Why can't torpedoes sink other torpedoes???

[Caseck]

You're telling me that ANY torpedo could survive a 500-1000kg warhead detonated within even a quarter of a mile of it? I find that very hard to believe! It would at least wreck it's little transducers, making it BLIND and useless! That's if it didn't set off it's impact fuzing!

Why can't torpedoes sink other torpedoes? They're all loud and noisy and easy targets!

Anyone got questions/comments and/or theories?

[Ula Jolly]

As for active torpedoes, they home on pings. I don't think such a tiny object as a torpedo provides much return on active sonar, and there may be a discrimination range set by the producer.

As for passive ones, I THINK that a plausible explanation would be frequency discrimination. If not, then it still takes a hell lot to make a torpedo HIT another torpedo. These weapons are intended for enormous objects, and they are not guaranteed a hit within two-three feet.

As for detonation causing a wave that would put other torpedoes out of the game, you have to remember that not only does a pressure wave have different ways of moving underwater, but 260kg (very few warheads are larger. I haven't seen a single torpedo warhead that's a TON! If you have, I must be told so I can use it! :D) is not all that much, especially not when much of the blast is given off to the submarine.

Use mines as reference. These are often quite devastating, the heaviest in DW being a metric ton. Now, when these explode underwater, the effects are not quite like one would expect them on land. The explosion would visually take the shape of a ball, but seeing as water is much heavier than air, and growing heavier with the increasing depth, an explosion is given very little space to move about. The water, while certainly being pushed outwards, will constantly put its weight on the explosion, limiting it dramatically.

[Sea Demon]

not only does a pressure wave have different ways of moving underwater, but 260kg (very few warheads are larger. I haven't seen a single torpedo warhead that's a TON! If you have, I must be told so I can use it! :D) is not all that much, especially not when much of the blast is given off to the submarine.


The closest torpedo I can think of is that Russian 65Cm at a whopping 900kg. Maybe not a Ton, but darn near close.

Sea Demon

[Caseck]

I disagree with your analysis of water as far as explosives are concerned. Perhaps I was not clear. I was speaking of explosive yield of the warheads in TNT, not the technical weight.

Regardless, you are wrong about pressure effects on high explosive.

First of all, I have considerable working knowledge with explosives. And the crazy part about water, is because of that very incompressibility you were talking about, water transmits explosive energy EXTREMELY efficiently. Almost perfectly. (This is because water molecules are packed so tightly together, that they don't need a lot of energy to transmit from one to the next.)

This means, that in effect, the shockwave from an explosion diminishes, you'll have to excuse me, but mathematically in an expanding spherical rate from the origin of the blast. Almost perfectly geometric. In contrast, there is very little diffusion of the blast from the medium, unlike in air.

Because of this, a torpedo would only have to "Be in the ballpark" literally, to have potentially huge shock effect on a target torpedo.

I can't believe those transducers on a torpedo could possibly survive even a relatively far "near miss", and guidance wires could easily be severed or damaged by an explosion in the target torpedo's wake.

They are small targets, but they are VERY NOISY passively, and easy to track operating at high speeds, cavitating as badly as most do.

(I'm sure there are stealth torpedoes, but that's another topic entirely.)

The explosive (Mk48 ADCAP equivalent to 1/2 TON of conventional TNT... Remember, this 488 lbs of explosive is more modern and efficient. I'll leave it at that.) is MORE than capable of damaging or destroying another torpedo within a wide lethal range.

(DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT A 1/2 TON OF TNT WOULD DO TO ANYTHING WITHIN 100 METERS OF IT UNDERWATER???)

(Or is this why seawolf has 8 tubes...)

[TLAM Strike]

There are some arms manufactures working on Anti-torpedo torpedoes. Here is a picture of one:
http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/3096/antitorptorp2os.th.jpg (http://img301.imageshack.us/my.php?image=antitorptorp2os.jpg)

[Caseck]

I'm just saying, if this hasn't been tried with current equipment, you Navy guys really need to get out more!

Doctrine is only a guide to known territory.

(And note the small size of that anti-torpedo.)

[Bellman]

Well as the actress said to the Bishop - 'Never mind size is'nt everything !'

What about deflecting a torp's course by one means or another ? Some anti- Asteroiders seem to think its worth a look. :cool:

[Nexus7]

Caseck, are you addressing WW2 torpedoes?

If no, i hardly can doubt that a change of pressure in the medium detonates a... billions $ torpedo...

