[Torpedo Fodder]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Laugh at yourself! A single swedish sub leased by the navy - the Gotland Tchocky mentioned - since over one years evades successfully any training efforts of the Navy to find and kill it.

Except active sonar, which is almost never used in exercises because it might kill whales, or something like that.

The crew of it said in an interview on german Tv they could sail up and down the mississippi - and the Navy being unable to do anything about it.

Obvious hyperbole: most of the Mississippi is too shallow for submarines anyway.

A german type-212 has been reported to run circles around a CBG at will and without the carrier being aware that it was there.

I find that hard to believe, as a Type 212's flank speed is barely as high as a carrier's cruise speed, and the sub can only maintain that speed on batteries for an hour or so. In a situation in the open sea, where a diesel submarine does not know the carrier's location and course, it would be hard pressed to find the carrier at all, and even if it did know, it'd have to be in the right position to put itself in the carrier's path, not an easy task given the carrier's far higher speed and endurance. And thus is the problem of a disel sub hunting down a carrier group: Unless the sub knows where and when the carrier will be, it has no hope of hunting it down.

A german-built type-209, owned by Southafrica, just weeks ago in exercises off the coast of southafrica has completely wiped out a NATO task force of 15 ships, including American and British combat vessels - without ever having been detected once.

You do understand that large exercises like this are heavily scripted, right? Most larger exercises need to be scripted, because naval exercises cost alot of money, and thus the participants cannot be given free reign to act exactly as they please. For example, in a large ASW exercise such as that, what would be the point of the exercise if the surface ships and the submarine never encountered each other at all? This means, that the surface group must follow a scripted course, and the sub will know exactly where and when the surface ships will be. If the skimmers cannot change their course and speed, and cannot use active sonar, while the submarine can simply lie and wait for them, that imposes a huge handicap on them right there.

It makes sense, imo, to invest in sub technology. since years I think thta like WWII saw the battleships going nto useums and carriers becoming the most important weapon, in the future the importance (in war) of carriers are completely inferior to that of subs - even more so since today combat units are no longer produced in so massive quantities like in WWII.

There are many things a carrier can do that a submarine simply cannot, such as project force deep over land or a radius hundreds of miles around itself at sea. Submarines cannot sustain continious combat operations for as long due to their limited payload, meanwhile a carrier can load enough ordinance to decimate a small country. Claiming that subs make carriers obsolete is like claiming that man-portable AT weaponry makes tanks obsolete, an argument that's almost as old as tanks themselves. Sure, a sub can kill a carrier if it finds it, but the carrier can also bomb the submarine's port facilities and support infrastructure to dust. Do not underestimate how hard it would be to find a surface vessel in the open sea, especially one that doesn't want to be found: Do you remember those NATO naval PSYOP exercises that immeditatly preceded ABLE ARCHER '83? In one case, a large fleet of US (including the USS Eisenhower) and various other NATO ships, managed pass through the GIUK gap, eluding the Soviet Navy's best efforts to locate them, and positioned themselves just outside Soviet territorial waters off Murmansk. Very few navies have the resources to search the open ocean like the Soviets (who also had RORSATs at their disposal) did, so you can see how hard it'd be for a single or small handful of submarines, who would have no reconnisance support from aircraft, by virtue of them being shot down by the Carrier's CAP.

Sure it's important to invest in submaries and ASW technolegy, because subs are still a serious threat to surface warships, and I'm not claiming otherwise. But they are by no means the unstoppable carrier killing uber-weapons of doom you seem to be making them out to be either.

The german in the Atlantic were close to strangle Britain, and the ameircans succeeded with that task and brought japan's economy to it's knees - with submarines.

First, the Germans chances of strangling Britain probably ended when ships began travelling in effectivly organized convoys; the U-boats could still kill some of the freighters, but never enough to truly strangle Britain. As for Japan, I think Curtis LeMay's B-29s systematically turning Japan's cities to ash had a big role in collapsing their economy as well.