about certain topics.
- duxup 7y ago
  Duke Cunningham is in there. Too bad he went the corruption route later in life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Cunningham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Cunningham
phkahler 7y ago
Recently saw an old video on youtube about that. Top Gun was created in response to heavy losses in Vietnam. It was very small and they had trouble even finding space for classes. A turning point came when a Mig was captured and they trained with it to find weaknesses. After that everything changed. The kill ratio inverted and they did start to run when engaged in some cases. Your uncle was lucky to go after the strategy was worked out, or he probably wouldn't have come back!
- kitteh 7y ago
  Have Doughnut and Have Drill were the govt programs (which have been declassified) where we used acquired MiGs to learn their weaknesses. There are some great videos on YouTube and books from people who were directly involved in the Red Eagles.
  - erentz 7y ago
    Any history on the use of the word “Have” in project names like this? I’m thinking of “Have Blue” also but didn’t realize it seems to be a theme. It’s always sounded weird as hell to me. Edit: oh I found something to answer my own question: https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-missing.htm https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-m...
  - themodelplumber 7y ago
    It appears that "Have" was used by assignment of the Joint Staff to a specific organization. Still random of course, but interesting that its provenance and scope of application is not quite so super secret, at least not anymore. https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/meaning-of-have-in-code-names-have-blue-and-have-glass.2965719/#post-14997685 https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/meaning-of-have-in-c...
- WalterBright 7y ago
  The FW-190 was cutting Allied aircraft to pieces in WW2, until the Allies captured one intact, learned its weaknesses, and turned the tables. To get extra range, the P-51s had a large fuel tank installed just behind the pilot (where the passenger seat goes if you've ever gotten a ride). Unfortunately, full of fuel caused a large imbalance in the airplane, making it nearly unmaneuverable. Naturally, the pilots would burn that tank off first. The Germans never realized this - if they did, an attack on the P-51 squadrons soon after they took off would have caught them helpless. Source: my dad was a P-51 pilot
umvi 7y ago
My grandfather flew F-86s in Korea, and his experience was similar - the MiGs always ran most of the time. From his personal history: "In September 1952, I was made an instructor pilot in the F-86 and, in early November, I was made a flight commander and an engineering test pilot. It was also in November that we had one of our most frustrating experiences while I was at Kimpo. One day we were called into a hush hush briefing and told that the State Department had cleared us for a one time crossing of the Yalu River—and, as I remember, the only restriction placed on us was that we could not attack any aircraft on the ground, and that may have been because most of those people were not proficient in air-to-ground operations, I don’t know. Anyway, we anticipated some real aerial combat for a change since we would be able to catch the Migs with no place to run to—it sounded like the mission of a lifetime!! Imagine our disappointment, then, at going up to the Yalu River and not finding a single Mig anywhere—we went right on across the river into China and circled the big airfield complex at Antung and, looking down, there wasn’t a single aircraft anywhere on any of those three airfields! Apparently, the State Department had given the Chinese the same information they had given us and all the aircraft had been moved north to Mukden, Manchuria. Well, as luck would have it, from our position at 40,000’, I spotted a single aircraft, on final approach to one of the Antung airfields, about a mile and a half from the end of the runway, one of the 10% that never gets the word, I guess. I really felt frustrated about the entire situation and was desperate to get a shot at one of those guys in their own back yard—I called the bogie out to #3 and said I was going after him. Number 3 called back and bet me a milk shake (to be repaid in the States) that I’d never reach him before he touched down, and then, of course, he was home