Russians chase of US sub.

[nikimcbee]

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20140809/191869986/Russia-Forces-US-Submarine-Out-of-Boundary-Waters.html

"On August 7, 2014, the patrol forces of the Northern Fleet detected a foreign submarine, supposedly a US Navy Virginia-class one, in the Barents Sea. A seaborne anti-submarine group, as well as an anti-submarine airplane Il-38, was sent to the region to search and track it down," the source said. :hmmm:
Are they getting better or are we getting worse?

[Betonov]

I'm surprised the Russians didn't tried to ram her

[Nexus7]

supposedly a Virginia class. From the superficial info i gathered there are about 7 in service and other 30 are planned, and it has to be the successor of the 688i. It is cheaper than the Seawolf class, I wonder if a SW would have been detected? would be interesting to know more, like what area and how it's been detected...

[Stealhead]

I know I know!! Someone like Aldrich Ames probably sold them information.

Or the story is a bogus lie.Of course anything can be found just as there is no true "Stealth" aircraft there surely is no 100% undetectable submarine. How well can you trust a Russian media outlet? Remember that the Russian government controls what they say.

[Skybird]

That Russians hunt and scare away American/British boats and Americans scaring away Russian boats is somethign i would expect to happen "every day", a routine. And not just now, but since always. Its just that usually both sides do not put it up in the media.

[Oberon]

I'd wager that story is in the media for the benefit of the Russian people, to hammer home the fact that Russia is 'under siege' from the west, etc, etc.

Otherwise it's just business as normal, after all, how many times have we read in our media outlets that a Russian aircraft has been escorted by NATO jets or a Russian submarine was detected x miles off the coast, etc.

Just another day in the decades old game of Cowboys and Cossacks. :03:

[Jimbuna]

:hmmm:
Are they getting better or are we getting worse?

I'd wager it is the Russians getting better.

[Skybird]

Russian bombers are currently penetrating the North American air defence zone frequently, btw. A systematic testing of the US defence system and reaction schemes/times.

[daft]

About a week ago a US RC-135 entered Swedish airspace after having forced away from it's eavesdropping station off Kaliningrad.

[Armistead]

Was Sarah Palin right afterall:o

[Sailor Steve]

Are they getting better or are we getting worse?
I'd wager it is the Russians getting better.
Or not. The headline talks about a US sub, but the story only says "supposedly".

They "forced the submarine out of Russian waters after a 27-minute contact." Or they lost contact and the sub is still there. Or it wasn't American. Or it was a whale. The known facts are they made contact with something, investigated it, and lost contact. Everything else is speculation, this time even on their part.

[Oberon]

Russian bombers are currently penetrating the North American air defence zone frequently, btw. A systematic testing of the US defence system and reaction schemes/times.

Which has been going on, with just a brief pause, for about fifty years... :O:

BTW, the air defence zone of the US, in this case Alaska, sometimes extends into international waters, the Russians haven't actually penetrated into US national airspace.

http://www.adn.com/article/20140807/norad-rumor-russian-bombers-alaska-airspace-isnt-quite-what-it-seems

[magicstix]

https://i.imgflip.com/b0isy.jpg


I'm skeptical. The Russians claim to have detected multiple Virginia class subs... They aren't exactly easy to find.

[Stealhead]

Which has been going on, with just a brief pause, for about fifty years... :O:

BTW, the air defence zone of the US, in this case Alaska, sometimes extends into international waters, the Russians haven't actually penetrated into US national airspace.

http://www.adn.com/article/20140807/norad-rumor-russian-bombers-alaska-airspace-isnt-quite-what-it-seems

Yeah all part of the game really.

[Platapus]

I'd wager that story is in the media for the benefit of the Russian people, to hammer home the fact that Russia is 'under siege' from the west, etc, etc.

Otherwise it's just business as normal, after all, how many times have we read in our media outlets that a Russian aircraft has been escorted by NATO jets or a Russian submarine was detected x miles off the coast, etc.

Just another day in the decades old game of Cowboys and Cossacks. :03:

I am shocked..Shocked, I say, that you would even intimate that a government would make-up/embellish such a story for political purposes. Especially, when there is no way any of the citizens could verify the story.

No government in the world would do such a thing. That would be wrong. :nope:

[Skybird]

https://i.imgflip.com/b0isy.jpg


I'm skeptical. The Russians claim to have detected multiple Virginia class subs... They aren't exactly easy to find.

They are easier to find than a German 212 or a Swedish Gotland! :D :O:

[magicstix]

They are easier to find than a German 212 or a Swedish Gotland! :D :O:

[Citation Needed]

[Betonov]

A Swedish Gotland sub sneaked inside a carrier group during exercises and took a photo of the USS Ronald Reagan and sneaked away.

Unfortunately I can only find a wiki article.