You work with explosives? Don't you use detonators? Maybe, electric detonators? :88)

I never tryed this and i hope it won't work, else i'd consider this as another bug... else, why does my Parabellum not fire when i throw her on the wall??? :rotfl:

[Soulchaser]

ermmm....noone said the torp would go off.
but all the sensitive electronics stuff inside might be damaged if an explosion takes place nearby.

[Ula Jolly]

I may not have any Ph.D in any kind of field that could touch this topic, but I do doubt that we know enough about the housing of the torpedo's electronics, as well as how fragile these instruments are, to draw any firm conclusion. I don't know exactly how many live-fire tests there have been with torpedoes, I could actually get some information from contacts in the Norwegian submarine flotilla, but I do know that the current doctrine should suffice; if anything, it makes the game more challenging.
As a matter of fact, when I think about it... the hunted in DW has an advantage of torpedoes exploding on decoys. The fact that torpedoes currently do not seize to work because of a nearby explosion could outweight this advantage.
:hmm:
We'd need some harder evidence, and by that not only mathematical formulas; only the user/producer of the torpedo could give us information about how much the electronics could withstand.

[Nexus7]

Hey Soulchaser,
Ok on that one... and on a self note, i'm particularrily irritable on the subject of detonating torpedoes generally (see topics about countermeasures in DW... still waiting for a decent answer :( ).

But about the effects of pressure on the sensitive components of a torpedo i give you the same answer, as a torpedo running at 50 knots, in a medium like water, already faces a lot of pressure.

About the "shock wave", yes it propagates spherically, but the intensity decreases with the radius raised by factor 3 (very quickly), meaning you'd need to explode your decoy very close to the very fast inbound...

[Soulchaser]

hey nexus7 :know:

sure, but it shouldnt be a problem with todays tech to get a torp to intercept another torp and blow up REALLY close...lets say....5 meters.

[Nexus7]

There are some arms manufactures working on Anti-torpedo torpedoes. [/img][/URL]

TLAM Strike, with the countermeasures we have at disposal this manufacturer'd go bankrupt very quickly :rotfl:

[Nexus7]

Or better said, real quick :know:

[Caseck]

My only point is this:

If a MINE in this game can sink a torpedo...

A torpedo should also be able to sink another torpedo!

Just taking a rough size to distance ratio, that should dictate how close a torp has to be to track on another torpedo actively. (This would pretty much make it impossible to drop an air-launched torp on another torp.)

[timmyg00]

My only point is this:

If a MINE in this game can sink a torpedo...

A torpedo should also be able to sink another torpedo!

Just taking a rough size to distance ratio, that should dictate how close a torp has to be to track on another torpedo actively. (This would pretty much make it impossible to drop an air-launched torp on another torp.) There would have to be an incredible confluence of circumstances for such an occurrence to even have a remote chance of occuring...

Anti-ship or anti-sub torpedoes are not meant to target other torpedoes, and are therefore most likely incapable of doing so.

Additionally, as far as the explosive effects, the explosion of a modern torpedo is not a continually expanding spheroidal shockwave that has a wide effective radius. The nature of such a detonation is such that it "oscillates"... expands, contracts, expands, contracts, repeatedly... until its energy is expended (a very short period of time, to be sure), which literally shakes the target until its main structure (keel or pressure hull) breaks. I've seen an animation of this before, but i forget where...

It's because of this behavior that I believe that a torpedo would have to be much closer to another torpedo than you might think in order for the explosion from one of them to render the other one inoperative.

TG

[MaHuJa]

In terms of the DW game engine, I believe this is as simple as turning on the "torpedo" target flag in the database editor. The torpedo you do that to (Shkval? Oh my... balance, anyone?) would then detonate on torpedoes.

I'll be testing it on the SLMM now - the only difference will be if its the torpedo killing the slmm or the slmm killing the torpedo, though.

(I know that the 2000lb mine will kill all mines and torpedoes within a couple nm when it goes off, as well as the ship that got hit.)

For the real world, though, I believe there are a few possibilities:
-That they aren't all that fragile (fragility of a weapon is not modeled in any way in DW) (and, after all, they are small, catching relatively little of the explosion, as well as small size meaning it "supports" its shell better. It's possible that the anti-torp-torps use penetrators instead of pure explosives?)
-Economics - while the subs are indeed far more expensive, an anti-submarine torp is too expensive for use against a "smaller" target than a sub. (Therefore specialized anti-torp-torps)

[Ula Jolly]

The Shkval uses magnetic distortion for triggering, and WILL have a discrimination range. It is meant for submarines, unless someone along the way made it anti-torp, and the MAD for a torpedo is NIL compared to a submarine. If the designers behind the Shkval had allowed it to detonate on pieces of metal however tiny, they would be lacking something extremely vital. :up:

[Bellman]

Cannot imagine why anti-torp torps would be considered.

