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USN AN-1 Submarine Aircraft Carrier (2018)
- cm2187 6y agoHow do they land? Or are they disposable aircrafts? Also the whole point of a submarine is to stay stealth until it is required. Which means the pilots would get very little flight time / training.
- stretchcat 6y agoThey were to be VTOLs, so very carefully.
- LordHeini 6y agoThe Japanese and British used float planes. I would assume the project was scrapped because it is basically impossible to land on a submarine. It is hard enough to land a helicopter on a ship with a proper flight deck. But landing a much less stable VTOL on a tiny submarine without any sizeable flight deck in the 60s was completely out of the question.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago> But landing a much less stable VTOL on a tiny submarine without any sizeable flight deck in the 60s was completely out of the question. Hey, it was the 1960s. The times when people pulled off stunts like dropping a payload less than a meter wide from a satellite and catching it mid-air[0], without anything resembling a computer available to design or coordinate such missions. I'm pretty confident they could get a VTOL to land on a submarine, if they seriously put their minds to it. -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_(satellite)
- HPsquared 6y agoDon't forget they landed on the moon as well. Raw power can compensate for a lot of shortcomings in other areas!
- pjc50 6y agoHawker Siddeley Harrier (1967) was a VTOL that could have done this, although I don't think even Eric Brown was quite mad enough to try it. He did try the "rubber flight deck", an equally crazy scheme: why not save weight on landing gear by having a rubber deck just after the arresting gear, so the aircraft would catch the hook and belly-flop onto it? https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/blog/david-hobbs-british-aircraft-carrier-design-that-led-the-world-part-1/ https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/blog/david-hobbs-british-air...
- LordHeini 6y agoWell i am sure you can find some daredevil who can do such a landing under the right conditions. But the military requirements are such, that good conditions are not the norm. There are missions in harsh weather (and weather at sea is a completely different animal compared to weather on land or in the air at a few kilometers height). Up in the sky the conditions are stable and picking up a parachute with an aircraft is something you can easily retry a few times when you fail. Missing the landing on a submarine results in a sunken aircraft (and possibly pilot). Pilots have varying skill levels and are expensive to train just look at training requirements for the people landing on aircraft carriers. If you look at loss rates of military aircraft in any period you will find, that a astonishing portion of the losses are due to accidents. Landing a hard to control VTOL on a small spot on a submarine (which itself is somewhat small and thus unstable) will cause a tremendous amount of attrition among the aircraft and pilots. It is just far more efficient to shot a cruise missile at a target, than going through the hassle of having aircraft drop a bomb and then return with a low chance of survival.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoI accept your reasoning. Still, I raise you a C-130 with rocket engines bolted to it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Credible_Sport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Credible_Sport It's a 1980s idea, though.
- rtkwe 6y agoWell the payload itself was small but they were aiming for the line between the payload and it's parachute which is a much larger target.
- tragomaskhalos 6y agoThe Japanese I-400s were originally fitted with float planes, but these became fire-and-forget kamikaze aircraft by the end of the war (planned attack on the Panama canal that never happened). The Germans had an autogyro that was let out on a cable from the U-boat, used for spotting. Not sure if this ever saw production / combat, but IMO that's already at the limit of what is sensible in submarine aviation.
- briffle 6y agoThey actually did attack Oregon with a similar setup (but an I-25 submarine) . They dropped some incendiary bombs on the forests near Bandon, OR hoping to cause massive fires, damage war critical timber production, etc. I guess they didn't think about how hard it is to start a forest fire on the Oregon Coast in winter though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_submarine_I-25#Fourth_patrol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_submarine_I-25#Fourth...
- pge 6y agoThe cylindrical hull that makes submarines efficient under water makes them roll a lot when on the surface. That would make it very difficult to handle planes (whether taking off or landing).
- rupellohn 6y ago> ... landing a much less stable VTOL on a tiny submarine without any sizeable flight deck in the 60s was completely out of the question Reminded me of this incident where a Royal Navy Harrier landed on a container ship. https://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/oldies-amp-oddities-the-alraigo-incident-10366728/ https://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/oldies-amp-odd...
- daveslash 6y agoFloat planes... that could work. Land on the water next to the submarine, then get towed back into the sub by a winch.
