Navy Nightmare: Meet the 1 Thing That Could Make Submarines Obsolete

[Onkel Neal]

Is the end of the submarine as a warfare platform on the way?

The report points out the century-old method of hunting subs is changing:

"In the past, antisubmarine warfare (ASW) has been carried out by a small number of highly capable ships and manned aircraft. Their task has been like that of a handful of police looking for a fugitive in a vast wilderness. Lacking the manpower to cover the whole area, they have to concentrate their forces on the most likely paths and hideouts, and hope for a lucky break."

Now, highly expensive subs must contend with an expanding array of cheap robot sub-hunters that can blanket the ocean, sort of in the same way that German U-boat "wolfpacks" ganged up on Allied convoys in the North Atlantic. These include small handheld drones that the U.S. military is designing to operate in swarms, air-launched drones like the U.S. Coyote that can be dropped by ASW aircraft, and sonar-equipped underwater robot gliders that quietly search the ocean.

"Small unmanned platforms can carry many types of sensors active and passive sonar, magnetic anomaly detectors, wake detection LIDAR, thermal sensors, laser-based optical sensors capable of piercing seawater and others," Hambling writes. "A submarine which can be seen by any one of these will cease to be invisible. A submarine whose location is exposed is highly vulnerable to instant attack. If submarines are easily detectable, they lose all their advantages as strategic weapons platforms."

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/bu...obsolete-83486

[Jimbuna]

Hard to say for sure because as each counter measure is invented there usually comes a counter measure to that.

I'd have thought technology would primarily focus on taken the human out of the equation.

[Mr Quatro]

SNN's can still protect an aircraft carrier fleet of ships of which I notice they are still building

[Kapitan]

To be honest i have never found national interest to be a reputable source so i will take this with a pinch of salt, they are well known for over dramatizing and sensationalizing stories and often mis-quote.

[Mike Abberton]

In part it comes down to numbers.

1. How many drones can you actually afford to make, maintain, and monitor? The ocean is ultimately a very big place. I find it hard to believe that any nation is going to embrace full autonomy for its drones either, meaning there is always going to be a man in the loop somewhere.

2. If defense drones are successful, it would seem likely that manned subs just get replaced by an equal or greater number of attack drones.


P.S. I completely agree on the National Interest. Most of the articles are just reprints from other sources, some of which can be quite old. They also seem to pick the most sensationalist articles to reprint. I don't know how many times I have seen "System X is the best thing ever" article followed within days by a "System X is already outdated and a complete waste of time" article.

[Mr Quatro]

No more sneaking into harbors your not suppose to be in anyway.
The old days gone ...

But the new days:

"Sonar/Conn give me a clean sweep of the harbor defences using drone Betty"

Conn/Sonar "Sending in Betty to do a clean sweep"

[Platapus]

Since these sensors need to communicate both ways, they will be vulnerable to spoofing or otherwise interfered with.