free. I rolled over into a split-s maneuver, left full power on and was shortly exceeding Mach 1 (the speed of sound)—I completed one 360 degree diving turn and came out the bottom of that dive at about 1300 feet. I was really moving, and I just had time to rapidly reverse the bank, acquire the Mig in the gunsight and squeeze off a quick burst—he was about six feet in the air over the end of the runway at that time and that burst of gunfire caught him squarely in the center of the fuselage, lighting it up like a Christmas tree. I just saw his aircraft slam into the ground and go careening off the runway and then I shot past him and had to direct my attention elsewhere. I whistled past the control tower and under a bunch of electric wires, and all the time I could hear automatic weapons firing so I must have been very close to them. An aircraft going directly away from enemy guns is an easy shot so I stayed on the deck (close to the ground) for a couple of miles and then made a steep climb out. Maybe getting that guy was a dumb thing to do but it sure was satisfying!"
c3534l 7y ago
I knew a guy who was a chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons guy in the army. He took bomb diffusal training, studied old soviet missiles, the lot. What did he do on a day to day basis? Mostly blew up grenades that didn't blow up on their own. Apparently it was super boring.
- _jal 7y ago
  That's the sort of job you want to be super boring.
  - LilBytes 7y ago
    Likely because it has the chance to be super exciting _once_.
    - Sharlin 7y ago
      This brought to mind this Schlock Mercenary strip[1]. [1] https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2010-08-29 https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2010-08-29
- tren-hard 7y ago
  bomb guys are EOD SW, they made a movie about them a while back, Hurt Locker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive_Ordnance_Disposal_Badge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive_Ordnance_Disposal_Ba...
kitteh 7y ago
Eh. There are documented dogfights out there that are dramatic, they even made a show about it with the actual pilots: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogfights_(TV_series) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogfights_(TV_series) That said, there are countless stories about US pilots locking up a bandit who has a RWR system that scares them into turning around (they'd see/hear that they were receiving high PRF - being locked on). That happened a lot more in the 70s and after as US air to air radar got better (look down shoot down radar didn't exist until the 70s too).
- sandworm101 7y ago
  >> a bandit who has a RWR system that scares them into turning around They weren't necessarily scared. Such maneuvers are stock counters to potential radar-guided missiles. (1) Missile ranges depend on closing speed. You can launch against something coming towards you sooner than something heading away. By turning around, or just sideways, the mig can instantly get outside of missile range. (2) Doppler radar measures relative velocity. Turning around/sideways reduces relative velocity. That can break a radar lock. If you can hear the American jet coming via the RWR, turning sideways may allow you to disappear from radar and draw your enemy closer. It would be wrong to assume that such maneuvers are done out of fear.
  - ARandomerDude 7y ago
    Ah, Falcon 4.0, I miss you so much. This "beaming" maneuver was in the manual, along with all kinds of other goodies. Most fun a 13 year old could have.
  - kitteh 7y ago
    I'm well familiar with Doppler notching and missile evasion. However in the accounts I was speaking about it was cases where they turned around and departed the area. Follow up conversations with some of these crews (which included Iraqi pilots, Libyan pilots to name a few) said that once they had seen the transition from being hit from search radar to acquisition radar they didn't want to provoke any further and chose to exit the engagement. Remember that during the 1980s the Phoenix AIM-54 had a scary reputation for it's range as well as the later AIM-120.
ckozlowski 7y ago
There's a fantastic book, "Clashes" by Marshall Michell all about this subject, which I can highly recommend. All about the air war in Vietnam. https://www.amazon.com/Clashes-Combat-North-Vietnam-1965-1972/dp/1591145198 https://www.amazon.com/Clashes-Combat-North-Vietnam-1965-197...

