Why can't torpedoes sink other torpedoes???
 

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?

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.

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

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...)

There are some arms manufactures working on Anti-torpedo torpedoes. Here is a picture of one:
http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/3...torp2os.th.jpg

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.)

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:

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:

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

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.

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...

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.

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

Or better said, real quick :know:

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

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)

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:

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.

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.