8 ms·

Will even the most advanced subs have nowhere to hide?

94 points by sohkamyung 2y ago

FjordWarden 2y ago
Active acoustic camouflage.
- mckirk 2y ago
  I imagine that to look something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSK3maq8Cyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSK3maq8Cyk
droopyEyelids 2y ago
My god the tone in this article is flippant for talking about the scariest part of our “eliminate all human life” deterrence system. And stupidly jingoistic in how it scaremongers that the five chinese subs could hit the USA while being smug about how the USA deploys five times as many of them.
- causal 2y ago
  What did you want, more trembling and hand wringing? This was a discussion of stealth capabilities, the problem of nukes is adjacent but not the focus. And I believe the article said the US has 167 subs, you made up "thousands" Edit: Actually 67, as gilleain points out
  - gilleain 2y ago
    Uhm. > The People’s Liberation Army Navy is the largest navy in the world, but it currently operates only 12 nuclear-powered submarines, a rather small number compared to the 67 attack subs and ballistic-missile subs of the U.S. Navy. Is this the paragraph you are both referring to? So 12 and 67, not 5 and (5 * 5) = 25 ... or 167 and thousands?
    - causal 2y ago
      Yup, will edit to correct
  - chasd00 2y ago
    Forget it causal, it’s China town.
- bluGill 2y ago
  Not all submarines are about eliminating all human life. Some are of course, but the majority are about more conventional war where you want to eliminate the enemies willingness to fight on, but you expect to survive and be okay after the war is over. (not as good as if there was no war of course, but you don't get to choose when there is war)
- Hayvok 2y ago
  I thought the article was pretty level headed. Here’s the status, here’s the future, here’s what AUKUS is doing, here’s what China is doing and is capable of doing. What smugness or jingoism were you referring to? I actually found it refreshing to not have a “journalists’” opinions and world-view slathered all over the article. I’m smart enough to form my own opinions about things, thanks.
- cokeandpepsi 2y ago
  [dead]
oldpersonintx 2y ago
[dead]
jameskilton 2y ago
Destin from Smarter Every Day got to spend a day on the USS Toledo and made multiple videos about this[0]. I mention it because in one of the videos he and the crew talk about submarine stealth (the non classified bits) and there's a surprising amount of science behind just being in the right part of the water, where the water itself (density changes, temperature changes, currents, etc) can make it almost impossible to see you. So Betteridge's Law of Headlines still applies: No, they will still hide just fine. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXXMJAU6vY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXXMJAU6vY8
- ckozlowski 2y ago
  "No, they will still hide just fine." Agreed. And the fact that adversaries are still building them even as headlines like this state that "stealth is dead" tells you everything. New threats? Yes. Obsolete, no.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  Jive Turkey's old YT videos in which he'd play Cold Waters and talk about late-Cold War-era sonar operation were amazing. And now sadly gone. :( Word is some of the information was still a little too OPSEC accurate (physics doesn't change that fast) + a career change to the private defense industry necessitated rebranding. Shame, as he did an excellent job teaching about thermoclines et al. in the context of passive sonar systems.
  - ckozlowski 2y ago
    He's still around under Sub Brief (https://www.youtube.com/@SubBrief https://www.youtube.com/@SubBrief) but I wouldn't be surprised if some of his videos have since been edited and/or removed. Especially the ones where he'd whiteboard things. He would state how he couldn't speak to certain things, but there were times where he would share some insight and I'd cringe a little. A couple come to mind, but I won't repeat them here. He's still interesting to watch though!
    - ethbr1 2y ago
SimianSci 2y ago
We tend to see these types of articles popping up any time a new American administration moves in. With the defense industry commanding government contracts worth trillions there is a lot of incentive to spread doubt and uncertainty about the current state of the art. Conveniently, once enough fear, uncertainty, and doubt, have been sown amongst the public, the people pushing these stories will also push to have their AI/Drone/{insert recent tech} company be granted a new defense contract. This method has been used countless times to waste the current defense budget on unproven tech that often goes nowhere.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > This method has been used countless times to waste the current defense budget on unproven tech that often goes nowhere. It's time to rework how fundamental / "moonshot" military R&D should get done, then. And that's not just true of the US, it's also a hot issue for the German military. We all need to separate "keeping the stuff we have up and running, and get new versions every so often to incorporate technical developments that happened in the meantime" from "let's try and see if we can hide a B2 bomber not just from radars but also eyes and ears" or "maybe we can get a Star Wars style repulsorlift antigrav system working". The basic stuff should be done by buying whatever is available on the market. No matter if it's Abrams, Leopard, <insert whatever South Korea makes in tanks here>, and ideally the US, EU, NATO and their major allies (Israel, South Korea, Ukraine) should pool their IP and manufacturing resources for a common pool where everyone can draw from, and everyone can contribute to, alone to keep geographic redundancy. Unfortunately for moonshot projects though, all the "easy" stuff has been done decades ago, and while the startups may have fancy ideas (especially the offshoots of university research), they lack the funding to get them to real-world stage, or they get bought out by one of the big experienced government milkers where the project fades into oblivion. And the US isn't particularly happy to share their stuff, not even with their close-knit FVEY circle.