moron4hire 7y ago

Yaaaay, warporn

cafard 7y ago

Has any ship been torpedoed by a submarine since the Admiral Belgrano in 1982?

NikolaeVarius 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROKS_Cheonan_sinking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROKS_Cheonan_sinking
nradov 7y ago
Unclear. The ROKS Cheonan was supposedly sunk by a torpedo fired from a North Korean submarine in 2010. But that has never been conclusively proven.
PhantomGremlin 7y ago
In 1999 the USS Bremerton torpedoed the New Carissa. One Mark 48 did the trick. That was after 69 rounds from a 127 mm deck gun on the USS David R. Ray couldn't sink it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Carissa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Carissa
mhh__ 7y ago
Minor Nitpick, it was the General Belgrano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARA_General_Belgrano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARA_General_Belgrano
- cafard 7y ago
  I just upvoted you. I can only say it has been a while...

redis_mlc 7y ago

Favorite article comment: "I love these deep dives on a topic."

1123581321 7y ago

“A torpedo cannot be ‘command-detonated’ as seen in the movie Hunt for Red October.” Why is this so? The wire controls seem sufficient.

karatestomp 7y ago
If true, my guess: little need for the feature, and an understandable reluctance to make the fuze any more complicated than necessary, especially as failures or inadequacies in various sorts of fuze or triggering device have repeatedly caused serious problems with naval ordnance. See: early-war American WWII torpedos basically just not working, British AP shells in the WWI Battle of Jutland detonating too early and so being far less effective than they should have been.
jdjrirkfkfk 7y ago
Probably some sort of safety reason .
zyang 7y ago
My guess it's to prevent accidents by using kill boxes, especially when they fight in groups.
hangonhn 7y ago
I think it just means it's unnecessary. Just disarm the warhead (or inert it) and shut off the torpedo like they describe in the article. The donating part is pointless.
reddog 7y ago
That is odd. I know that during the war in the Pacific the Japanese were extremely careful to avoid having the vastly superior longlance torpedoes fall into the hands of the Allies. They would go to great lengths to search for and recover lost, unexploded torpedos that were in shallow water. It seems like a command-detonation options would be very useful in this regard.
- dbcurtis 7y ago
  Well, I can guess at a few reasons. 1. As mentioned elsewhere, the radio signal path loss through salt water is astoundingly high -- I did the math once. 2. WW II era radio technology was bulky, and did not work well on batteries -- vacuum tube filaments eat a lot of power and the plate supply requires a high voltage battery. 3. WW II era radio technology did not have encryption built-in -- it would have been pretty easy for the enemy to signal the torpedo to blow up before you launched it, which would kind of ruin your afternoon.

tra3 7y ago

Never occurred to me that torpedoes can be battery powered. Any idea what kind of cells they have? I got confused by the dual units here: > 65cm torpedoes have enough fuel to travel in excess of 100 kilometers at 50 knots for just over an hour. Turns out 1 knot/hr is nearly 2km/h so that checks out. Weird nautical units.

extrapickles 7y ago
Probably some form of lithium primary cell as they have high energy densities and good shelf life.
- variaga 7y ago
  The article says Zinc-Oxide
jdjrirkfkfk 7y ago
From linked reference: Silver oxide-aluminium (AgO-Al) Silver oxide-zinc (AgO-Zn) Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) Lithium-polymer Lithium-iron phosphate (LiFePO4) 1,040 Wh/kg 490 Wh/kg 600 Wh/kg 600 Wh/kg 520 Wh/kg The F21 is powered by a new generation of silver oxide-aluminium (AgO-Al) sea-water primary battery using dissolved sodium dioxide powder as electrolyte and incorporating a new electronic closed loop electrolyte circulation system. In comparison with silverzinc and other technologies, AgO-Al energy density is unrivalled. It ensures both maximum speed beyond 50 knots and endurance around 1 hour without compromising safety. TIL: A silver-oxide battery (IEC code: S) is a primary cell with a very high energy-to-weight ratio. They are available in small sizes as button cells, where the amount of silver used is minimal and not a significant contributor to the product cost.
- user5994461 7y ago
  And here we are on Hacker News with other threads on how battery density is peaking with Lithium and there is nothing better in sight. Turns out there are silver based battery that can do almost double. So what's the catch as to why it's not being adopted by phones?

AtlasBarfed 7y ago

I rip on surface fleets as being floating reef fodder that would be sunk almost immediately against any modern power, either because of the sophistication of submarines, the rise of cheap drones winning the economic exchange, or death-from-above missles and ICBMs that are basically undefendable. But against subs I'm surprised there aren't plans for a drone-net that surrounds a fleet or high value ship that can detect incoming underwater threats via some mesh networking.

magicsmoke 7y ago
Smaller drones have weaker propulsion and can't keep up with the ship its supposed to provide a detection bubble around. Being underwater and having to deal with additional drag also doesn't help. The large size of an aircraft carrier belies the fact that it is the fastest ship in the carrier group and can outrun all of its escorts. Larger ship = more space to pack powerful engines. That's also a major issue for a lot of other drone swarm schemes such as using drone swarms to counter fighter aircraft. Smaller drones don't have the propulsion to keep up with fighters, and once you make drones large enough to hold the engines that would let them keep up with a fighter you might as well build a fighter instead.
- jfnixon 7y ago
  If by fighter you mean "manned fighter" there are several reasons to build large, fast drones; no life support overhead, much better maneuverability (tolerance for high g), no worries about pilots flying highly dangerous missions, can use impact kills.
- contingencies 7y ago
  There were networks of deployable remote surveillance buoys being developed by the 1990s. Source: Public research reports of military research organizations. Presumably removing the propulsion expectation simplifies the problem domain.
  - AtlasBarfed 7y ago
    So they were deployed but then abandoned? I wonder if you could have a flotilla of heli-drones that drop in sampling microphones/active sonar. Wind might be hard to deal with in storms or heck even typical conditions.

deanCommie 7y ago

Outstanding article, very informative, but the tense and tone is slightly amusing to me: > Actual underwater combat occurs silently with very little reaction time to fend off an impending attack. Does it occur? Do we have any examples of "actual underwater combat" occurring? I don't believe we have any real life examples of nations withs submarine capabilities in combat. War games probably don't count...

