How the Soviet Union Snooped Waters for Enemy Subs—Without Sonar

[Mr Quatro]

We are just non-quals compared to the officers and men that man these beautiful works of complicated works.

They have quite rooms, safe rooms, white rooms, where they plot and plan how to deal with the enemy submarine threats to our Navy.

If the Chinese have a detection system to locate our boats then we have one better.

The war isn't just under the ocean, it's in the air and even in spy satellites too.
The USN doesn't have to be off of their coast line to track anything.

Russia is suspected of not even leaving their territorial waters with the few FBM's that they have left.

Why should the USN leave the 12 mile limit when they can also target anything within 5,000 nautical miles.

Common knowledge that the USN submarine force now transfers at sea using ocean going tugs for crew changes and re-supplies.

Now be an admiral and take a chance on exposing your submarine fleet.

War is a whole different matter in one day they will be blind (the enemy that is)

[ikalugin]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

We are just non-quals compared to the officers and men that man these beautiful works of complicated works.

They have quite rooms, safe rooms, white rooms, where they plot and plan how to deal with the enemy submarine threats to our Navy.

If the Chinese have a detection system to locate our boats then we have one better.

The war isn't just under the ocean, it's in the air and even in spy satellites too.
The USN doesn't have to be off of their coast line to track anything.

Russia is suspected of not even leaving their territorial waters with the few FBM's that they have left.

Why should the USN leave the 12 mile limit when they can also target anything within 5,000 nautical miles.

Common knowledge that the USN submarine force now transfers at sea using ocean going tugs for crew changes and re-supplies.

Now be an admiral and take a chance on exposing your submarine fleet.

War is a whole different matter in one day they will be blind (the enemy that is)

FBMs?


If you are talking SSBNs then known patrol/launch areas are outside of territorial waters.

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

FBMs?


If you are talking SSBNs then known patrol/launch areas are outside of territorial waters.

You must be baiting me, uh? I know FBM's are SSBN's, but they are also under great demand not to cause an accidental war.

The first Typhoon Dmitriy Donskoy is still in service as a test bed for the Bulava (SS-NX-32) missile, but the other five are now long gone except for two now in reserve fleet and considered very inactive, but the first one was treated very special so as not to give away her huge value and stayed close to the home port waters. She didn't even have a name just a number TK-208 and a designation Akula class.

It is just a report that she had a underwater micro cable optic landline to Moscow to be able to make sure that she received the order to launch missiles on time. Communications underwater was and always will be an iffy thing.

Then you have the before the Kursk disaster and after the Kursk disaster ... Rescue of the crew has been improved and could have resulted in orders for the SSBN's to stay in more shallow waters, but still within range of the USA.

The Borei class Ballistic missile submarine may very well be a free range submarine, but not the Typhoon.

Your admirals are different than our admirals and they have changed the game to include a not to fail attitude in the event of war.

Thus I propose that the Russian fleet of SSBN's stay close to home while the SSN's freely roam looking for trouble under the ice and of course the cat and mouse game of where do we hide ours.

I don't mean to sound like I know more than you do ... I am just an arm chair admiral with a healthy interest in the underwater chess game of the USA vs the USSR

You might want to research the Washington/Moscow hotline too to see that fiber optics between nations can be used for early warning then so can fiber optics for submarines to it's president.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow...ington_hotline

[ikalugin]

No, I just did not know what FBM stands for, I am but a man, can't know/keep in mind everything. My guess was that it is SSBN related. What does it stand for?

As to the Russian SSBN force - you can see composition and readiness here:
Green is for ready, yellow for refits and repair, maintenance, grey for reserves.
You can tell the class by project number (955 for Borei-I, 955A for Borei-II, 667БДРМ for Delta-IV, 667БДР for Delta-III, 941 for Typhoon)
You can tell the specific boat by tactical number, ie K-535 is Yuri Dolgoruki

 

Currently the core of the force is made out of Delta-IVs, no idea why you were mentioning Typhoons as they were irrelevant for over a decade.

Known patrol/launch areas are outside of the territorial waters, in Barents/Okhotsk seas (which can be shallow, sure), there has been a return to constant at sea patrols in the recent years (around ~1/6 on patrol rate). I would guess from your reference to Typhoons and Kursk that your views on the topic are outdated by 10 to 20 years.

Same applies to exercises and training - you could see this by looking at where the launches were, for example for Grom-2019 and Grom-2020 exercises. They included launches from both Deltas and Boreis.

The hotline part is just incoherent to me, data on launches is shared separately, through data exchange centers (http://www.kremlin.ru/supplement/3201) which are a product of 1980s agreement. Not sure how fiber optics come into play here considering other (ie space borne) comm channels.

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

No, I just did not know what FBM stands for, I am but a man, can't know/keep in mind everything.

Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarine

Originally Posted by ikalugin

I would guess from your reference to Typhoons and Kursk that your views on the topic are outdated by 10 to 20 years.

Perhaps, but they did try it once with a Typhoon and that was before the Kursk accident so why not afterwards?

My real fear for my much loved USN is your desire to destroy our carriers in the event of war. The ASW people are very good at what they do at sea and in the air.

[ikalugin]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarine

Thanks.

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

Perhaps, but they did try it once with a Typhoon and that was before the Kursk accident so why not afterwards?

Delta-IVs went through midlife upgrades and are on good maintenance schedule now, there is new blood in the form of 3 Borei-Is and 1 Borei-IIs, with 4-6 Borei-IIs on the way (in production, in production and contracted) the trend for constant patrols is going to stay.


That said - pierside alerts were/still are a thing, while ~1/6 is on patrol (much lower rate than what is reported for the USN) the rest tends to be in LoW alert pier side.
Similar thing applies to ICBM TELs too.

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

My real fear for my much loved USN is your desire to destroy our carriers in the event of war. The ASW people are very good at what they do at sea and in the air.

I guess with the relatively high readiness rates for Oscar-IIs this is not totally unreasonable (5 available, 2 in midlife refit vs 3 available Akulas with 3 more in repair/maintenance, 3 more in midlife refits).


Illustration below:

 

But then Russia is focussed on Bastion defence, so as long as US CBGs keep out of them they should be fine. Still, the core mission of the Russian Navy is the strategic nuclear one and, atleast in the Russian military thinking, any serious war between Russia and US&co would have a strategic nuclear exchange.