Is the Age of the Submarine Over?

[Onkel Neal]

Is the Age of the Submarine Over?

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) analyst and retired U.S. Navy commander postulates that a technological revolution is about to overtake undersea warfare, rendering the wine-dark sea transparent to hostile antisubmarine (ASW) forces for the first time. This would be a bad thing from the standpoint of U.S. naval mastery.

This article hints at technologies that could imperil the submarine as an undetectable force, but I think we are still along way from it.

[Jimbuna]

Looks like the UK are currently leading in the race to do away with submarines

[Platapus]

Are any other weapon systems obsolete and useless be cause they can be seen? No.

Seeing is not the same as fighting.


If this should happen, the role and use of submarines will probably change to adapt to the battlespace environment, but that can be said about pretty much any weapon system.

[Carl of Psionics]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

Is the Age of the Submarine Over?



This article hints at technologies that could imperil the submarine as an undetectable force, but I think we are still along way from it.

Thanks, Onkel Neal mate.

[PacificSwordsman]

No way, no how.

[Rockstar]

Underwater warfare is changing but its not going away and neither are submarines. But it could be said the construction and use of manned submarines as a primary delivery system is being reconsidered.

Also , its well known NOAA and police use LIDAR but nothing on how the military is using it for the detection of underwater objects. Inquiring minds want to know

[ikalugin]

It is like with tanks or other major military equipment items. They are not going obsolete, it is just that they are going sufficiently expensive to preclude small wealthy countries from operating them in numbers.

[Mr Quatro]

The USA could always just claim the Gulf of ALaska and stay within it's boundaries while preventing any other country from fishing or transiting the area.

Trump's the man that can do it ... He can do anything

[Castout]

"...rendering the wine-dark sea transparent to hostile antisubmarine (ASW) forces for the first time..."

Hmm, from that sentence I speculate the US to have found a device most probably airborne device that's capable of detecting a submarine target in a wide area.

Probably a sea penetrating radar like device either on aircraft or satellite.

Hmm?!

http://gentleseas.blogspot.co.id/201...ubmarines.html

[ikalugin]

Basic physics make direct radar detection of submarines hard.

[Castout]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

Basic physics make direct radar detection of submarines hard.

It's not literal radar, it's radar-like device. Something that can scan the ocean and detect submarines.

Satellites are able to see difference in temperature and wake generated by a submerged submarine thus enabling them to detect submarines with relative ease.

The reason of the article is that besides the US and Russia, China has probably begun sending these satellites into orbit....thus the fuss.

[ikalugin]

The problem is with inroducing those ideas into practice.

For example, can you name specific US desighns that use those principles to detect submarines and their capabilities?

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

The problem is with inroducing those ideas into practice.

For example, can you name specific US desighns that use those principles to detect submarines and their capabilities?

I don't mean to be rude ikalugin, but you would be the last person we would share that information with

[Castout]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

The problem is with inroducing those ideas into practice.

For example, can you name specific US desighns that use those principles to detect submarines and their capabilities?

Easier to ask your government. They have them too according to the blogpost I posted. If they are willing to tell you

[Rockstar]

Dont understand it but the technology sure sounds cool here's just a few in the works. Found at the European Patent Office

LIDAR
A light detection and ranging (LIDAR) system uses dual detectors to provide three-dimensional imaging of underwater objects (or other objects hidden by a partially transmissive medium). One of the detectors is a low resolution, high bandwidth detector. The other is a high resolution, narrow bandwidth detector. An initiallaser pulse is transmitted to known x-y coordinates of a target area. The photo signals returned from the targetarea from this initial pulse are directed to the low resolution, high bandwidth detector, where a preliminary determination as to the location (depth, or z coordinate) of an object in the target area is made based on the time-of-receipt of the return photo signal. A second laser pulse is then transmitted to the targetarea and the return photo signals from such second laser pulse are directed to the high resolution, narrow bandwidth detector. This high resolution detector is gated on at a time so that only photo signals returned from a narrow “slice” of the target area (corresponding to the previously detected depth of the object) are received. An image of the detected object is then reconstructed from the signals generated by the high resolution detector. In a preferred embodiment, the two detectors are housed in a single digicon tube, with magnetic deflection being used to steer the beam to the appropriate detector.

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BAE Systems
A method for detecting, tracking and locating submarines ( 24 ) utilizes pulsed coherent radiation from a laser ( 12 ) that is projected down through a water column, with particles in the water producing speckle from backscatter of the random particle distribution, with correlation of two closely time-spaced particle-based speckle patterns providing an intensity measurement indicative of the presence of a submarine. Subsurface submarine movement provides a subsurface wake which causes movement of particles such that two closely-spaced "snapshots" of the returns from particles in the same water column can detect particle movement due to the wake. The magnitude of the speckle pattern change indicates particle movement.; In one embodiment, the return signals are imaged onto an intensified CCD or APA array that capture two successive laser pulses through the utilization of dual pixel registered cameras. Note that in the subject system, phase information is converted to measurable intensity information relating to particle motion.



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MARTIN MARIETTA CORP
The present invention relates to a hydrophone and to a virtual array of hydrophones for sensing the amplitude, frequency, and in arrays, the direction of sonic waves in water. The hydrophone employs a laser beam which is focused upon a small "focal" volume of water in which natural light scattering matter is suspended and which matter vibrates in synchronism with any sonic waves present. The vibration produces a phase modulation of the scattered light which may be recovered by optical heterodyne and sensitive phase detection techniques. The sonic waves are sensed at locations displaced from the focusing lenses. Because of this remote sensing capability, the physical hardware of an array of hydrophones may be confined to a small area comparable to the dimensions of the lenses themselves while the sensing of the sonic waves virtually occurs at widely spaced, remote focal volumes. Thus, by combining the signals from these remote focal volumes, a virtual array of hydrophones may be formed whose dimensions are large enough in relation to the sonic wavelengths of interest to achieve high directionality but without the penalties of hydrodynamic drag usually associated with large area arrays.



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GTE
Subsurface waves in an ocean are created by the turbulence in a submarine's wake. These waves can be remotely detected by a search submarine by monitoring subsurface water temperatures using a laser. A pulsed laser beam is directed into the water to at least the depth of the thermocline and an analysis is made of the resultant Brillouin and Rayleigh backscatter components. Wavelength shifted Brillouin scatter is mixed with the unshifted Rayleigh scatter in a self-heterodyne manner for each volume element of illuminated water, and the frequency of the heterodyne signal is measured and converted into equivalent temperature values. This produces the desired temperature-depth profile of the water enabling detection of the first submarine by tracking the internal waves at or near the ocean thermocline.