4 ms·

Only an armchair enthusiast, but: these diesel/electric subs are quite slow and have limited range, certainly compared to a carrier group. Even with the new(ish

Only an armchair enthusiast, but: these diesel/electric subs are quite slow and have limited range, certainly compared to a carrier group. Even with the new(ish) Air Independent Propulsion, they can stay underwater for a long time - maybe weeks - but can't go very fast. Their limited endurance also means they have to stay close-ish to their bases. The AIP bit often relies on special fuels (hydrogen, ethanol, and in any case, compressed oxygen) meaning they can't refuel at any random port, or generate the fuel at sea, like recharging batteries from diesel power. They are amazing and great at coastal operations, but I just don't see how they can chase a carrier group around. They could of course lie in wait and pick the right spot/get lucky, but I'm not sure if this is a viable strategy.

maxglute 1y ago
See PRC recently revealed XXLUUVs (US will be building them too I imagine), large submarine drones, long endurance, no crew, i.e. expendable blue water one way munition launchers. Space ISR means all movement of carrier groups at any given time is essentially known. Group of XXLUUVs can be plotted on different intercept trajectories. They can be spatially distributed to handoff shadowing. The real problem is not even ASW anymore, imagine subsect of XXLUUVs fleet blasting active sonar not trying even to hide to find subsurface, queue meme of that trumpet boy following annoyed girl. i.e. loud drones that weaponize their expendability as trip wire. Imagine conop: we know where your expensive manned surface/subsurface platforms are, we don't care about being sunk, we're always going to be blasting sensors so we know if you're trying to take us out, mean while we're close enough that we can counter fire before your munitions reach us, and since we're in terminal range, we have weapons grade track all ready. If you ignore us, we're just going to keep following you with weapons grade track that we're broadcasting for other platforms, some of which are other XXLUUVs just outside your ASW range that you don't know about. This moves away from technologic subsurface cat and mouse to industrial/attritional, i.e. PRC can crank out more theatre level XXLUUVs than US can SSNs or their own UUVs.
- rich_sasha 1y ago
  I see this narrative everywhere: that drones are inherently, and always, much cheaper and effective. I think it's maybe more complicated than this. In some cases, sure, you can strip out 90% of the ability and pay 1% of the price, and that's a great tradeoff. Eliminating the human means cost savings and greater expendability - a significant consideration is losing your trainer operators and not being able to replace them. But let's take an advanced aerial drone. Not a one-way Shahed drone but a F-35 or F-22 contender. It will still need all or most of the advanced avionics that make F-35s expensive. If this is the expensive bit, then you can't save that much by just taking the human out. So an advanced submarine will surely still be expensive if it aims for a similar level of capability. And if not... Sure. You can make it Nx simpler and hope it is at least Nx cheaper. But even then there's the question of how expensive it is to defeat. Ukraine is ingeniously working to defeat Russian drones at ever lower costs, as Russia tries to send ever more and more of them at lower and lower prices. It's not enough to make something cheaply - it comes down to "value" for money. If these super-simple super-cheap Chinese drones can likewise be defeated by cheap weaponry, the impact is limited. The other thing Ukraine war demonstrates is that there are limits to what you can do with cheap drones. They are fine for harassing each other - terrorist bombings of civilian areas, disrupting oil refining etc. But apart from stunning special operations done by drones by the Ukraine side, the deep and painful strikes are still done by expensive classical rockets - ATACMS, Storm Shadow etc.