- Animats 6y agoNope. Here it is, the Ryan X-13.[1] First VTOL jet. Landed tail-first and hooked itself to a raised platform. As a demo, one was landed at the Pentagon in 1957. If there had been a need, a fleet of VTOL-fighter carrying submarines would have been built. The USSR never built a navy which required something like this to counter it. I came across this in my days in aerospace, and an ex-Navy fighter pilot at work said he didn't see that landing as a difficult task. [1] https://youtu.be/xT38UcpHFXY https://youtu.be/xT38UcpHFXY
- schnedan 6y agoIn fact first VTOL designs existed almost 15 years earlier in Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Wulf_Triebfl%C3%BCgel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Wulf_Triebfl%C3%BCgel Also vertical Start was already tested with real designs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachem_Ba_349 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachem_Ba_349 even when it ended badly
- nix23 6y agoThe Belgorod makes much more sense: http://www.hisutton.com/Spy%20Subs%20-Project%2009852%20Belgorod.html http://www.hisutton.com/Spy%20Subs%20-Project%2009852%20Belg... BTW: One can find it here: Google Maps 64.58557915035752, 39.817968886716 Next to the only typhoon still in ~service 64.57990365204542, 39.791519636530744
- yangl1996 6y agoThe Japanese Navy had similar ideas [1] in WWII. The plan was to sail undetected to near the west coast, launch the planes, and drop some biological weapon. Basically the predecessor of today's missile-carrying submarines. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-400-class_submarine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-400-class_submarine
- gerdesj 6y agoRead the article, specifically the section headed: "Earlier aircraft carrying submarines".
- Y_Y 6y ago> "Some biological weapon" It was a box of plague fleas. See also: Operation Cherry Blossom at Night
- rozab 6y agoHere's a good video on these from Mustard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxyk84t4Q8w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxyk84t4Q8w They have loads of content on weird military hardware like this.
- redis_mlc 6y agoThe Japanese used balloons that drifted into the US West Coast with incendiary devices, killing at least 6 Americans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1945-japanese-balloon-bomb-killed-six-americansfive-them-children-oregon-180972259/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1945-japanese-balloon... They used various payloads in China, including fleas carrying anthrax and bubonic plague http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-09/19/content_32187279.htm http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-09/19/content_321872...
- jessaustin 6y agoDidn't everyone design one of these while doodling on the back of a notebook while bored in third grade? Several of my classmates came up with more plausible designs... If it takes three engines' thrust to take off vertically, one engine won't be able to land vertically, even if we ignore the only-recently-solved-now control issues.
- HPsquared 6y agoNot sure about 3 times less, but planes are usually lighter when they come in to land, than they are taking off. (Fuel etc)
- wil421 6y agoHarriers, F-35s, and Ospreys are all VTOL aircraft that could’ve launch from a sub. The other airplanes have only one engine and the osprey 2. They already land vertically on carriers. I don’t think the image in the article would’ve worked where planes take off going straight up without additional thrusters.
- jessaustin 6y agoUsing actually-functioning aircraft, as you suggest, would also be more plausible than TFA. The maintenance requirements of the specific aircraft you mention might preclude submarine deployment, however.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Harriers, F-35s, and Ospreys are all VTOL aircraft that could’ve launch from a sub. The other airplanes have only one engine and the osprey 2. They already land vertically on carriers. F-35s and Ospreys didn't exist when this was proposed (the Harrier, but not the Harrier II, did), and the use of a Mach-3 fighter after consideration of the F11F suggests that the role envisioned for the fighters was interception, which is at best a secondary role of the F-35, and not a role of the Harrier (and even less the Osprey). > I don’t think the image in the article would’ve worked where planes take off going straight up without additional thrusters. I doubt it would have been practical for recovery at sea; launch would have worked better, and, IIRC, both were demonstrated successfully with prototype aircraft on land.
- lmilcin 6y agoFor everybody that criticizes this, remember, every successful idea is accompanied with a bunch of wild and crazy ideas and it usually takes time to figure out which ones exactly are good. I expect that somebody said at some point, "Planes on ships? That must be the stupidest idea I have ever heard!" It is easy to criticize with the help of hindsight. Most people at a certain point would say a page to connect school peers would never become one of the largest corporations on Earth. Were all these people stupid or is this just effect of having seen it happen?
