Historical Russian Weapons question

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by Kapitan

The USN uses only the MK48ADCAP as thier main torpedo the british use spearfish they are multi role units can attack ships or submarines easily and to me that is the way forward why have 6 types of torpedo to do 2 jobs when you can build just one type that can do both not only save money but the simplicity involved, also british and american submarines are all fitted with 21inch torpedo tubes another great achievement that simplyfies things.

Well, the "all-21 inch" thing was the default, so how was that an achievement?

The Mk48 is one thing, but the Spearfish had so many problems by the time they actually got it to work well, it was past the end of the Cold War. In the Cold War, they relied on Mk8s and Tigerfish.

The russian just make it complex although thier akulas have 14 torpedo tubes great wonderful a massivly armed vessel 6 of the 14 tubes are useless as you cant re load them at sea.

But with that logic, you will have to blast the Americans and their VLS tubes, which are equally unreloadable. Worse, they can only accomodate missiles, so if what you needed that mission were torpedoes you were plain out of luck.

Another 4 of the tubes are 65cm tubes made specificaly to carry and fire weapons like the 65-76 again a big handicap here a larger torpedo takes more space and i dont know if you can fire a 21inch torpedo out of a 25inch tube (aint 100% about that)

IIRC, there was supposed to be a liner you can use for those times.

So what are you left with once you fired all the 65cm torpedos and the outer 6 tubes ? four just four tubes to squeeze 21inch torpedos down to me waste of effort and money.

Four is as much as an American has total. I suppose another factor here is the whole "Battle of the First Salvo" thing, so the Russians decided that a one-time salvo of 14 tubes was a good idea. If the salvo works, the remaining shots are mopup and can proceed at a slower pace.

You find that they have 3 torpedos that can do anti submarine warfare another 3 that can do anti surface warfare 1 torpedo while is great on paper is utterly useless (yes i refer to the skhval) and another 3 that is multi role can do both.

Which 3 of each are you talking about?

The biggest handicap for the USN was the ceased production of TASM which is the anti ship missile tomahawk version it means they have to rely on the very slow 510knot harpoon which to be honest is a bit of a pathetic excuse of a missile im sorry i just dont like harpoons you would be better off with exocet, but the russians excelled in ASM weaponry (missiles) the SS-N-19 is 7tonnes yes far larger the harpoon can reach 80nm the SS-N-19 can go to 250nm the harpoon can travel at 510knots about the speed of a 747 the SS-N-19 travels at mach 2+ (some sources reported upto mach 4.5)

To give a good insight into the shipwreck SS-N-19 the missile is some 30feet long and has a diamiter of nearly 2.5 feet which is why only three types of vessels can carry them and they dont carry them in great numbers.
Kirovs only carry about 24 of them the kuznetsov about 12 and the oscars 24 they have a great target data and guidence systems if you fire them in swarms one climbs to 20,000 feet gives updates to every other missile if its shot down another takes its place untill it hits target[/quote]

Yeah, and don't forget its active jammer and evasive functions. It sounds like it is smarter than a computer game AI today

Still, even some Russians, such as a Captain 1st Rank, Candidate of Science Kuzmin, would much prefer the American missiles, since to him they are relatively small and standardized in size. Of course, what the guy really is doing in that essay is a general strafe on Soviet naval strategy. He's a pro-carrier type, which does make sense in the power-projection sense, but as far as anticarrier work goes, if the Soviets made Orel in the 70s, the best they'll be able to stick on it might be some shipboard versions of MiG-23s and MiG-27s. When you count in the low-level flight part, they won't even convincingly outrange say the P-500 Bazalt, nor the American carrier airgroup anyway, which means it is a dead ship even one on one. Might as well try something else, if you ask me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VA-111_Shkval This is for the VA-111 Shkval in my own opinion this torpedo is more of a propaganda stunt than something of any major importance simply because when fired its not wire guided its a dumb torpedo it has no guidence and is fired in the general direction of the enamy in the vain hope to shoe it away, in many ways this torpedo is a bit like you with a slipper trying to stop a dog urinating on the carpet of your lounge its a nifty toy to "scare" the west but in fact its little more then a lump of metal that goes bang somewhere near an enamy submarine, this i do believe was more to scare than to actually fight in a war but give it time it may change.

If it is a propaganda stunt, they might have been more public about it.

My take on world weapons is as follows

britian creates something its great it works its practical.

Then what was the SA-80?

Originally Posted by SandyCaesar

The only problem I could see is that, AFAIK, the Soviets/Russians never did work out the noise issue with their SSGNs. (By the 1970s, I think that Juliets and Echos wouldn't have really been a significant threat to American carrier croups; surfacing against those helicopters and aircraft to try to fire missiles equals dead meat.) And the SSGNs (Charlies and Oscars) were usually noisier than their SSN/SSK counterparts, right?

Ironically, according to Russian sources, the Charlie was actually the quietest of their subs when they first pushed it. It is actually believable considering it does only have one reactor.

To be fair to the Echos, granting they weren't detected until they surfaced, they are effectively a submerged rocket cruiser; if they prepared for launch fast or they had help from a distraction (say a closer Charlie shooting missiles or a Backfire strike) they might get at least part of their warload off. Even if the protecting antisubmarine aircraft were armed with Harpoons, at the extreme range for Shaddock or Sandbox they might still have to do some maneuvering (time; every 8-9 miles they have to fly before getting into range means at least 1 minute for the submarine to get its shots off) from their screening position before they are in range to get off their shot. Then shooting at maximum range, it'll take another 7-8 minutes for the Harpoon to traverse the entire range to hit. That's quite a few minutes added up, and as long as the submarine gets off its salvo, with Sandbox the submarine can dive - it has a Front Door guidance system if necessary, but a missile with an INS and the ability to scout for 7 other missiles can probably find the way to the carrier itself. Whether it can then evade the furious antisubmarine revenge hunt is dubious, but the missiles are shot.

Even TASMs on the ship won't improve the situation greatly. Suppose the submarine was detected the moment it surfaced, ~200 miles from the nearest escort ship. Even if there was no delay b/w acquisition and launch, the missile still takes close to 30 minutes to swim out to 200 miles - plenty of time for the submarine to get ready.

And come to think of it, I find it hard to believe that wakehomers are really worth all the hype. Hard as hell to use properly, and just as you've set up a shot on a juicy CVN some twerp in his FFG decides to play the hero and cross the carrier's wake, messing up the wakehoming sensor and maybe sacrificing a frigate to save the carrier, since everybody to that point will have heard the torpedo. Yeah, I know, purely theoretical, but it's a way to waste your 65-76 shots, besides the inefficient search pattern (then again, with the Kit you don't need fuel efficiency).

Well, the American admirals thought it was a big threat. If the best counter to a weapon is a whole frigate (which may or may not work - the torpedo might still find the correct wake edge) instead of a chaff cloud or a Nixie decoy, that's already really good - since I don't see that frigate surviving the 65cm hit, so it might well go down with nearly all hands.

But regarding some of those torpedoes...why didn't the Sovs just settle on a standardized model? Maybe it's the packrat mentality and that, but why would anyone keep SAET-50/60s and SET-53s around when they have the newer torps?

Probably for the older subs, while the new subs got the new weapons. You have to remember that a lot of control stuff is hardwired back then, so it isn't like now when attaching a new weapon means loading some software to its launching platform.

Also, all those old torps are a nice reserve for when they run out of the newer torps.