- liontwist 2y ago
  It’s larger than military. This is how our democracy works. The government seeds ideas in PR articles to media and then evaluates if there is enough public support to do it. The most egregious example I remember is the “Russians are putting bounties on Americans in the Middle East” article that was well promoted by prominent individuals on this site, and then turned out to be fake.
teeray 2y ago
I wonder if you could do the opposite with success: spam the detection networks with a bunch of cheap noisy autonomous decoy subs that are indistinguishable from cheap noisy real subs. Of course, the key phrase that might make the difference in this strategy is how cheap is “cheap.”
- ckozlowski 2y ago
  Yup! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_submarine_simulator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_submarine_simulator
ckozlowski 2y ago
There's a lot to unpack in this article. There's several points it gets wrong, and several others in which an assertion is made but then fails to mention the compensating factors or later negates them in the piece. I'm not in the Navy, but I've worked in and studied this space for a long time (and have talked to many who do) so I'll share what I know. - The submarines (boats!) like the USS Minnesota are fast-attack submarines. Their primary mission is anti-shipping and sea control, not nuclear deterrence. While there's some talk I understand of bringing back the nuclear-armed version of the Tomahawk which the Virginia-class could then carry; this is not their primary mission. The Ohios and follow on Columbias will do this. The fast-attack subs will to counter the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) - I've seen a variety of articles over the past several years talking about how AI and advanced signal processing will make submarines obsolete. This article does the same, but is very vague on the details, then proceeds to state how there's things that complicate this (drones, other traffic.) When they say "AI", what I think they really mean is machine learning, and certainly, this helps. But noise is still subject to the inverse square law, and so there's no magical detection of everything everywhere even if advanced processing makes it a lot easier than before. It's also important to point out that this works in both directions. So if the PLAN is using better sensors and processing, you bet the U.S. and other navies are as well. - Which brings me to this point that the article doesn't address. "If not the submarine, then what?" The Chieftain (youtube) did a great video on this when there was a lot of talk on the tank being obsolete after watching battles in Ukraine. (He disarms this pretty well). While there are new threats to submarines, the type gives capabilities that aircraft and surface ships cannot match, and until such a combination of features comes about that fulfills the same roles and provides the same effects as a submarine, then it won't be replaced. - I wanna touch on the AUKUS bit, as this article starts taking swipes at it for its expense, states that the submarines will be easily detectable, but then says "just get AIP boats (Air independent propulsion)." There's a valid debate that can occur over what the best bang-for-the-buck is for Australia, and some questionable aspects about the deal (like whether we can actually build the boats on time). But in my opinion, Australia had a very valid reason for going that route that the author glosses over when touting AIP boats. They do not even remotely reach the capabilities of a nuclear boat. AIP boats are something of a misnomer; they do need oxygen, they just carry it with them. It allows them to stay submerged longer, but they're still carrying a much less energy dense fuel, and now they have to carry even more of it underwater. This is fine for Europe's needs, where most operations are going to be close to shore and not far from their bases such as in the Baltic Sea, North Sea, and Mediterranean. AIP is an excellent choice there! But the Pacific is vast, Australia is vast, and those boats are too short ranged and too slow to get anywhere they need to be within a reasonable amount of time in a conflict. Is Australia fights, they're going to want to do with their allies north, and that means in the South China Sea or Philippine Sea, not outside Darwin. The French boats they were originally ordering wouldn't give them that ability, and given they were hopelessly late as it was, they decided to go with a better option. Does Australia need to project that far north? Valid question. If they want a stay-at-home navy, go AIP. But they want to be part of the allied force, so they need something that can really endure and project, and that means 30+ knots sustained for thousands of kilometers. AIP boats can't do that.
indigoabstract 2y ago
As I was reading about submarine stealth techniques, I saw the map and had trouble visualizing it at first, as they colored the land in blue and the water in white. Pretty strange choice for coloring a map.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  Not if your domain is the water. White is the best background color for details. That said, maybe the ground should have been brown or green.
  - indigoabstract 2y ago
    Ah, I see, I hadn't thought of that. I guess it makes sense that the Navy people would focus on the sea instead of the land.
- karaterobot 2y ago
  Same problem. Glad somebody else said it, I always assume I'm the only one who's bothered by this stuff.
travisjungroth 2y ago
