Kilo vs Trafalgars, or Strong Resolve

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by LoBlo

Or a valid case could be made that the experience gained in joint duty gives US submariners a better understanding of other platform capabilities, operations, strengths, and weaknesses and how they can be exploited thus making them better submariners.... so that example could be viewed either way.

I guess that was the theory behind the joint stuff, but as I understand it, "joint" does not mean an operational tour on say a surface warship to broaden experience. It means a staff assignment, and not even a Navy assignment - its more like a Pentagon assignment. It is highly unlikely you will get any kind of insight about say surface ship weaknesses that you shouldn't have gotten by self-reading or tactical education.

So the gains are dubious and the loss is definite - a loss of 3 whole years (JDA tour length) of experience, a 3 year gap in which your shiphandling goes to corroded rust and your tactical instincts are dulled.

I guess the only thing worse will be to an Air Force officer doing his JDA - he doesn't fly, or fly minimally to keep his flight status, and his proficiency goes to the toilet.

Regarding sailing times. What are the sailing time differences between the navies?

Not sure about the Brits. I heard that the Belgians spend 280 days/year at sea, and the US about 200. I suspect the average Brit rate is somewhat lower than the American due to their lesser commitments, but the Brits probably do go out more than the Poles, thanks to money.

Try going to RAND and search for an article called Finding the Right Balance: Simulator and Live Training for Navy Units. The article's real value is stating some of the differences b/w American, British and French training. Training methods do vary b/w navies, and so do personnel policies. Each may only have a small difference, but added together, combined with the fact there are no 2nd place prizes in sub warfare, makes a huge difference.

[PeriscopeDepth]

Questions for SeaQueen:

I've read that diesels are handicapped sensor wise because of their size and lack of power. Basically, they can't carry the whiz bang sensors the nukes can and run the computers that power them because of these limitations. Have you heard anything like this?

What kind of programs do you guys use at work for simulation? Off the shelf stuff like Harpoon or puprose built? Understand if you can't talk about it.

PD

[SeaQueen]

Originally Posted by PeriscopeDepth

I've read that diesels are handicapped sensor wise because of their size and lack of power. Basically, they can't carry the whiz bang sensors the nukes can and run the computers that power them because of these limitations. Have you heard anything like this?

That's the first time I've heard it. I'm probably not the best person to ask, though. My knowledge of naval architecture is limited. I know that in all warships there is always electricity issues any time they want to add a new gizmo, but usually they are able to work something out. I suspect it all depends.

What kind of programs do you guys use at work for simulation? Off the shelf stuff like Harpoon or puprose built? Understand if you can't talk about it.

It depends. I don't use Harpoon at work, although I've talked with a coworker about using Harpoon Pro for certain types of things. It really depends on the questions we're trying to answer.

Often, the best thing to do is just sit down with Excel and make a spreadsheet. You can build surprisingly sophisticated things in Excel. We made a really cool sonar search Monte Carlo with Excel once. You just had to plug a transmission loss curve in and you could get pretty good results in comparison to what the "official" models did. There's also a whole universe of mathematical models that have been build for various things ranging from barrier searches to cruise missile exchanges. There's Koopman's search theory, and any of the other stuff stemming from military operations research. There's Lanchaster models, although we don't do that so much.

Sometimes we use MATLAB as well. I use Maple for some stuff, because I'm odd that way.

There's other things too, though. We have a modeling language called GCAM, which allows one to build wargames up to the campaign level. There's models like NSS, which is less flexible than GCAM, but is good for what it was designed to do. There's a model called CAPS which is for ballistic missile defense. I always thought that one was kind of cool. There's AREPS for modeling radar problems. There's EADSIM which is a lot like CAPS but more detailed. Sometimes we even build our own. There's a girl at work who built a really cool model of hypersonic re-entry bodies. I was jealous of that project. I wanted to work on it too.

There exists a ton of different computer models for dealing with different sorts of things. Sometimes we use different models to feed into other models. Other times we use canned values, or even just make things up that look reasonable because nobody really knows. It all really just depends. What do you want to know? How well do you need to know it? Etc. etc.

[Henson]

Getting back to the Australia vs US exercises....keep in mind that they shoot the same weapons and operate the same CCS as we do. Their intimate knowledge of the ADCAP's operating characteristics has resulted in some less than realistic evasion tactics.

As for nuc vs diesel, diesels are limited by speed. You cannot effectively track a nuc while maintaining tactical control when you're limited to less than 5 kts.

[Doc Savage]

Slightly off topic but, how do they score "kills" in these exercises anyway. Do they actually shoot a test torpedo at the other sub and see if it hits? Or do they just ping the target with active/snap a photo with the periscope to say "I see you"?

[Henson]

Before an ADCAP becomes a warshot it has already been shot more times than you might imagine as an exercise weapon. The warshots are actually the old (proven reliable) ones.

Does that answer your question?