Don't tell others... shhhh. :cool:

Very interesting :|\\ , are there some publicly available books that treat those issues about TMA and more in general modern naval tactics and/or strategy ?
You know, books available on amazon, etc... ?

Some great discussion going on here, keep it up!

The link below is to testimony given by CO of USS Greeneville following that sub's collision with and sinking of a Japanese civilian ship. There are some interesting comments about TMA in here!

http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001...ession3.5.html

and

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/sub...ession5.2.html



Also, if you haven't seen this before it's well worth the download:

http://www.haptonstahl.org/ppt/tma_files/frame.htm

:arrgh!:

Nice reading ! Hey, Bill .. have you ever posted some useless post ? :up:

All posts are useless in the big scheme of things :|\\

Here's how TMA is described in the BBC's Guide to Submarine Combat:

When you think you have found a submarine, you now need to perform the fire control task of TMA. TMA stands for Target Motion Analysis. Basically try to figure out which direction the enemy sub is moving and how fast it is going. From this you can get an idea of where you need to go to get into a good intercept position.

The recommended tactic is to get around in front of the enemy, than stop and wait, listening as he slowly passes by you. You should then have a good fix on his range, bearing, and mark (where he is and where he is going). You will also be behind him, which means he can't hear you as well, because his sonar is up front and his noisy propeller (called a screw) is between the sonar and you. He will also have to turn around to be able to shoot at you, so it looks like you've got the drop on him (See Note 4). You can then begin to press an attack, assuming you have authorization. Let's just say you have been tasked to terminate with extreme prejudice, so it's time to get it on. Load a fish into tubes 2 and 4. Basically, take your shotgun and load a couple shells. You already have a firing solution (where to put your fish to turn your opponent into fish food) on the target, so now you'll need to flood the torpedo tube. To do this, work the slide to chamber a round. The sound should make you cringe, and with good reason, because you've probably alerted your prey to your existence, position, and intentions. Which means you have only seconds to attack before he attempts a snap shot at you.
Blast a shot in your enemy's direction, while trying to listen to what he is doing. He should be accelerating to full speed (running like a wuss) while turning out of the way and hoping that all this running and turning puts you in range of return fire. So you should turn away from him and run to try and get out of range of his fish. And try to restrain the desire to shout "Conn, sonar! Crazy Ivan!" It's not a Crazy Ivan, and it won't help you to stay hidden. You don't have to worry about him playing a fantastic game of underwater chicken and having the fish swing around and hit you, enabling your pretentious Executive Officer to berate you for being arrogant and killing you. This just doesn't happen. In real life, because shotgun shells have no homing capabilities, being purely ballistic weapons, and in submarine warfare, because torpedoes are quite crafty and will click off if they find they have turned around. They then sink harmlessly to the sea bottom, to be exploded years later by a hapless scuba diver.


Read the entire BBC guide here:

http://www.subguru.com/BBC-Guide.htm

:sunny:

As an instructor of FTOWs and junior OODs, the Greenville transcripts make me ill. I can see this stuff happening sooo many times in my trainers, and on some level it's OK for it to happen in a safe environment where we can correct the root deficiencies, but in this case relatively obvious information was not noticed and procedures were ignored, and the consequences included several dead students.

This incident literally changed how we do business as a force, and things changed for the better. Thanks for the link, it'll make a long night's reading for me.

Naval Operations Analysis by Danial Wagner is a text book used in the mathematics department at the US Naval Academy. Although it's not for the mathematically challenged (calculus, probabilit, statistics, and game theory are used freely throughout the book), it contains instructions on how to do Ekelund and Speiss TMA.

They have a whole chapter on bearings only TMA and the mathematics behind it, as well as the reasoning behind positioning combat air patrols, search, weapons effectiveness, etc. It's interesting because occaisionally for examples and problems it'll use historical data to explain why things were done the way they were. He also does a lot of stuff that is also in Koopman's Search and Screening but with greater clarity. All the stuff on barrier patrols and the random search equation that's in Koopman are reproduced in Wagner.

I wouldn't doubt that they are going back thru their SOP's again during this current stand down of the submarine force.:damn::damn::o:o