After reading the article, it’s fun to just sort of riff from first principles to guess where things are headed. I think there are two types of hiding: silence and camouflage. Silence is where you reduce the signal you emit and reflect. Camouflage is where you mask it with something else. Hiding a gold bar in a basement is camouflage (by this definition). Making your sub reflect sonar to look like a whale is camouflage. Making your sub reflect nothing is silence. Long term, I think silence is a losing strategy for the hider. You can hide with silence in the ocean because it’s so big. But as sensors become more sensitive, the ocean gets “smaller”. I think you run into basic physical limitations on silence well before you do on detection. Like the article suggested, I think the days of quieter propulsion and better propulsion detection being a big part of the game are numbered. I can see camouflage going on longer. Seems like the second stage of the game. What happens when you have 10,000 vehicles emitting all sorts of signatures you can’t disambiguate, and 50 of those are nuclear subs? Or worse, a million objects including civilian UUVs and marine life? That’s essentially the same as non-identification. It’s like using facial identification against a military to find the general, but everyone can change their face at will.
- MrSkelter 2y ago
  Americas obsession with nuclear propulsion is a large part of the problem. You can’t switch a nuclear power plant off. It’s always making noise and vibrating. These these subs are always noisier than electric units which can be totally off and totally silent, emitting nothing. It’s politics that demands the glamour of a huge nuclear fleet. For stealth nuclear power which makes noise constantly and is nuts radiation is an inferior choice.
- adolph 2y ago
  > Long term, I think silence is a losing strategy for the hider. You can hide with silence in the ocean because it’s so big. This would also apply to low observability strategies for the atmosphere, no? Perhaps lower observable atmospheric vehicles in general, autonomous or not, would mitigate mass freak-outs like NJ.
  - HPsquared 2y ago
ziknard 2y ago
>map in the article "Obviously this blue part here is the land."
- xnx 2y ago
  Buster?
- unsnap_biceps 2y ago
  This color scheme broke my brain for a minute as I tried to figure out what landmass the white was.
charles_f 2y ago
> AI-enabled systems that analyze sensor data I really wish publications like IEEE spectrum would call that machine learning. For all intents and purposes "AI" has become a marketing term for "consumer grade chat bots". It has a semi-magical / science fiction aura, and it's bordering on click bait. "Machine learning" is what this kind of signal processing based on training from large data sets. Next thing you know we'll start seeing anything that implements Dijkstra as "AI".
- AnarchismIsCool 2y ago
  Also, we need to be more specific about what ML actually means. I see a lot of people thinking that Kalman filters/CFAR/wavelet transforms/super-res/DSP correlation/whatever are all just magic AI bullshit that can find any signal regardless of how far below the noise floor it is. I wish we'd go back to referring to things by their core algorithm like "Neural Nets for DSP filtering". I guess that just doesn't get the ultra wealthy dumb fuck class to open their wallet fast enough...
  - Syonyk 2y ago
    > ... just magic AI bullshit... Given how many have grown up with the phrase, "Computer, enhance!" - I expect a lot of people treat it exactly like that!
photochemsyn 2y ago
The underwater drone technology being developed could drastically cut military expenditures by making aircraft carrier-centric naval strategies obsolete. Look at this Orca XLUUV developed by the US Navy and Boeing - it can carry an eight ton payload, travel thousands of miles, and doesn't have to surface for extended periods (although it is diesel-electric, a hybrid of sorts). The depth limit is certainly classified but it could probably sit well below surface ship detection limits, and even be outfitted with nuclear payloads. https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2024/06/our-first-look-at-the-us-navys-orca-xluuv-fitted-with-payload-module/ https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2024/06/our-first-look-... Note this thing could also be equipped with autonomous drones, eg it could surface, release a swarm of aerial attack drones, and submerge. This sort of makes aircraft-carrier centric battle groups obsolete, and it's far cheaper too. Notably, US shipyards are mostly building military ships these days; a more rational policy would return these shipyards to building cargo ships, an area where China currently dominates. This highlights why an economy that revolves around the military-industrial sector will always lag behind economically in comparison to countries that invest in more productive enterprises; eg a tank, once build, can only destroy; building large cranes instead means you are set up for big infrastructure projects.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  At the end of the day the aircraft carrier is basically a huge truck. If the warfare is now drones thats great you have this huge truck you can load to the brim with them and park or deliver around the world.
adamc 2y ago
No expertise here, but wouldn't another strategy be to attack the sensors? Ideally subtly, but. And another strategy be to overwhelm the sensors? Have a million dummy subs that give off sensor readings suggesting they are real, when in fact they are cheaper drones? Kind of the way prey overwhelm predators by all hatching at the same time.
- AnarchismIsCool 2y ago
  Yeah, article is full of shit. It's just another evolution in The Game. You'll probably see subs get slightly smaller and more automated though, also probably able to control larger formations of unmanned systems. We see this with stealth aircraft. You can hunt them from the comfort of your living room with <$1000 in equipment. They're not invisible, I have yet to see a picture of an empty parking space unironically labeled "stealth aircraft". They're optimized to prevent categorization (NCTR) and precision fire control (X band specifically) so actually prioritizing and engaging them is difficult, especially at range. So now we see them moving towards being drone motherships so they can stay at the ranges where their stealth is useful. Keeping that in mind, subs are also now packing much longer range weapons now and even if you can vaguely locate them with a variety of methods, you still need to go over there and kill the damn thing. We aren't seeing anyone investing in ballistic missile launched torpedos yet because these methods aren't necessarily able to provide a firing solution for such a weapon, just that "there's something weird in this square mile, maybe go investigate"

