From:	"ADAM B. TRELOAR" <s777317@*******.GU.EDU.AU>
Subject:	Re: Golden opportunities - or not.
Date:	Wed, 28 May 1997 09:52:09 +1000

<snip>

> You'd need to know where the area of interest was, and it's expensive to
> maintain: if you're after surface contacts, maritime patrol aircraft are
> cheaper, more flexible, and have much higher search rates.

Wrong. Maritime patrol craft don't see all that much. You have any idea
how big the ocean is? More flexible? Of course they are! They can
actually *do* something about a contact, but for the most part, they're
contacts other vessels and/or SOSUS have picked up. Also SOSUS doesn't
miss much. Besides the really quiet boomers, that is.

Hmmm... Sorry about the tone of that. Seems a little abrupt.

> It's not _impossible_, but it's also not hard to discover where the
> sensor lines are and avoid them.

discovering where they are is extremely easy, yes. Avoiding them, no.
The effective range of SOSUS lines is measured in thousands of miles.
Excluding sonar shadows from land masses, of course.

> >>The Soviet Union's gone: the Red Horde is a shadow of the threat it was
> >>once seen to be: the submarines are far less numerous and rather
> >>quieter.
> >
> >Military submarines are, but what about civilian - by that I mean the
> >exploration/transport variety belonging to corps and rich people.
>
> Submarines are inherently uneconomic: they're volume-limited, while most
> cargo is weight-limited. The only credible use I've seen for commercial
> submarines is to run cargo under the Polar icepack.

Size limited yes. Weight limited, no. Within reason, anyway.

> Face it: submarines have been around for a century. If it was
> commercially viable to use them for civilian applications, it would have
> been done by now :) Anything that makes a sub cheap, makes a surface
> ship cheaper.

Actually, Germany in WW2 used several merchant submarines to bypass the
British warships and go to Brazil and other places to trade. They worked,
surprisingly well, too. Just not well enough or in great enough numbers
to effect the outcome of the war. They are not commercially viable, tho.

<snip>

> >and the <checks with Pete> Trafalgar class have some sort
> >of towed array, (according to Red Storm Rising anyway) that allows more
> >definitive detection than other sonar arrays. I assume that would have
> >been upgraded for the newer subs - Seawolf aren't they?
>
> Seawolf, yup, also the new Astute-class boats for the RN and most
> surface warships too. Towed arrays have been around for over twenty
> years, and are very effective equipment.
>
> The problem remains that a diesel-electric submarine running surfaced
> sounds like a diesel-engined vessel, of which there are many thousands
> from fishing vessels to bulk cargo haulers. In peacetime you simply
> don't have time or inclination to investigate every single contact.

It's easier to classify than you'd think. And AFAIK every contact is
investigated, too. Every ship has a unique signature, most of them on
record in the sonar equipment. Given that new contacts are aquired over
time, not all at once, it's easy (relatively, that is. Lotsa people
working on it, not just one poor sucker) to keep track of them.

> >Taking 2058 technology, might it not be possible to have a more
> >efficient and better SOSUS array, than the UK have at the moment?
>
> Not too difficult since, officially, we don't have _any_ SOSUS arrays
> and never have :) Though I'd be surprised if we didn't have _something_
> to monitor the Irish Sea's entrances with, since Faslane and Holy Loch
> both exited through those relatively narrow straits: but that doesn't
> translate to a blue-water search capability.

*grin* Of course, you have instant access to the US GIUK line and the
data from it, but no, it's not actually yours... :)

> >Especially if the Lord Protector wanted to keep tabs on the other
> >nations using the waters around the UK.
>
> That's what the Navy and the RAF's maritime patrol aircraft are for
> (today it's Nimrods and will be until 2025 or so: after that, who
> knows?)

And not a huge area to search, either, to the east. The whole atlantic
to the west, tho.

BTW, the (Russian) Akula class are reputed to be up-to-scratch boats, but
they're the last the Russians will be making for a while - more important
things to spend their money on.

Guardian.

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"Any sufficiently advanced magic is indestinguishable from technology.
So there."
Adam Treloar aka Guardian
s777317@*****.student.gu.edu.au http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/1900/
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