Quote:
Originally Posted by joegrundman
why do you say that?
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In a word, training. The surface navy has let their ASW skills decay significantly after the Cold War ended. Ask any bubblehead sonarman what he thinks of a skimmer sonarman, and you're not likely to get an answer that's fit to print.
A good book to read on the subject is "Lessons not learned: the U.S. Navy's status quo culture."
For submariners, sonar is life. For surface folks, it's just another thing to worry about.
The unfortunate reality is that surface sonarmen spend most of their time doing anything but sonar, as they're usually the first to get grabbed for odd jobs around the ship. Combine this with a mentality that ASW just isn't important, and you rarely have time to train or willingness to train.
IMO, what the Navy needs to do is rotate surface sonarmen through tours on submarines, and vice-versa to get the skimmers caught up on the finer points of sonar technique. At least then they'll be in a position to *find* the submarines, to say nothing of being able to go and kill them.