94 points by sohkamyung 2y ago

FjordWarden 2y ago

Active acoustic camouflage.

mckirk 2y ago
I imagine that to look something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSK3maq8Cyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSK3maq8Cyk

droopyEyelids 2y ago

My god the tone in this article is flippant for talking about the scariest part of our “eliminate all human life” deterrence system. And stupidly jingoistic in how it scaremongers that the five chinese subs could hit the USA while being smug about how the USA deploys five times as many of them.

causal 2y ago
What did you want, more trembling and hand wringing? This was a discussion of stealth capabilities, the problem of nukes is adjacent but not the focus. And I believe the article said the US has 167 subs, you made up "thousands" Edit: Actually 67, as gilleain points out
- gilleain 2y ago
  Uhm. > The People’s Liberation Army Navy is the largest navy in the world, but it currently operates only 12 nuclear-powered submarines, a rather small number compared to the 67 attack subs and ballistic-missile subs of the U.S. Navy. Is this the paragraph you are both referring to? So 12 and 67, not 5 and (5 * 5) = 25 ... or 167 and thousands?
  - causal 2y ago
    Yup, will edit to correct
- chasd00 2y ago
  Forget it causal, it’s China town.
bluGill 2y ago
Not all submarines are about eliminating all human life. Some are of course, but the majority are about more conventional war where you want to eliminate the enemies willingness to fight on, but you expect to survive and be okay after the war is over. (not as good as if there was no war of course, but you don't get to choose when there is war)
Hayvok 2y ago
I thought the article was pretty level headed. Here’s the status, here’s the future, here’s what AUKUS is doing, here’s what China is doing and is capable of doing. What smugness or jingoism were you referring to? I actually found it refreshing to not have a “journalists’” opinions and world-view slathered all over the article. I’m smart enough to form my own opinions about things, thanks.
cokeandpepsi 2y ago
[dead]

oldpersonintx 2y ago

[dead]