Aircraft defense measures do not include anti missile missiles. Why entertain the complexities and high
wasteage costs entailed when a simple drone or decoy can be effective.

Presumably submarine decoys/drones can be controlled in a variety of ways to suit the character of the threat.

[Ula Jolly]

(I know that the 2000lb mine will kill all mines and torpedoes within a couple nm when it goes off, as well as the ship that got hit.)
As for my knowledge of mines, this does not apply. What information do you base this conclusion on?
As for mines that are moored within a few hundred feet of each other, I would assume a chain reaction could happen, but nowadays I think mines are far too advanced to accept something like another mine's explosion! Certain mines are set to count ship counts (useful for busy shiplanes if you know what ship to strike, others search the frequencies to identify certain ships using hydrophones. I doubt contact mines nowadays would accept detonation from such a lightweight contact as a distant explosion, even underwater.
I do not rest my case on much else than a very general knowledge of how modern mines work, but I should be able to find more data in some hours.

[Caseck]

The idea that a torpedo would somehow OUTRUN the shockwave of an underwater detonation is patently false, and defies physics.

Oscillations in the pressure wave? Why would this matter after the first shattering wavefront? How would this make an explosion LESS deadly? Underwater explosions are actually LEAST deadly near the surface! There, the blast gets directed towards the air! And additionally there is the least pressure against a hull-form at shallow depths, giving it MORE resistance to an explosion.

The pressure wave of an explosion travels at 1500m/s underwater. (Speed of sound in water.)

Here, just read this...

http://www.underwaternoise.org.uk/noise_sources/high_explosives.htm

As for the 2000lb mine killing EVERYTHING within 2nm, I think he's talking in the game. I do know they will kill torpedoes IN THE GAME.

Really all I'm hearing is a bunch of naysaying, and nobody is decisively able to defeat what evidence I've posited. The most I will grant you is that this is an unknown, and deserves better scrutiny.

The idea that these torpedoes are hardened to explosions (other than fuzing) doesn't seem supported by any evidence at all. I've never heard of torpedoes undergoing explosion trials, unlike subs and ships, which do.

I don't think anyone's done this, and if they have, they've kept it bottled up.

It is logical that they would be vulnerable, the question is HOW vulnerable.

Food for thought.

[Ula Jolly]

Give us some ease. This is a field where no one are experts, and no one BUT the experts may conclude this or that. There isn't much naysaying going on, just a bit of swimming around and poking at "What if?"s and "Maybe it's not"s. No one is standing on their back legs against'cha.
As for killing within 2nm, that's not in the game. A 1,000 kg heavy mine will not make other mines go kasploom, not the ones I saw that were about three hundred feet from each other.
What proof you have yet to show, is that it's reasonable to consider the torpedo's onboard electronics as as fragile and vulnerable as you want it to. Again, that information could only, and may not in our lifetime, be given by the very right people. Until we know better, it's only sensible to let things be as they are.

[SquidB]

OK. Anti torp torps...how long till someone comes up with anti, anti torp torps?

IF and its a big if we can shoot down adcaps then ok.

To me and my humble opinion....why bother. When you fire a torp you comprimise your postition.

So make it a sub killer rather than a torp killier. Otherwist your just surrendering the intitative to your opponent again?

The best form of defense is offense right?

[MaHuJa]

What I said about the 2000lb mine, is based on my own experience in the game. I've seen it happen, and unfortunately it took out just about the whole minefield I had placed in the path of the enemy ships. And that on a 'forerunner'.

The reason? The attack strength / hitpoints field is combined, meaning that weapons have 1 hitpoint. Anything goes off near them = goodbye. (Also the reason the 0.50s are not that bad against missiles...)

I guess you're right about the shkval, as most torpedoes have MAD SL set to zero. (Quick check found two exceptions, with signatures set to the size of subs! Argh, DWX already!)

The point of anti torp weapons, is that hard kills are that much more certain. Even if I like chaffing missiles, I prefer shooting them down with my own SM-2s. As for now, there IS such a weapon in our arsenals - the mines. Esp against active torps. However, they currently do their work the same way as countermeasures do - by providing a false target to kill instead.

>To me and my humble opinion....why bother. When you fire a torp you comprimise your postition.

When you are fired at, we can safely assume your position is known.

>So make it a sub killer rather than a torp killier. Otherwist your just surrendering the intitative to your opponent again?

Who said anything about firing only torp killers?

