60's sub tactics

[Julhelm]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

I guess it is a matter of perspective. In my opinion western powers (ie US with mk48) got better all round torpedoes.

I am not a big fan of how UST project ended (it ended in adoption of USET80).

I was referring to how in the 80's you get stand-off ASW missiles whereas in the 60's ASW weapons are limited to RBU's and torpedoes.

What was the problem with USET-80 in your opinion?

[ikalugin]

I was talking about subs only weapons, but I see your point now.

There are several things people tend to dislike about USET80 but lets get some historic context first - USET80 torpedo was the result of the UST program to develop a general purpose/multirole torpedo. Back when that program was conducted two things contributed to it's outcome - the fact that a single organisation had a strong monopoly on torpedo R&D and the fact that Soviet naval theorists believed that the sub to sub combat would occur on the depths greater than 600m. This lead to the "Гидроприбор" desighn (due to the lobbey power of it) and the electric propulsion (which has superior transport characteristics that is speed/range at the depths of 600-1000m when compared to the fuel torp) being selected.

Those decisions meant that:
- USET-80 had poor wire guidance.
- USET-80 had a poor seeker up to (and according to some accounts including) the USET-80K.
- USET-80 could not be used in the regions with low salininty (battery uses seawater as electrolyte).
- USET-80 has low speed/range for it's class at the normal combat depths (less than 600m).

In retrospect we really should have went for the combustion engine desighns, as those were competing in all the calibres (there was for example a general purpose torpedo being developed for the 650mm TTs).

[Julhelm]

So USET-80 does have wire-guidance? The sources I have conflict on this to some extent, but Polmar has USET as wireguided and I tend to trust written sources over online ones.

[ikalugin]

Originally Posted by Julhelm

So USET-80 does have wire-guidance? The sources I have conflict on this to some extent, but Polmar has USET as wireguided and I tend to trust written sources over online ones.

There were several mods, some had wireguidance, some didnt. Original desighn had wireguidance. If I remember it correctly wireguidance was removed at some point and replaced with extra batteries. For simplicity sake I would suggest using TEST-71 series as the primary Soviet wire guided torp.

Note that many desighns (ie Kilo class) had limited ammount of TTs adapted for wire guided torps (2 out of 6 in case of Kilo class).