In 2004, the Swedish government received a request from the United States of America to lease HMS Gotland – Swedish-flagged, commanded and manned, for a duration of one year for use in anti-submarine warfare exercises. The Swedish government granted this request in October 2004, with both navies signing a memorandum of understanding on March 21, 2005.[5][6] The lease was extended for another 12 months in 2006.[7][8][9] In July 2007, HMS Gotland departed San Diego for Sweden.[10]
HMS Gotland managed to snap several pictures of the USS Ronald Reagan during a wargaming exercise in the Pacific Ocean, effectively "sinking" the aircraft carrier.[11] The exercise was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the US Fleet against diesel-electric submarines, which some have noted as severely lacking.

And

After being refit and upgraded to sustain the higher temperatures of tropical water,[4] HMS Halland took part in a multi-national exercise in the Mediterranean from September 16, 2000. Allegedly, there she remained undetected while still recording many of her friendly adversaries, attracting interest from the participating countries. In early November the same year, she participated in a NATO "blue-water" exercise in the Atlantic. There she reportedly won a victory in a mock "duel" with Spanish naval units, and then the same in similar duel against a French SSN, a nuclear-powered attack submarine. She also "defeated" an American SSN, the USS Houston.[4]

[magicstix]

A Swedish Gotland sub sneaked inside a carrier group during exercises and took a photo of the USS Ronald Reagan and sneaked away.

Unfortunately I can only find a wiki article.



And

While these tidbits tend to make for good PR, they don't really mean anything as far as a Gotland's noise level compared to a Virginia...

In an exercise, there are training objectives to be met, and carrier strike groups aren't always in an ASW posture, not that skimmer sonar operators are all that great anyway... Besides, if the USN just killed everyone in wargames there wouldn't be much point to holding them, would there?

There's also not much point in comparing a Gotland to a flight 1 688 like USS Houston, since the old 688s are probably the loudest submarines in the fleet...

Modern diesels are quiet, no doubt about it, and they're certainly a pain to track, but just because they get a kill in an exercise doesn't mean they'd out-sneak a cutting edge design like a VA.

[Skybird]

Fact is that heads rolled when a Gotland - and on another occasion a German sub as well - penetrated the US carrier group's escort shield in the past. When a German sub once shot fireworks at a carrier after it took photos and then surfaced beside a carrier in closest vicinity to it, the Admiral onboard was said to have "exploded". :haha:

More meaningful may be the fact that the US Navy "leased" a Swedish Gotland some years ago that participated in some excercise, with results from those exercises that rang alarm bells in America, and so they asked the Swedes whether they would stay for longer time, to test their procedures and technology against it - and that was not the usual ,military excercise context anymore, that was about cracking that Swedish bug open. But they couldn't. Thje boat stayed first for some months and then for over one year, as a training partner - because they were unable to find it and the Gotland raced circles around its hunters at will. Last report I read somewhere about it was that the Americans were anything but happy.

The worries weigh heavy when imagining such a boat in the hands of a real enemy, or rogue nation.

The Swedes however are smirking until today about it, :D saying that the Us observers they took on their boat were "sweating blood" when seeing how chnceless the US units were in trying to find it. As far as I know the Gotland was not detected and intercepted a single time when being hunted, and achieved all its attack objectives in training, sinking them all. That was once reported on some English navy technology website, maybe two years ago.

The German boats are that good that the Americans once tried to buy the whole German shipbuilding company to get their hands on the blueprints and to prevent the Germans to sell the technology to customers maybe that the US would not welcome to have such boats.

Conventional boats with these new fuel cells and comparable concepts simply are more silent than nuclear boats. The Gotlands and 212s/214s have the reputation to be "undetectable" currently. For best nuclear boats, ask the Brits and Americans. For best non-nuclear boats, ask the Germans, Dutch and Swedes.

[vanjast]

the Admiral onboard was said to have "exploded"
Would have loved to have been there... whoops.. there goes my fleet command :)

Well, at least the US navy has in-inadvertently admitted it has a 'technical problem', and is trying to do something about it. I'll give them credit for that :03:

[Stealhead]

While these tidbits tend to make for good PR, they don't really mean anything as far as a Gotland's noise level compared to a Virginia...

In an exercise, there are training objectives to be met, and carrier strike groups aren't always in an ASW posture, not that skimmer sonar operators are all that great anyway... Besides, if the USN just killed everyone in wargames there wouldn't be much point to holding them, would there?

There's also not much point in comparing a Gotland to a flight 1 688 like USS Houston, since the old 688s are probably the loudest submarines in the fleet...

Modern diesels are quiet, no doubt about it, and they're certainly a pain to track, but just because they get a kill in an exercise doesn't mean they'd out-sneak a cutting edge design like a VA.

Like it or not there are modern diesel boats that are far quieter than any nuclear powered submarine simple truth. Now of course the trade off is a diesel boat has less electrical output and therefore can not carry as powerful of senor gear as a nuclear powered submarine can. The trade off for a nuclear powered submarine is that it they use steam turbines which no matter what is done make a certain amount of noise that simply can not be avoided. A diesel electric on the other hand which can run purely on batteries (while still having full use of its weapons and sensors) can be very very hard to detect.