jameskilton 2y ago

Destin from Smarter Every Day got to spend a day on the USS Toledo and made multiple videos about this[0]. I mention it because in one of the videos he and the crew talk about submarine stealth (the non classified bits) and there's a surprising amount of science behind just being in the right part of the water, where the water itself (density changes, temperature changes, currents, etc) can make it almost impossible to see you. So Betteridge's Law of Headlines still applies: No, they will still hide just fine. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXXMJAU6vY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXXMJAU6vY8

ckozlowski 2y ago
"No, they will still hide just fine." Agreed. And the fact that adversaries are still building them even as headlines like this state that "stealth is dead" tells you everything. New threats? Yes. Obsolete, no.
ethbr1 2y ago
Jive Turkey's old YT videos in which he'd play Cold Waters and talk about late-Cold War-era sonar operation were amazing. And now sadly gone. :( Word is some of the information was still a little too OPSEC accurate (physics doesn't change that fast) + a career change to the private defense industry necessitated rebranding. Shame, as he did an excellent job teaching about thermoclines et al. in the context of passive sonar systems.
- ckozlowski 2y ago
  He's still around under Sub Brief (https://www.youtube.com/@SubBrief https://www.youtube.com/@SubBrief) but I wouldn't be surprised if some of his videos have since been edited and/or removed. Especially the ones where he'd whiteboard things. He would state how he couldn't speak to certain things, but there were times where he would share some insight and I'd cringe a little. A couple come to mind, but I won't repeat them here. He's still interesting to watch though!
  - ethbr1 2y ago

SimianSci 2y ago

We tend to see these types of articles popping up any time a new American administration moves in. With the defense industry commanding government contracts worth trillions there is a lot of incentive to spread doubt and uncertainty about the current state of the art. Conveniently, once enough fear, uncertainty, and doubt, have been sown amongst the public, the people pushing these stories will also push to have their AI/Drone/{insert recent tech} company be granted a new defense contract. This method has been used countless times to waste the current defense budget on unproven tech that often goes nowhere.

mschuster91 2y ago
> This method has been used countless times to waste the current defense budget on unproven tech that often goes nowhere. It's time to rework how fundamental / "moonshot" military R&D should get done, then. And that's not just true of the US, it's also a hot issue for the German military. We all need to separate "keeping the stuff we have up and running, and get new versions every so often to incorporate technical developments that happened in the meantime" from "let's try and see if we can hide a B2 bomber not just from radars but also eyes and ears" or "maybe we can get a Star Wars style repulsorlift antigrav system working". The basic stuff should be done by buying whatever is available on the market. No matter if it's Abrams, Leopard, <insert whatever South Korea makes in tanks here>, and ideally the US, EU, NATO and their major allies (Israel, South Korea, Ukraine) should pool their IP and manufacturing resources for a common pool where everyone can draw from, and everyone can contribute to, alone to keep geographic redundancy. Unfortunately for moonshot projects though, all the "easy" stuff has been done decades ago, and while the startups may have fancy ideas (especially the offshoots of university research), they lack the funding to get them to real-world stage, or they get bought out by one of the big experienced government milkers where the project fades into oblivion. And the US isn't particularly happy to share their stuff, not even with their close-knit FVEY circle.
liontwist 2y ago
It’s larger than military. This is how our democracy works. The government seeds ideas in PR articles to media and then evaluates if there is enough public support to do it. The most egregious example I remember is the “Russians are putting bounties on Americans in the Middle East” article that was well promoted by prominent individuals on this site, and then turned out to be fake.

teeray 2y ago

I wonder if you could do the opposite with success: spam the detection networks with a bunch of cheap noisy autonomous decoy subs that are indistinguishable from cheap noisy real subs. Of course, the key phrase that might make the difference in this strategy is how cheap is “cheap.”

ckozlowski 2y ago
Yup! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_submarine_simulator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_submarine_simulator