[TLAM Strike]

OK. Anti torp torps...how long till someone comes up with anti, anti torp torps?

IF and its a big if we can shoot down adcaps then ok.

To me and my humble opinion....why bother. When you fire a torp you comprimise your postition.

So make it a sub killer rather than a torp killier. Otherwist your just surrendering the intitative to your opponent again?

The best form of defense is offense right?

What if you have a high value submarine like a Boomer? Killing the enemy might be less important than preserving its self. Having a cache of defensive torpedoes would be a assets to a sub like a Boomer.

[timmyg00]

Really all I'm hearing is a bunch of naysaying, and nobody is decisively able to defeat what evidence I've posited. Ummm... what evidence? Any photos (besides that grainy little one in the webpage you linked to - which, by the way, confirms the oscillation I mentioned?) Animations? Videos? Any real numbers for us to sink our teeth into? Or just a bunch of barely supported hot air?

The most I will grant you is that this is an unknown, and deserves better scrutiny. You will grant us? Wow, that's very magnanimous of you :lol:


The idea that a torpedo would somehow OUTRUN the shockwave of an underwater detonation is patently false, and defies physics. A somewhat-deeper-than-cursory scan of the thread will show that nobody mentioned anything about trying to outrun a shockwave from a detonation prior to this mention...

Oscillations in the pressure wave? Why, yes! From the very link you posted:
- Subsidiary pulses when the shock wave is reflected from the seabed and the surface.
- Water displacement in the vicinity of the charge
- Low frequency bubble pulses; caused by the bubble left by the explosion oscillating under the action of hydrostatic pressure.


Why would this matter after the first shattering wavefront? Got any figures on how far that shattering wavefront travels for a given quantity of a given explosive for a detonation at a given depth? Or for what distance it retains that "shattering" characteristic? Seems to me, that's the magic number we're looking for... how far away does one torpedo have to be from another to be safe (i.e. still capable of performing its mission) if one of them detonates?

How would this make an explosion LESS deadly? I don't recall anyone mentioning that it would, or even implying the same.

The naysaying you hear is the open discussion and speculation that we all engage in here, over a variety of topics. Not many of us are experts in these hobbies we hold so dear (though some of us have more knowledge and experience in these things than others), so cut us a break. You imply that we haven't proven you wrong, when you haven't proven yourself right. Why don't you go ask the Navy for about 100lbs of PBXN-103 and stage a test, then come back with the results :P

TG

[Caseck]

Yeah, we're both pretty much arguing from ignorance. And butting heads besides.

To really decide this, we need to know the construction of the torps, as well as the strength of the pressure wave at depth.

Anyone know how thick the skin of a Mk48 ADCAP is?

Naval weapons engineering:
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/navy/docs/es310/uw_wpns/uw_wpns.htm

[Bellman]

Caseck - First let me congratulate you on your change of avator - hope that the Administrators in the
Control Box were'nt sending you a message with that "Shore Leave' one. :)

Some folks just enjoy beeing macho but to spectators it simply looks like 'Stag Rutting'

In another thread you congratulate, I hope sincerely, those ex-naval types for their clam-like secrecy.
Then you provoke/tease out responses in areas which some may consider 'delicate'

Not sure where you are coming from but you sure got a 'Thick skin'

[Caseck]

That's why I considered the above comment about the ADCAP a joke. I figured this thread was done, and certainly didn't expect a reply.

Let me explain:

I actually started that other thread AFTER this one, simply because I realized there IS so little info to work off of, and it occured to me that it wasn't because nobody's done these things, but simply because nobody is going to talk about it! There isn't any way we are going to come up with real facts on this, it's all classified, or nobody is talking about it!

In a way that's cool though, because it really leaves us in a position where we are free to guess at what these capabilities actually could be, rather than being tied to a historical or known capabilities. (Because there really are few hard facts!)

I hope that clarifies the two perspectives I seem to have on this stuff. I'm not really irrational! It's just my perspective has changed from one of being frustrated about the lack of info. At first I thought this was due to institutional lack of creativity, that this data didn't even EXIST, and that nobody had even TRIED to do this stuff, but now I understand WHY there is this lack of info, and I really respect that. It's just amazing that this stuff is locked up that tight! I mean, effectively since WWII, we really don't know ANYTHING new factwise about what submarines can do! That's crazy!

I thought the shore leave avatar was pretty funny actually.

I hope that settles things. No hard feelings.