angry_octet 7y ago
RIPLEY How may drops is this for you, Lieutenant? GORMAN Thirty-eight...simulated. VASQUEZ How many combat drops? GORMAN Well...two. Three, including this one.
giardini 7y ago
None that anyone can talk about.

kragen 7y ago

How is there an article entitled "modern submarine torpedo attacks" apparently written in 2020 that doesn't contain the word "supercavitating"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VA-111_Shkval https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VA-111_Shkval

Arubis 7y ago
Somewhat cynical take: because the West doesn’t have superiority in this space.
- ckozlowski 7y ago
  These got a lot of attention a while back. But their use case is limited because they're really short-ranged. These things go all out soon after leaving the tube, make a hell of a lot of noise, and are good only really close in. They're sort of a last resort weapon, a snapshot provided that the enemy shooting at you is even within range. A modern US Mark 48 can swim out quietly under wire guidance and emit no noise or sensor emissions, steered on an intercept course, then revved up to top speed once it's in close. A torpedo like the Shkval can't close the distance, and that's assuming the enemy even knows where they're being shot from. Just because a Mark 48 suddenly goes active on your stern doesn't mean it was fired from there. According to the wiki article, this was for intercepting incoming torpedoes. I suppose that could work, though again, the noise I'd imagine would be troublesome. It might mask for you a bit, but your attacker would know where this thing was shot from. Meanwhile, your own sonar is only going to hear this thing, meaning you've lost a solution on the guy shooting you, leaving him to set up again. I highly suspect the reason we haven't seen an equivalent is because the tactical doctrine doesn't call for one. My armchair two-cents.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    My personal theory is that a big use case for Shkval is in the littoral and shallow waters of the Baltic Sea where there is fantastic opportunity to play hide and seek. Especially sub to sub. I think the Soviet command expected enemy subs to successfully sneak up on them and then have something up their sleeve to raise hell right back.

m4rtink 7y ago

You mean like how torpedoes actually detonate when they hit a target in a movie ? ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo Or how in the movies they don't run in circles and sink the submarine that launched them ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_18_torpedo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_18_torpedo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Tang_(SS-306) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Tang_(SS-306)

chiph 7y ago
Or they sink a truck? https://youtu.be/GpEcU0OEzhc?t=120 https://youtu.be/GpEcU0OEzhc?t=120
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
To be fair, the article title does say "Modern", which, argueably, neither of those two are.
ThrowawayR2 7y ago
What do 70-75 year old torpedoes (look at the manufacturing dates in the articles you cited) have to do with modern torpedoes?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

sandworm101 7y ago

Take EVERYTHING in that article with a giant tub of salt. The specifics of torpedo combat are some of the most closely guarded military secrets. Take the following: "These high-torque, permanent magnet electric motor torpedoes ramp up to speed in under a second. They go from sitting in a torpedo tube to 50 knots in a near-instant because they don’t have the mechanical lag and inertia thermal torpedoes must overcome during startup. " So much of that is totally wrong. The torpedo has nothing to do with how it gets out of the tube. Its propulsor (not a propeller) wont work from the back of a torpedo tube. Starting it up in the tube, INSIDE the sub, sounds horribly dangerous. The torp is ejected by force from the sub and then starts its engine. Electric or thermal, it's doing 50+ whether it wants to or not. Once out of the tube, further acceleration potential is limited by depth/pressure. All torps have more than enough torque to start cavitating their propulsor in shallow water. To continue to automotive analogy, it doesn't matter whether your car is electric or turbine powered, acceleration is limited by how much power your tires can handle before spinning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjoholiW1ho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjoholiW1ho And this is why you don't want that engine running prior to the torp leaving the tube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoElLaLcfOc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoElLaLcfOc

smabie 7y ago
"Aaron Amick is a retired U.S. Navy submarine sonarman. He served in both Atlantic and Pacific Oceans on 688 Los Angles Class Fast Attack and Ohio class ballistic missile submarines. He has published two audiobooks on Cold War-era submarines, Akula SSN Project 971 Sub Brief and USS Nautilus SSN-571 Sub Brief." I dunno, the author's bio suggests that he knows that he's talking about.
rudyfink 7y ago
Apparently, there are things called "swim out" torpedoes? https://www.reddit.com/r/submarines/comments/at5nt4/silent_launch_torpedo/ https://www.reddit.com/r/submarines/comments/at5nt4/silent_l... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbeQmfXE0ws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbeQmfXE0ws - discussed in this video (from in the parent article)
- 7y ago

tzs 7y ago

> The batteries are connected in series allowing each weapon to have 2, 3, or 4 batteries. More batteries give the weapon more range. Fewer batteries make the weapon much lighter and more agile, but at the cost of range. This sounds wrong. Shouldn't they be connected in parallel?