- Aerroon 6y ago>I expect that somebody said at some point, "Planes on ships? That must be the stupidest idea I have ever heard!" I don't know about that. Before the invention of the airplane we already had balloon carriers - ships that carried balloons for observation in naval engagements. The first flight of a fixed wing aircraft happened in 1903. By 1910 a plane had already taken off from the armored cruiser USS Birmingham.[0] The French converted the Foudre to be a seaplane carrier in 1911 after the invention of the seaplane in 1910. Planes launched from ships were used in World War I. For example, HMS Engandine was a freight ship that was converted into a seaplane tender and commissioned in 1914. In 1916 she took part in the Battle of Jutland. HMS Ark Royal was a purpose built seaplane carrier and was commissioned in 1914. She also took part in World War I. Later we got the flat-deck carriers. HMS Argus was converted in 1918, USS Langley in 1920. The first purpose built flat deck carriers were the Japanese Hōshō and British Hermes. They were commissioned in 1922 and 1924 respectively, but the Hermes was laid down first in 1918. Funnily enough, the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 cancelled the production of more battleships and battlecruisers. This led to the USS Lexington and USS Saratoga being converted to carriers. And eventually carriers made direct surface combat ships obsolete. Planes on ships probably wasn't a crazy idea. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Birmingham_(CL-2) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Birmingham_(CL-2)
- lmilcin 6y agoI am not versed in that part of history. Probably you are right, it might not have been that crazy idea. But I have read a lot of other history, especially WW2 and Cold War, and it is kinda normal that military throws a lot of crazy ideas. In the end even if a very small portion of those ideas bring fruit it typically tends to give the edge that you need in conflict. So I try to not criticize too much because people who prepared this were probably asked to do exactly that -- go wild with their ideas with low probability anything they produce is going to bring fruit. At the time this submarine aircraft carrier has been prepared: - Cold War was at its high - US just started using atomic power for everything they did and it seemed nuclear reactors and atomic power are going to solve any problem from going very long time under sea to having planes reach orbit and other planets - US had nuclear bombs but had trouble maintaining ability to reach USSR territory with them. Having ability for a submarine surface close to USSR territory and launch completely unexpected attack would be huge advantage and deterrent - US did not have working ICBMs and only perception that USSR is leading in development of these, so there must have been huge pressure to get ANYTHING to maintain deterrent. Now, given that kind of environment this idea doesn't sound so stupid anymore. At least not more stupid that warships made of ice and wood chips.
- melomal 6y agoHonestly, after watching Dark Doc's on YT I have to say that the military is totally open to the most craziest ideas as long as it has the potential to raise their game. Whilst the nature of the engineering is pretty awful and causes unwarranted pain it does make you think about the level of creativity to cause as much damage as possible.
- sslayer 6y agoIt's less "engineering is pretty awful" and more "What risk are we willing to accept vs tactical/strategical gain"
- melomal 6y agoIt really is. The level of confidence from test pilots to initial designers to firstly propose ideas and then have someone sit inside and try it out is pretty interesting too.
- munificent 6y agoI think the real take-away is that the boundary for "good idea" is determined almost entirely by funding. The military has such a firehose of cash that they can throw money at almost anything and see what sticks. If we spent $718.69 billion on art funding every year, you'd probably see artists making skyscrapers out of butter or genetically cross-breeding birds and mammals for creative speciation.
- melomal 6y ago:) art students could consider this route post studies, military creativity courses with essentially unlimited funding. It really is astounding to see how many millions/billions then and now can go into failed projects.
- ksec 6y agoSounds like Tuatha de Danaan in Full Metal Panic.
- throwaway6734 6y agoI imagine we'll see a return to this idea now that drones are becoming more ubiquitous.
- WJW 6y agoDrones launched from submarines are already a thing: https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/12/07/the-us-navy-wants-to-find-ships-to-kill-using-aerial-drones-launched-from-submarines/ https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/12/07/the-us-navy-wan... They use tubes for launching flares and buoys that the subs are already equipped with, and perhaps in the future also the larger vertical missile tubes for bigger drones.
- krisoft 6y agoIt is already a thing. Cruise missiles are basically pilotless airplanes. They have wings, they have air breathing engines, they navigate and manoeuvre like an airplane (bank to turn most of them for example). Cruise missile carrying submarines are a staple of the US strategy. Every significant engagement starts by such a submarine rolling in and unleashing the cruise missiles to suppress the enemy air defences. And again the cruise missiles are pilotless aircraft in everything but name.