ckozlowski 2y ago

There's a lot to unpack in this article. There's several points it gets wrong, and several others in which an assertion is made but then fails to mention the compensating factors or later negates them in the piece. I'm not in the Navy, but I've worked in and studied this space for a long time (and have talked to many who do) so I'll share what I know. - The submarines (boats!) like the USS Minnesota are fast-attack submarines. Their primary mission is anti-shipping and sea control, not nuclear deterrence. While there's some talk I understand of bringing back the nuclear-armed version of the Tomahawk which the Virginia-class could then carry; this is not their primary mission. The Ohios and follow on Columbias will do this. The fast-attack subs will to counter the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) - I've seen a variety of articles over the past several years talking about how AI and advanced signal processing will make submarines obsolete. This article does the same, but is very vague on the details, then proceeds to state how there's things that complicate this (drones, other traffic.) When they say "AI", what I think they really mean is machine learning, and certainly, this helps. But noise is still subject to the inverse square law, and so there's no magical detection of everything everywhere even if advanced processing makes it a lot easier than before. It's also important to point out that this works in both directions. So if the PLAN is using better sensors and processing, you bet the U.S. and other navies are as well. - Which brings me to this point that the article doesn't address. "If not the submarine, then what?" The Chieftain (youtube) did a great video on this when there was a lot of talk on the tank being obsolete after watching battles in Ukraine. (He disarms this pretty well). While there are new threats to submarines, the type gives capabilities that aircraft and surface ships cannot match, and until such a combination of features comes about that fulfills the same roles and provides the same effects as a submarine, then it won't be replaced. - I wanna touch on the AUKUS bit, as this article starts taking swipes at it for its expense, states that the submarines will be easily detectable, but then says "just get AIP boats (Air independent propulsion)." There's a valid debate that can occur over what the best bang-for-the-buck is for Australia, and some questionable aspects about the deal (like whether we can actually build the boats on time). But in my opinion, Australia had a very valid reason for going that route that the author glosses over when touting AIP boats. They do not even remotely reach the capabilities of a nuclear boat. AIP boats are something of a misnomer; they do need oxygen, they just carry it with them. It allows them to stay submerged longer, but they're still carrying a much less energy dense fuel, and now they have to carry even more of it underwater. This is fine for Europe's needs, where most operations are going to be close to shore and not far from their bases such as in the Baltic Sea, North Sea, and Mediterranean. AIP is an excellent choice there! But the Pacific is vast, Australia is vast, and those boats are too short ranged and too slow to get anywhere they need to be within a reasonable amount of time in a conflict. Is Australia fights, they're going to want to do with their allies north, and that means in the South China Sea or Philippine Sea, not outside Darwin. The French boats they were originally ordering wouldn't give them that ability, and given they were hopelessly late as it was, they decided to go with a better option. Does Australia need to project that far north? Valid question. If they want a stay-at-home navy, go AIP. But they want to be part of the allied force, so they need something that can really endure and project, and that means 30+ knots sustained for thousands of kilometers. AIP boats can't do that.

indigoabstract 2y ago

As I was reading about submarine stealth techniques, I saw the map and had trouble visualizing it at first, as they colored the land in blue and the water in white. Pretty strange choice for coloring a map.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
Not if your domain is the water. White is the best background color for details. That said, maybe the ground should have been brown or green.
- indigoabstract 2y ago
  Ah, I see, I hadn't thought of that. I guess it makes sense that the Navy people would focus on the sea instead of the land.
karaterobot 2y ago
Same problem. Glad somebody else said it, I always assume I'm the only one who's bothered by this stuff.

travisjungroth 2y ago

After reading the article, it’s fun to just sort of riff from first principles to guess where things are headed. I think there are two types of hiding: silence and camouflage. Silence is where you reduce the signal you emit and reflect. Camouflage is where you mask it with something else. Hiding a gold bar in a basement is camouflage (by this definition). Making your sub reflect sonar to look like a whale is camouflage. Making your sub reflect nothing is silence. Long term, I think silence is a losing strategy for the hider. You can hide with silence in the ocean because it’s so big. But as sensors become more sensitive, the ocean gets “smaller”. I think you run into basic physical limitations on silence well before you do on detection. Like the article suggested, I think the days of quieter propulsion and better propulsion detection being a big part of the game are numbered. I can see camouflage going on longer. Seems like the second stage of the game. What happens when you have 10,000 vehicles emitting all sorts of signatures you can’t disambiguate, and 50 of those are nuclear subs? Or worse, a million objects including civilian UUVs and marine life? That’s essentially the same as non-identification. It’s like using facial identification against a military to find the general, but everyone can change their face at will.

