they even have the concept of non relodable TT for Akula

Those are actually for autonomous decoys like the MG-74.

You’d be so kind as to produce pictures of the Chinese or Russian SURTASS boats then?. No?.

Why would I produce pictures of the Chinese or Russian SURTASS boats when I did not once claim that they have them?! I’m beginning to wonder how many times I’m going to have to repeat myself. You appear to have no logical counter-argument, so the only thing you can keep parroting is SURTASS SURTASS SURTASS.

OK how about evidence of Russia’s SOSUS nets then?. I cant actually provide evidence they exist, but I know they do – I’d guess you’d be willing to take my word on that one eh?.

The conspiracy theory forum is that way.

1, ESM. You get a bearing to within a degree or so, signal strength/profile and, with some more advanced systems, angle of incidence on the signal. From this it is possible to determine a rough positional fix of an emitter. Classification is possible to set-type, if that has enough unique signal characteristics to identify it, that is classification to set-type not vessel class though – to use the famous example an SPS-49 tracked via ESM could be bolted to a Canadian Halifax class or Polish Perry class as easily as it could be something that you want to track!. Occasionally contacts can be made at quite extraordinary range as atmospheric ducting can carry an EM signal, of low enough frequency, hundreds of nautical miles. Not so great for targetting though as the surface Warfare officer can hardly report back to the boss that he cant fire his big ship-killing missiles today because there are no ducts!.

2, Passive sonar. Bearing, as you acknowledged, to within a few degrees. Direct path you get a solid, if generalised, target track. CZ you get an intermittent contact as the target passes in and out of the accoustic pressure zones. Target classification is possible, but, not without certain limitations. Even SURTASS isn’t necessarily capable of differentiating between a diesel charging a snorting SSK’s batteries and one powering a coaster or fishing vessel!.

3. OTH/Skywave radar. As discussed on here ad nauseum resolution decreases massively with range. You get a rough bearing, a velocity vector and a very rough range figure and thats your lot. You dont get any indication of target size whatsoever for example.

NONE of what you have posted counters any of my claims. Some of your claims have NOTHING to do with the topic (why should I care if SURTASS can’t tell the difference between a diesel sub and a fishing boat?). You are however, deliberately exaggerating bearing error in an attempt to make it seem that the above sensors will barely be able to determine even the general direction of a contact. All of the above systems are capable of narrowing down the location enough for other platforms to close in for the kill. Even determining the location down to an area the size of a few hundred square km is more than enough.

…is so fundamentally wrong. You have a finite amount of deployable search assets and, one would hope, you’d not fire ASM’s on initial detect anyway!.

So the defender, the one with potentially an entire country’s-worth of weapons is the one who has a finite assets? Yet the carrier group seemingly has an infinite number of assets to destroy all the defender’s sensors and platforms before the defender even knows what hit him? What parallel universe is this in? How many search assets do you think the defender needs? The Argentineans, with almost non-existent assets were able to find and attack the British task force, yet somehow someone who is actually equipped for the job and has platforms and sensor systems that can scan tens of thousands of square kilometers of ocean still won’t have enough? Why don’t I just claim that the carrier group won’t have enough aircraft to even scratch the defender’s zillion sensors which are protected by a ring of thousands of SAMs and fighters? Wow! I too can make up an unrealistic scenario that makes it much easier for one side!

Great way to waste expensive ASM’s even if you care nothing about potetially murdering innocent people!.

If your scenario involves a significant civilian presence, then that makes the job for the carrier much harder, as any passing aircraft or ship may notify the defender of your presence. Furthermore, you’ve got to identify everything coming at you; otherwise the F-14 you think you might be shooting down may in fact turn out to be an Airbus. So the defender can theoretically get his forces much closer to you before you can give the go ahead to open fire.

If you are going to chase down every contact that has the potential to be a carrier group you are going to run out of assets pretty quick….or, more likely, your resources will be drawn off to allow for manoever forces to exploit the gap. The VERY last thing you do is send off strike aircraft and SSGN’s after every spurious contact!.

Yes, or if you’re dropping torpedoes on every subsurface contact then you might run out torpedoes if you ever actually detect a real submarine!

Use weapons catalogues for a general reference on performance figures only – they’re wrong all of them (whoever writes them) and should be taken as guideline only.

I had to re-read that three times before I could bring myself to believe that you wrote it.

Jonesy has just declared that ALL performance figures in ALL weapons catalogues EVERYWHERE are WRONG! Never has there been an accurate performance figure ever published in the history of the world! No, only the omniscient Jonesy knows all!

How arrogant do you have to be to claim something like that?

I know, personally, of RN deployments in those areas that have gone completely unchallenged – when they certainly should not have been – then no, sorry, someones making stuff up!.

Apparently the UK’s surveillance systems cannot detect old Russian bombers since a number of their flights near the UK have gone unchallenged!

Do you seriously believe that the Russians are going to launch a massive simulated attack everytime something approaches their shores? If so, why the heck doesn’t everyone else do that?

The SURTASS array is vastly more sensitive and has the processing backend to exploit that sensitivity. You are comparing a fighters radar capability to that of an AWACS.

More processing backend? An SSN built today will have vastly more processing power than a dedicated SURTASS vessel built even a decade ago. In platforms where storage space and weight is not a big problem, processing power will have far more to do with date of construction than anything else. AWACS and fighter radars are a completely different thing, so are not comparable. With that said, modern figher radars can detect targets at hundreds of kilometers range like AWACs, so you’re comparison actual favors my side of the argument.

Doesnt mean that it could reliably get that detection, track it or classify it.

In other words, you don’t have any proof that it could not detect, track or classify it so you’re just speculating based on no actual data.