- saberdancer 6y agoCruise missiles do not return to base. Also I don't know of any cruise missile that is used for reconnaissance but I may be uninformed. Are any cruise missiles launched and then flown around until you notice something of interest to sink? Problem with using a cruise missile for recon is that it looks exactly like a missile.
- nix23 6y ago>Are any cruise missiles launched and then flown around until you notice something of interest to sink? No they don't, but they can change the target in flight, flight evasive maneuvers, coordinate each others and so on, but they are missiles and not Drones.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoWow... All the weird stuff they come up with. And sometimes it actually gets made. Like the Glomar Explorer. Wow.
- MichaelMoser123 6y agoi wonder how much money gets wasted on these failed explorations/projects.
- cripblip 6y agoI look at these explorations as eliminating concepts that don’t work, bringing you closer to finding the one that does; necessary investment
- 0xdba 6y agohaving worked for multiple dod contractors that did prototypes, lots. Sad part is lots of the good ideas get culled when some head honcho doesn't like the dpt. it came from, or where the funding came from, because politics. Lot of warfighters/ppl who are actually going to use the systems/products give us good feedback and then some O-6 comes on and doesn't like it or doesn't understand it.
- mojomark 6y ago> i wonder how much money gets wasted on these failed explorations/projects. Failure is not a waste of money if lessons are learned. The value is in the lesson. As anyone whosed developed a reinforcement learning application knows, there is a balance between EXPLORATION and EXPLOITATION. If you don't explore, your performance will never improve. This is true even if 99% of the explored states are failures. I suppose if one doesn't want to invest in exploration, one could always join an Amish township. They are very content and apparently happy with their perpetually static state of technological development - and there's nothing wrong with that until someone with a missile comes in to take over your land amd all you have to fend them off with is a hay fork.
- b3kart 6y ago> if lessons are learned This is the key statement. Even in reinforcement learning exploring intelligently is an important problem. There’s no point exploring a new state if your world model is confident about what’s going to happen there: you won’t learn much.
- 6y ago
- mikece 6y agoI seem to recall in the late 80s and early 90s the idea of submarines being able to launch surface to air missiles being discussed. If you're a sub and a helicopter is dipping a sonar, you know exactly where the helo is but you cannot shoot at it, even if you surfaced. The idea, as I recall, was to release some buoyant device that, when it surfaced, would launch 1 to 4 SAMs that would go into active seek mode and then lock in on whatever flying object they found. Lots of things can go wrong with this idea... which is probably why nothing has been in the military media about it.
- secfirstmd 6y agoThat's a thing that's being implemented at the moment. https://defense-update.com/20120214_idas-submarine-launched-surface-to-air-missile-system.html https://defense-update.com/20120214_idas-submarine-launched-... Russians used to keep shoulder launched SAMs also. Less useful for obvious reasons though.
- semi-extrinsic 6y agoFrom your link: "The fiber optical link would then be used by the crew to verify the target, confirm the intercept and perform battle damage assessment." This thing is literally dragging a fiber optic cable behind it, with a sensor package that is apparently left behind at the sea surface when the missile transits into the air, that allows the submarine to see the helicopter target before and after missile impact, and to abort the missile strike if necessary.
- openasocket 6y agoNow that you've got submarines with vertical launch cells like the latest Virginia class I've wondered about some of the possibilities. Since those are capable of holding Tomahawks, they certainly are large enough to hold an SM-2 or SM-6 SAM missile (though I doubt they could fire those unmodified). Having a submarine with long range SAMs open up some interesting tactics. You detect a bunch of enemy fighters sortieing out to engage one of your ships with an airborne early warning aircraft or fighter on a long range patrol. All of a sudden, way before they enter range of your ship's SAMs, a submarine surfaces, launches a bunch of SAMs, and the aircraft that detected the enemy fighters guides them to targets using cooperative engagement. With this technique all you need is a submarine and a fighter or early warning aircraft and you effectively get a guided missile destroyer which is profoundly hard to detect. Fighter might be a better choice, so it can chase off ASW helos and aircraft without needing the submarine to surface and waste some of its own SAMs. Lots of things can go wrong of course, and I'm sure it would take a ton of engineering effort to make it happen, but it's certainly an interesting concept.