  - dmix 1y ago
    > It will still need all or most of the advanced avionics that make F-35s expensive. Those jets are catch-all do-everything machines, almost entirely because it's so crazy expensive to build jets + the political/contracting games played, that they are forced to jam everything into them. There's lots of efficiency and tactical gains in small niche applications where each platform is specialized for the job. > Ukraine is ingeniously working to defeat Russian drones at ever lower costs, as Russia tries to send ever more and more of them at lower and lower prices. It's not enough to make something cheaply - it comes down to "value" for money. If these super-simple super-cheap Chinese drones can likewise be defeated by cheap weaponry, the impact is limited. Even in Ukraine we really haven't seen 'cheap' defenses properly scale up to deal with the drone problem. Ukraine was getting 90% shoot downs in the early days but that's changed in the past year where Russia's tactics adapted. They've have been getting hammered weekly, even deep into their air defences along the polish border. With Chinese SAMs and extreme range air-to-air missiles all of the fancy F-35 avionics will mostly be just them doing everything trying to survive those encounters far away from the frontline in Taiwan... where they mostly become very expensive missile launch platforms (bombers) and some radar networking. If you remove maximum survivability + narrow into niches those get a lot cheaper.
- daymanstep 1y ago
  > Space ISR means all movement of carrier groups at any given time is essentially known. Do you have a source for this claim? I have argued with colleagues for years and they all say that satellites cannot track carriers
  - maxglute 1y ago
    Track as in find carriers (then cue other assets to fix), not eyes on deck / line of sight / provide weapons grade track at all times. Movement as in we know carrier can only be in this small geographic area. Nothing that states it as fact, but there's write ups about PRC yaogan IMINT constellations many years ago, that basically said when constellation size reach X, they'll have Y revisitation rates. We're at X & Y, and people in PLA watching, doing napkin math, using PRC commercial sat specs (jilin/gaofen) like swath size to determine that more or less on paper has functionally persistence in at least pacific theatre, i.e. the gaps were insubstantial that predictive algos can find carriers basically at all times, unless carriers can teleport. Combine this this PRC rolling out a lot of SAR in last few years (i.e. like 200-300 more satellites into have launched since initial articles) + wake detection algos, and on paper they should be able to persistently track carriers through cloud coverage. Of course cannot say definitely, it's just mathmematically possible now unlike a few years ago when constellation too small. Again, none of this will be publically disclosed as "fact", it's more (as customary with analysis is PRC), the supporting evidence is so overwhelming that it cannot be denied. Extrapolate to PRC and US spaceforce rolls out megaconstellations sized IMINT, it's more or less over for carriers. Maybe stealth bombers or submarines.
cwillu 1y ago
Diesels are basically intelligent mines.
advisedwang 1y ago
> They could of course lie in wait and pick the right spot/get lucky, but I'm not sure if this is a viable strategy. "we have only to be lucky once, you will have to be lucky always"
psunavy03 1y ago
As a former Navy officer, the best description I ever heard of a conventionally powered submarine is "a mobile minefield." Nuclear is a different story.