[goldorak]

I hope that clarifies the two perspectives I seem to have on this stuff. I'm not really irrational! It's just my perspective has changed from one of being frustrated about the lack of info, which at first I thought was due to institutional lack of creativity, to understanding WHY there is this lack of info, and respecting that. (It's not because there ISN'T data, but just because ALL the data, experiments and stuff relating to it, must ALL be classified. That level of secrecy is something that RARELY happens in my field.)
.

This is the trademark of any kind of military simulation games.
Even Falcon 4 the best military flight sim has a lot of info classified, even the real flight model is classified so what ?
Unless you are a real fighter pilot on the F-16 you won't mind if the data in the simulation is not "real enough" and this doesn't take the fun away despite what a lot of whinners on the falcon forums go saying.
The same goes for sub sims, how much realism can you get when all the info is classified ? Only the people who served on boomers or attack submarines can notice the difference between real facts and what is depicted in the simulation (and they are of course not at liberty to discuss it).
In any case this lack of info doesn't take the fun away so relax and enjoy being a virtual skipper :|\

[Caseck]

That's a good example of how different this stuff is.

Because with an F16, there are far more knowns than unknowns. Yeah, it's got some spicy electronics we don't know about, and of course some of it's weapons have never been made public, but we know how fast it is, roughly how many G's it can pull. We know A LOT about it.

But, you can't say, go to Pakistan and find an old Permit class, and find out what it could do. How deep it could dive. How fast it could really go. How good was it? They're all gone, and nothing about them was ever declassified! Heck, I think stuff about Nautilus (SSN-571) is just NOW being declassed! And only some of it! And only because it's sitting there as a floating museum!

It's like some kind of fricken' "Secret History" or something!

With Navy subs, it's more unknowns than knowns.

Fertile ground for the imagination, but strange ground for sub sims!

Which is why I can say. "Why CAN'T a torp sink another torp?" And bring this thread full circle, and to a close.

[Ula Jolly]

*HUUUUUUURGHL. CCCCCCCCRUGH.* I swallowed a bloody fly. 'Neway.
Effectively, with a lack of information, the game developers are forced to use a little bit of fantasy. That only adds to the fun, at least in this case.
:up:

[Wim Libaers]

Well, for underwater detonations, a lot of test and theoretical information is available. You could have a look at, for example, AMCP 706-180 Engineering Design Handbook, Principles of explosive behavior, US Army Materiel command, April 1972. More recent, Numerical Modeling of Explosives and Propellants, 2nd ed., Charles Mader, CRC Press. Both have sections dedicated to this subject. However, they do not include simple look-up tables. They contain the needed information to calculate them, combined with some experimental data. The second book even includes the computer models. If you're good with mathematics, computer programming, and don't know what to do with your time for a week or two, give it a try ;)

Stuff you aren't as likely to find in a library, and expensive, but there's more out there:
http://www.stormingmedia.us/keywords/underwater_explosions.html
Some of those look like they might apply here.

Of course, it would be useless without also knowing the damage resistance of torpedoes, and that involves a lot more than just skin thickness.

For F-16 flight models, everything isn't public, but there is at least one book that includes a lot of data on it as an example system.
http://www10.pair.com/jsalvati/resources.htm

[JoGary(sco)]

A little of topic but it was mentioned someware in a earlier post.
In GAME mines detonating close to other mines then set of those mines. Well i dont actually know if the explosion is detonating the mines near by or destroying them. but all mines within about 2nm or more somtimes disapear and you get multible warninhgs in game that a mine has detonated near by. with this i am guessing that they are being detonated. I have the map i used to test this some time ago if any one is interested send me an email.

[Bellman]

Further off-topic but 'proximity' related -

Often observed in SC replay post MP that a torp would explode well over 600 yards from a target sub and destroy it.
Checked with others at the time and it was felt that this was either 'just replay viewer related' or might just be 'realistic'
It was confirmed that the Mk48 did not have a proximity fuse in the game.

Anyone experiencing any anomalies in DW MP ?

[northfromhere]

The impact on the object from the pressure wave is related to size and shape of the object and the distance from the point of origin. Most anti subamrine charges are shaped, like HEAT and will have different explosive compounds than their anti-ship convetional (gas generating type) to brake the bow. Proximity fuzes are easily tricked into going off prematurely or not at all.

[compressioncut]

Which is why I can say. "Why CAN'T a torp sink another torp?" And bring this thread full circle, and to a close.

They very likely can - at the very least, I've seen a Mk.46 Mod 5 AS(W) track a Mk.48 ADCAP on more than one occasion. In real life.

And at least one of those situations was ruled a kill, although whether a 46 could actually kill an ADCAP, rather than just make passes on it, I dunno.