angry_octet 7y ago
I think we can take this as an explanation for generalists, rather than a problem set from basic EE.
2rsf 7y ago
Not necessarily (answering as an Electrical Engineer with zero submarine knowledge), batteries in series give more voltage while batteries in parallel allow more current drawn. Now it depends on what and how your propulsion is.
_archon_ 7y ago
I would assume that we're talking about the physical location being sequential, like stages on a rocket.

supernova87a 7y ago

Side question -- do submarines really have the ability to ping, like in Hunt for Red October, do they ever use it, and does it actually use the frequency range of human hearing like that? Do torpedoes? Or are they ultrasonic (given that depth gauges I know are ultrasonic). I assume that subs once did use such pings historically given how common that sound effect is associated with them. Maybe not any more I guess?

dylan604 7y ago
The thing about the ping is that everyone that can hear it gets the benefit of that ping. So you are 100% giving away your position with a ping. Nowadays, you want to stay silent, so you use passive sonar. A very long tail is trailed behind the sub with lots of microphones listening. They've done it so long, they know what all sorts of things sound like. Man made objects likes subs and surface ships, airplanes flying above the water, rocks sliding, crabs crawling, etc.
- waste_monk 7y ago
  My (admittedly very armchair) understanding is the ping is a lot worse for the hunter than the target - the distance you can hear the ping is roughly 2x the distance* you'll get a useful return from it, so if the target is beyond that range you'll effectively lose all stealth and confer a huge advantage to the enemy. * this is complicated by thermal layers, geography, etc. but very approximately 2x is the figure I've heard.
- supernova87a 7y ago
  Yes, I understand, though my question was more whether subs actually have the ability to issue an audible ping like in that movie -- and why they would ever do it.

mothsonasloth 7y ago

The article misses out on other forms of submarine attacks, like anti ship missiles (harpoon) and ballistic missiles.

bryanrasmussen 7y ago

I think it would be more interesting to have a list of things that are like in the movies, as I assume it would be a lot shorter than the list of things unlike, and rarity is in many things considered more important than the common.

alanbernstein 7y ago

A misconception I had was that submarines fight each other under water. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-864 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-864 "It is the only documented instance in the history of naval warfare where one submarine intentionally sank another while both were submerged."

ubermonkey 7y ago
Not for nothing, but have there BEEN many submarine engagements since WWII? Is current doctrine that, say, fast attack subs would shoot at opposing boomers from underwater? I mean, it seems likely, right?
- jki275 7y ago
  Not a submariner, but I always thought that was the essence of the existence of the fast attack.
- HideousKojima 7y ago
  There are some suspected ones during the Cold War (the USS Scorpion and the Soviet K-129)

hoseja 7y ago

Wonder how much of this will translate to space combat.

nabla9 7y ago

When you store unguided torpedo inside capsule in the bottom of the ocean, or allow it to float in some predetermined depth, you have Torpedo mine, like CAPTOR. You don't need expensive submarines, if you want to protect narrow points or specific areas. You just drop torpedo mines underwater.

qwerty456127 7y ago

Does anybody even attack submarines nowadays? Isn't the sole purpose of a torpedo - to make the opponent believe they better avoid attacking you?

vanderZwan 7y ago

> With command wire capabilities, the weapon can change its attack geometry or even shut down if directed by the fire control operator. Detected targets can be changed, depth and range limitations can be set, and countermeasures, such as decoys and jammers, can be ignored using the submarine’s sonar data instead of the torpedo's lower-fidelity onboard sonar data. If the data link is lost, the weapon will follow its last given command and execute pre-programmed countermeasure defeating profiles, if necessary. This somehow reminded me of the final scene from John Carpenter's Dark Star (spoilers, obviously) where a smart bomb wants to blow up (yes, you read that right), and the crew has to talk it into not doing so by using philosophy to give it an existential crisis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h73PsFKtIck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h73PsFKtIck

tim333 7y ago

The most in recent serious submarine attack, the sinking of the Blegrano they decided to skip the fancy homing missiles due to unreliability and fired three non-guided torpedoes so it was a bit like the WW2 movies.

bregma 7y ago

OK, so modern submarine attacks are not like in the movies. Everything else in the movies is realistic, though, right?