MrSkelter 2y ago
Americas obsession with nuclear propulsion is a large part of the problem. You can’t switch a nuclear power plant off. It’s always making noise and vibrating. These these subs are always noisier than electric units which can be totally off and totally silent, emitting nothing. It’s politics that demands the glamour of a huge nuclear fleet. For stealth nuclear power which makes noise constantly and is nuts radiation is an inferior choice.
adolph 2y ago
> Long term, I think silence is a losing strategy for the hider. You can hide with silence in the ocean because it’s so big. This would also apply to low observability strategies for the atmosphere, no? Perhaps lower observable atmospheric vehicles in general, autonomous or not, would mitigate mass freak-outs like NJ.
- HPsquared 2y ago

ziknard 2y ago

>map in the article "Obviously this blue part here is the land."

xnx 2y ago
Buster?
unsnap_biceps 2y ago
This color scheme broke my brain for a minute as I tried to figure out what landmass the white was.

charles_f 2y ago

> AI-enabled systems that analyze sensor data I really wish publications like IEEE spectrum would call that machine learning. For all intents and purposes "AI" has become a marketing term for "consumer grade chat bots". It has a semi-magical / science fiction aura, and it's bordering on click bait. "Machine learning" is what this kind of signal processing based on training from large data sets. Next thing you know we'll start seeing anything that implements Dijkstra as "AI".

AnarchismIsCool 2y ago
Also, we need to be more specific about what ML actually means. I see a lot of people thinking that Kalman filters/CFAR/wavelet transforms/super-res/DSP correlation/whatever are all just magic AI bullshit that can find any signal regardless of how far below the noise floor it is. I wish we'd go back to referring to things by their core algorithm like "Neural Nets for DSP filtering". I guess that just doesn't get the ultra wealthy dumb fuck class to open their wallet fast enough...
- Syonyk 2y ago
  > ... just magic AI bullshit... Given how many have grown up with the phrase, "Computer, enhance!" - I expect a lot of people treat it exactly like that!

photochemsyn 2y ago

The underwater drone technology being developed could drastically cut military expenditures by making aircraft carrier-centric naval strategies obsolete. Look at this Orca XLUUV developed by the US Navy and Boeing - it can carry an eight ton payload, travel thousands of miles, and doesn't have to surface for extended periods (although it is diesel-electric, a hybrid of sorts). The depth limit is certainly classified but it could probably sit well below surface ship detection limits, and even be outfitted with nuclear payloads. https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2024/06/our-first-look-at-the-us-navys-orca-xluuv-fitted-with-payload-module/ https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2024/06/our-first-look-... Note this thing could also be equipped with autonomous drones, eg it could surface, release a swarm of aerial attack drones, and submerge. This sort of makes aircraft-carrier centric battle groups obsolete, and it's far cheaper too. Notably, US shipyards are mostly building military ships these days; a more rational policy would return these shipyards to building cargo ships, an area where China currently dominates. This highlights why an economy that revolves around the military-industrial sector will always lag behind economically in comparison to countries that invest in more productive enterprises; eg a tank, once build, can only destroy; building large cranes instead means you are set up for big infrastructure projects.

kjkjadksj 2y ago
At the end of the day the aircraft carrier is basically a huge truck. If the warfare is now drones thats great you have this huge truck you can load to the brim with them and park or deliver around the world.

adamc 2y ago

No expertise here, but wouldn't another strategy be to attack the sensors? Ideally subtly, but. And another strategy be to overwhelm the sensors? Have a million dummy subs that give off sensor readings suggesting they are real, when in fact they are cheaper drones? Kind of the way prey overwhelm predators by all hatching at the same time.

AnarchismIsCool 2y ago
Yeah, article is full of shit. It's just another evolution in The Game. You'll probably see subs get slightly smaller and more automated though, also probably able to control larger formations of unmanned systems. We see this with stealth aircraft. You can hunt them from the comfort of your living room with <$1000 in equipment. They're not invisible, I have yet to see a picture of an empty parking space unironically labeled "stealth aircraft". They're optimized to prevent categorization (NCTR) and precision fire control (X band specifically) so actually prioritizing and engaging them is difficult, especially at range. So now we see them moving towards being drone motherships so they can stay at the ranges where their stealth is useful. Keeping that in mind, subs are also now packing much longer range weapons now and even if you can vaguely locate them with a variety of methods, you still need to go over there and kill the damn thing. We aren't seeing anyone investing in ballistic missile launched torpedos yet because these methods aren't necessarily able to provide a firing solution for such a weapon, just that "there's something weird in this square mile, maybe go investigate"