- mojomark 6y agoAs someone working on ship design for a few decades I can attest that this site is an amazing resource for whacky concepts and also new concepts, internationally, that were/are being experimented with but were/are fairly under wraps. I have no idea where the owner gets the info from - probably scraped off of remote corners of the web (non-english posts), but a few times a year someone sends me a link to this site and something inevitably blows my mind. A lot of times very good concepts are abandoned due to a technology gap (e.g. control computers, materials limits, etc.) that no longer exist. I think our industry likely owes a great deal of debt to the site owner for helping to consolidate and document this history so we don't waste time/money reinventing the wheel (saving us from iterative condemnation).
- ranger207 6y agoIIRC he does all of his original art in Paint too.
- sandworm101 6y agoIt looks like Russians send him stuff. Nothing really classified, but things like the photos of desktop models seem to come from people visiting various offices or agencies. Some Russian military facilities also run unofficial tours (whatever pays the bills) resulting in photos of stuff that would normally be behind locked doors/gates. His satellite imagery is all unclassified, mostly stuff available via google. You just have to know what you are looking at. Covert Shores has such a reputation in the maritime community that he could probably just knock on the door and get a tour of their non-classified material. Old/scrapped subs are often just sitting on bases forgotten.
- samstave 6y agoI've always wondered how one gets into ship design... I worked with a guy who was a technology designer for billionaire level yachts, David Person - he worked on both of Larry Ellison's yachts (and houses) - but the yachts were made in Germany.. but how does one actually become a ship designer?
- s5300 6y ago
- neom 6y agoMustard did a fascinating episode about the Japanese version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxyk84t4Q8w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxyk84t4Q8w
- TheGallopedHigh 6y agoMark Felton did cover that as well on YouTube.
- Giorgi 6y agoYeah, getting from underwater confinement and blasting into the air should do works on your health
- stretchcat 6y agoSubmarines like that do not use pressurized atmospheres. They hold back the water pressure using the strength of the hull alone. (Also the aircraft would be launched when the submarine was surfaced.)
- TheGallopedHigh 6y agoHolding back the sea pressure is implicitly holding the submarine at atmospheric pressure.
- stretchcat 6y agoI suppose that's a valid way of looking at it. Either way though, there's no risk of the crew experiencing decompression sickness in a typical military submarine.
- sradman 6y agoBased on the same Covert Shores article, a Popular Mechanics article [1] has more TL;DR context in the title, The U.S. Navy Could Have Had a Submarine Aircraft Carrier, and opening: > During the 1950s, the advent of the atomic age forced the U.S. Navy to look at a number of alternate basing schemes for naval aviation. One such scheme was AN-1, an enormous nuclear-powered submarine that could launch eight fighter jets in just under eight minutes. > Although AN-1 was never built, it’s a fascinating look at a ship that could have been. [1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a25241538/submarine-aircraft-carrier-us-navy/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a252415...
- arithmomachist 6y agoGiven that carriers are increasingly boxed out from shore by anti-ship missiles and drones are a lot smaller than crewed aircraft, I wonder if this design concept is due for a revival. I could imagine drones launched vertically with single-use rocket boosters that would then land on the water for retrieval. You could get much closer to shore than a carrier while still carrying out a pretty effective air strike, especially with several subs.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoApart from the "reusable" part, your proposal sounds a lot like cruise missiles, which subs can and do launch. True, reusable is nice. But a cruise missile can also carry a lot bigger payload than a reusable drone can.
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y agoReusability creates a lot more complexity vs just cruise missiles. Current generation US attack subs have multi-purpose tubes that can launch underwater drones, etc. So they are designed for some flexibility, but the main use is just tomahawk missiles.
- mcguire 6y agoSpoiler: Tail-sitting vertical take off and landing aircraft.
- zanderz 6y agoOn the subject of aircraft launched from a submarine, a rotary winged kite was developed in Germany during WWII for reconnaissance. Compact when disassembled, it could be deployed in minutes, tethered to the sub while it motored upwind, allowing a lookout to see much farther over the horizon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Achgelis_Fa_330 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Achgelis_Fa_330 Examples are on display at many museums, including the Deutsches Technikmuseum in Berlin.