Another factor that is changing is a shift in what waters one needs to control.During the Cold War this was the major oceans.Today littoral waters(the zone from 0 to 600 feet in depth) are far more important. A nuclear submarine whose element is the deep sea has much more area to hide itself and its sound signature in meaning that you do not have to be that quite you just have to be quite enough to hide in the ambient sounds.
In littoral waters you do not have nearly as much ambient noise and depth to hide your noise in.

[daft]

Australian sub operating against US surface forces. You really need to watch all the way to the end :D :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Kv4rqR6RQ

[nikimcbee]

Australian sub operating against US surface forces. You really need to watch all the way to the end :D :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Kv4rqR6RQ

:haha::up: Those sneaky Cons. Needs more :/\\k:.

[vanjast]

This scenario is probably typical of any military establishment that gets a shock when they find themselves suddenly out of practice, when dueling on an equal footing.

Seems to happen a lot... but at least the US has taken action, where most high commands are too stupid/blind to see the facts.
:03:

[Gerald]

HMS Gotland on NBC Swedish Submarine (Swedish Subtitle)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoMj1TjNTFw

[Skybird]

That a decent contemporary sub keeps the upper hand over surface forces, probably is not really a surprise. That the Swedes also defeated modern US submarines - that was the shocking news.

[BrucePartington]

Australian sub operating against US surface forces. You really need to watch all the way to the end :D :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Kv4rqR6RQ
A most fitting victory signal :arrgh!::yeah:

[Nippelspanner]

https://i.imgflip.com/b0isy.jpg


I'm skeptical. The Russians claim to have detected multiple Virginia class subs... They aren't exactly easy to find.
I think you're just living the American dream...

[Oberon]

There is a specific reason the US Navy hired the Gotland SSK for a while, and that was a concern at a weakness in their ASW ability when it came to detecting and destroying SSKs. There are numerous 'claims' of SSKs killing high value US targets in wargames, but it's often hard to sort the fact from the fiction in those respects. However consider this, during the Falklands war, one of the biggest time consumers of the Royal Navy was searching for two Argentinian submarines, one was a Type 209 and the other an old Balao class, we managed to attack and disable one (The Santa Fe, the Balao class) while it was at pier, but the other eluded us and caused the RN no end of headaches trying to find it, to the extend that HMS Brilliant torpedoed three whales after mistaking them for a submarine.
Furthermore, it was a warranted concern, the San Luis (the Type 209) had the opportunity to attack three RN warships during its patrol but fortunately for us, the Argentinian torpedoes were faulty and none hit.

So basically, just the knowledge of the existence of the San Luis in the region of the Task Force caused severe concerns and problems for the Royal Navy, and had her torpedoes had been working, the Royal Navy would most likely have had to divert more resources into hunting down and killing the San Luis if she had successful sunk HMS Brilliant or Yarmouth.

Long story short, never underestimate an SSK, or you'll find yourself full of holes. :03:

[nikimcbee]

I wonder what the score is SSK vs skimmers in the open ocean? No islands to hide by, deep water.
I would guess the subs have the upper hand.

[Oberon]

Hmmm, depends on a few factors tbh, skimmers have the advantage of usually having a helo on hand to dip and drop buoys, if they're lucky they can catch the SSK while it's snorkelling and at its noisest. If not then they just have to hope that they drop a buoy close enough to detect the hull noise, or catch a good return from a ping.

Open and deep waters are not generally the playing grounds of an SSK though, as Stealhead has pointed out, SSKs like to hide in waters which are not much deeper than their max depth, that way they can hide on the bottom, thus screwing with the active returns and if they're smart enough, wait for the ship to come to them rather than expend energy and sound getting to the ship.

Open and deep water is an SSNs playground, they've got the speed and hull strength to go deep and fast, they don't need to worry about air, so they can also play under the ice caps, they are a bit noisier but they can mask this by hiding deeper than an SSK generally can.
That being said, the USN did use to use the Skipjacks and Sturgeons a lot on the old barndoor watching exercises outside Polyarny, and we'd occasionally drop a Swiftsure in the area, but for our close intel runs it was usually an Oberon SSK, because they were quieter and so could get closer without being detected. Not that the Swiftsures and Sturgeons didn't also have their successes, but the SSKs were built for it.

[Skybird]

Like Oberon said, each toy plays in its dedicated playground. As long as that is so, I always put my money on the sub. If both sides are on temporary technology levels, it still will not win always. But most of the time, I assume, and very clearly so. The American concept of carrier battle groups imo only works in small wars against minor, inferior enemies that cannot really bite back. Against an enemy with a decent capacity in waging submarine warfare, this doctrine basing on carrier groups imo is doomed to fail.

Also take into account the Chinese carrier killer missiles. They improve them at frightening pace.

Military thinkers tend to repeat methods by which they won the last war. By that they often miss that time and technology and knowledge have moved on. So it was with battleships in WWII. So I think it will be with carriers in the next possible major conflict (China). Not even mentioning the growing number of increasingly improved Chinese subs.