maxglute 1y ago

See PRC recently revealed XXLUUVs (US will be building them too I imagine), large submarine drones, long endurance, no crew, i.e. expendable blue water one way munition launchers. Space ISR means all movement of carrier groups at any given time is essentially known. Group of XXLUUVs can be plotted on different intercept trajectories. They can be spatially distributed to handoff shadowing. The real problem is not even ASW anymore, imagine subsect of XXLUUVs fleet blasting active sonar not trying even to hide to find subsurface, queue meme of that trumpet boy following annoyed girl. i.e. loud drones that weaponize their expendability as trip wire. Imagine conop: we know where your expensive manned surface/subsurface platforms are, we don't care about being sunk, we're always going to be blasting sensors so we know if you're trying to take us out, mean while we're close enough that we can counter fire before your munitions reach us, and since we're in terminal range, we have weapons grade track all ready. If you ignore us, we're just going to keep following you with weapons grade track that we're broadcasting for other platforms, some of which are other XXLUUVs just outside your ASW range that you don't know about. This moves away from technologic subsurface cat and mouse to industrial/attritional, i.e. PRC can crank out more theatre level XXLUUVs than US can SSNs or their own UUVs.

rich_sasha 1y ago
I see this narrative everywhere: that drones are inherently, and always, much cheaper and effective. I think it's maybe more complicated than this. In some cases, sure, you can strip out 90% of the ability and pay 1% of the price, and that's a great tradeoff. Eliminating the human means cost savings and greater expendability - a significant consideration is losing your trainer operators and not being able to replace them. But let's take an advanced aerial drone. Not a one-way Shahed drone but a F-35 or F-22 contender. It will still need all or most of the advanced avionics that make F-35s expensive. If this is the expensive bit, then you can't save that much by just taking the human out. So an advanced submarine will surely still be expensive if it aims for a similar level of capability. And if not... Sure. You can make it Nx simpler and hope it is at least Nx cheaper. But even then there's the question of how expensive it is to defeat. Ukraine is ingeniously working to defeat Russian drones at ever lower costs, as Russia tries to send ever more and more of them at lower and lower prices. It's not enough to make something cheaply - it comes down to "value" for money. If these super-simple super-cheap Chinese drones can likewise be defeated by cheap weaponry, the impact is limited. The other thing Ukraine war demonstrates is that there are limits to what you can do with cheap drones. They are fine for harassing each other - terrorist bombings of civilian areas, disrupting oil refining etc. But apart from stunning special operations done by drones by the Ukraine side, the deep and painful strikes are still done by expensive classical rockets - ATACMS, Storm Shadow etc.
- dmix 1y ago
  > It will still need all or most of the advanced avionics that make F-35s expensive. Those jets are catch-all do-everything machines, almost entirely because it's so crazy expensive to build jets + the political/contracting games played, that they are forced to jam everything into them. There's lots of efficiency and tactical gains in small niche applications where each platform is specialized for the job. > Ukraine is ingeniously working to defeat Russian drones at ever lower costs, as Russia tries to send ever more and more of them at lower and lower prices. It's not enough to make something cheaply - it comes down to "value" for money. If these super-simple super-cheap Chinese drones can likewise be defeated by cheap weaponry, the impact is limited. Even in Ukraine we really haven't seen 'cheap' defenses properly scale up to deal with the drone problem. Ukraine was getting 90% shoot downs in the early days but that's changed in the past year where Russia's tactics adapted. They've have been getting hammered weekly, even deep into their air defences along the polish border. With Chinese SAMs and extreme range air-to-air missiles all of the fancy F-35 avionics will mostly be just them doing everything trying to survive those encounters far away from the frontline in Taiwan... where they mostly become very expensive missile launch platforms (bombers) and some radar networking. If you remove maximum survivability + narrow into niches those get a lot cheaper.
daymanstep 1y ago
> Space ISR means all movement of carrier groups at any given time is essentially known. Do you have a source for this claim? I have argued with colleagues for years and they all say that satellites cannot track carriers
- maxglute 1y ago
  Track as in find carriers (then cue other assets to fix), not eyes on deck / line of sight / provide weapons grade track at all times. Movement as in we know carrier can only be in this small geographic area. Nothing that states it as fact, but there's write ups about PRC yaogan IMINT constellations many years ago, that basically said when constellation size reach X, they'll have Y revisitation rates. We're at X & Y, and people in PLA watching, doing napkin math, using PRC commercial sat specs (jilin/gaofen) like swath size to determine that more or less on paper has functionally persistence in at least pacific theatre, i.e. the gaps were insubstantial that predictive algos can find carriers basically at all times, unless carriers can teleport. Combine this this PRC rolling out a lot of SAR in last few years (i.e. like 200-300 more satellites into have launched since initial articles) + wake detection algos, and on paper they should be able to persistently track carriers through cloud coverage. Of course cannot say definitely, it's just mathmematically possible now unlike a few years ago when constellation too small. Again, none of this will be publically disclosed as "fact", it's more (as customary with analysis is PRC), the supporting evidence is so overwhelming that it cannot be denied. Extrapolate to PRC and US spaceforce rolls out megaconstellations sized IMINT, it's more or less over for carriers. Maybe stealth bombers or submarines.

cwillu 1y ago

Diesels are basically intelligent mines.

advisedwang 1y ago

> They could of course lie in wait and pick the right spot/get lucky, but I'm not sure if this is a viable strategy. "we have only to be lucky once, you will have to be lucky always"

psunavy03 1y ago

As a former Navy officer, the best description I ever heard of a conventionally powered submarine is "a mobile minefield." Nuclear is a different story.