48,000? I don’t know where you found that, but for Yasen only 13,800t is mentioned as submerged displacement. Borei gives 24,000t submerged in Maxpain’s book.

Automation is not always good and will not go on forever, you will always need that sonar operator, you will always need people to check and repair the engines eventhough they are automated. Otherwise you could wildly assume there will be unmanned ships, something impossible as it would probably mean the totall loss of the ship if something goes wrong.

The induction of VLS tubes with Onyx also means there is a need for extra crew to control that as not everything can be done from the torpedo room then. Same counts for the more complicated spherical bow sonar etc. You need more people that know more than in the previous ships.

As for “very basic”, I wouldn’t be so sure about it, only UK, US and France have these “very basic” things up till now. Not really basic then if you ask me.

Oops sorry, I never actually said they were stealing it (althoug Alaska can partially be seen as stealing) nonetheless I mentioned stealing as in “they are stealing from Iraq, soon they might try it with Russia”. It’s not a real coincidence that the first US Tanker entered an Iraqi port when the first shots were just delivered…

Who sais Russia has to dig those wells themselves? Sens, you obviously don’t seem to have any clue how oil and gas business runs. Norwegian as well as American and European Companies are all in line for drilling the Barentz Sea Gas field, the Russians aren’t allowing it yet. The Russians don’t need the money to drill, they can just sell the entire field after some surveying to get more money from it without doing the investments themselves. And if things don’t work out like they wish, they can kick them out with their new ships, isn’t that a great idea? Same counts for all their other fields.
Strangely our very democratic friends in America are now complaining about Russia using their Gas line as a means to force political goals in Ukraine. Go tell your president that Ukraine already had a cheap price due to political means, which is not allowed too in his opinion then? And that Russia can do wathever they want with their resources, and indeed that will be a bitter pill for poor US in the future. Oh yes, I think the man already ruined two Oil Companies didn’t he? I guess now we know why!
And I’m pretty happy Russia is not getting its resources up for now, cause US would probably try to invade if Russia wouldn’t have its forces back and have all those resources, in that respect Garry was very right. In the future our good friend Bush will not be president, maybe, maybe, maybe there will be someone with brains on his chair then and see the importance of Russia? (honestly I doubt so)

That is the rubbish about this info, subs always stay OUT of the Deep Sea Sound Channel. It’s one of the major advantages of a VDS, they can dip it inside the layer.
For a sub it has nothing but disadvantages except for a “safe” environment during a dynamic fight, while fleeing or trying to get away from surface forces.
The sub itself can not look “out” of the layer, basically that means it’s a blind bat if other subs and surface forces are on top of it. This is also why I said dynamic battle, if someone is expecting you and has one of his VDS in the layer, they can detect you at over 1,000km, something you wouldn’t want I suppose.
The Deep Sea Sound Channel is not really formed by thermal differences only. The “top” boundary, is formed by a temperature difference, the lower boundary is formed by a certain pressure. Two parallel layers are generally formed, not always being parallel though. In between these boundaries the emitted waves are bounced back and forth without losing much energy. This means that basically it will travel an extremely long distance (much like super refraction for radars).
The concept was used back in WWII, when some aircraft carried depth charges with a hydrostatic release, if the plane crashed, the depth charge went down and exploded at the preset depth, inside the layer. Hydrophones were placed in US and UK etc. (landstations) This way they had their bearings all together and found the position of the downed aircraft. (roughly).

edit/delete

There is no civil or military limitation in Glonass… Only GPS has such things. And Galileo on the future. The report also indicates that the system is by no means really operational, as he still hopes to get it finished by 2008.

The first Galileo satellite, Giove A, has been launched too now. (they had too, as with the new year their licence for the frequencies would have expired, they were obliged to use some during 2005 and US would most probably steal it if they had the opportunity to do so). She’s launched by a Russian missile. The intended accuracy would be 4m now, with the precision applications in less than a meter. Among these applications are the Military, SAR and others.

Only back in 2003 or 2004 did the Russians do their first night-time carrier landing, would you want India to succeed in such a thing in 2020? I don’t think so… So it’s better to gain some experience in such operations form someone who’s used to it.

Another try, last time I wanted to reply it just didn’t work…

As for “less reliable”, I mean that for GPS, with an accuracy of 10m and a very high possibility of DOP1 it means that you are nearly sure of your position/accuracy. For Glonass, with a theoretical accuracy of 5m, but a DOP of mostly 2 or 3, this means that it is only equal or even worse than GPS accuracy as it gives you 10m and 15 respectively. As for GPS you are relatively certain of that error, for Glonass you are not. If you don’t take in account that DOP, you might as well be up to 30m out of your real position.

Austin, will join the constellation, they are not ready yet. And they will replace some of the older satellites as these are getting quite outdated too.
Another disadvantage of GPS, they can’t update fast enough. Galileo will change that. Galileo also has an integrity check, automatically kicking out a “false” satellite, while in GPS that one is still used for positioning.
As for GPS, the Precision code is gone for the moment. The normal GPS positions are equally accuraty as the military ones for now. They had to do this as the DGPS stations were rising a lot and hence they wanted to get rid of that. To counter Galileo they are also developing GPS2, but as it takes them a long while to replace all of their satellites it will be a hard battle for the customers.