Now this is a bizarre course to choose in this debate!. You said before that a US CSG would have to emit in a war zone because it would be too dangerous not to. Yet you cite the very reason why thats the last thing that they’d do!. We had no airborne radar surveillance in 1982. The Argentinians caught our pickets because we were forced to have them emit

And if they weren’t emitting, then they would have been even more vulnerable! The Argentineans used their own radars and scouts, and not ESM to find the targets!

Quote:

As an interesting note, the Argies apparently used long range surveillance radars to find the carriers by tracking the aircraft flying around them. So I hope that you’ve retired all your E-2s and replaced all your Hornets and Harriers with F-35s, otherwise, I’ve got another way to detect your undetectable CVBG

Yep they did.

What? They did? When were all the Hornets, Harrier’s and E-2’s retired? When did I miss this amazing news?

We showed what happens if you dont practise deceptive manoever very cleverly and dont suppress opfor counter-detect systems.

Yes, because the defender is always going to sit back and watch your fighters come in and destroy his systems without doing anything in response. /Sarcasm

It seems that in your imaginary world, every defensive system is useless because it will somehow always be destroyed by the attacker before it detects him or shoots back.

What makes you think that they didnt know they were being tracked by that Iranian drone?. They just said that they weren’t.

The irony. Let me replace just two words:

What makes you think that they didnt know they were being tracked by that Soviet sub?. They just said that they weren’t.

So you’ve proven that
1) If an official claim or statement agrees with your position, then it’s 100% true
2) If those same people people suddenly make a claim that does not favor your position, then they are obviously lying!

Patterns of active sonobuoys from aircraft, surface forces dropping sounding charges, accoustic barrages various options to stop NATO building up profiles on their vessels. Basic ‘de-lousing’ procedures that you would do if you knew that someone was conducting accoustic reconnaisance off your bases.

If you had actually read my post, you would notice that I did not claim that the Soviets knew where all of those subs were. Here’s what is said again:

As far as I’m concerned, the Soviets probably new where the 688s were about as much as NATO knew where the 671s actually were. In other words, most of the time neither side had any idea where they actually were.

So basically, you’re making stuff up.

With that said, they do claim to have tracked them when detected. Sometimes they’ve used ASW aircraft and surface ships to pursue. On rare occasions, they’ve dropped warning depth charges nearby (although that’s far more common during exercises when there is going to be live weapons fire). However, they’ve clearly stated that, like the Americans, most of the time they do nothing and simply attempt to keep a track on the target submarine.

Take a look at how the Japanese have dealt with the Chinese subs they detect. They’re not much different than the Russians.

Acoustic deception measures cannot be proven as they are one of the highest-kept secrets. Making claims about them is silly. It’s like claiming one type of modern, classified jammer is absolutely superior to another.

Nice try to reshape events. The sound trace was pulled through and explained very briefly, the trace showed plant noise and several transients before and, unsuprisingly, after the first smaller detonation. It was a discrete, filtered, track of a subsurface contact at the site that the accident occured. Its on one of the documentaries regarding the event. I’m still stunned that they let that detail out. I can only assume they thought it more important to show that there was no USN involvement in the accident than to let slip what SURTASS could do.

You haven’t said anything new here. I already covered this in my previous post. In fact, you yourself have stated that passive sonar will have bearing error and would likely have difficulties differentiating similar sources of sound in the same area, so there is absolutely no way to confirm that SURTASS was tracking the Kursk as opposed to any of the other contacts nearby including the much, much noiser nuclear powered Pyotr Velikiy. It’s just more proof that you will present a claim when it supports your position but then turn around and claim the opposite when it doesn’t.

Yep. You are right the Soviets/Russians could’ve found and defeated an RN CVS group with the kit the RN had available in 1982 – at a range of 200km off their coast.

So the Argies with almost non-existant capabilities could attack an RN group at 800 + km yet the Soviets with colossally greater resources would only manage 200 km? Let me remind you that we are talking about the real world, not your imaginary one.

We had a problem finding an SSK in shallow water because SSK’s in shallow water present a different target set than SSN’s/SSGN’s in deep-water.

You had a problem? You launched over a hundred attacks and failed to hit a single thing. That’s more accurately called a disaster. Best of all, it throws all your other claims into doubt. You can’t seriously expect people to believe all your other claims after such a failure. Second, the depth of the area where the escorts and carriers operated from exceeded 1000 meters in places and even greater as one moves further away from the islands. Hardly what I’d call shallow. In fact, that’s more than the majority of the GIUK Gap and far more than the North Sea (which is much better described as shallow water in a naval sense).

The Tigerfish of the day weren’t fantastic but the Mk8’s would have been the correct choice for a ship like Belgrano anyway.

Weren’t fantastic? Not being able to hit anything even in controlled tests is what you describe as “not fantastic?” And the best choice for the Belgrano would have been a wake-homing active/passive wire-guided heavyweight torpedo, not a relic out of WW2. The Conqueror was lucky in that the Belgrano and her escorts did not detect the torpedoes or torpedo launch, and did not perform any sudden maneuvers. However, according to at least some of the reports I read, one of the torpedoes missed anyway. I do have to give credit to the Conqueror’s crew for launching the torpedoes on a curved trajectory as opposed to a straight one and still managing to have a majority hit.

Stingray was just starting to become available to the chopper fleet. There were no issues with that system. Tigerfish got fixed after a few years and, after some early teething trouble Spearfish came good.

So in other words, one torpedo was barely in service, and the other was only “fixed” years later. How reassuring that must have been to British sub crews. After all, if they were hit, then at least it probably wasn’t by friendly fire.

You can try and obfuscate/generalise your way into proving a point that doesnt exist as much as you like but it doesnt alter the truth.

I haven’t altered the truth in the least. I’ve simply pointed out the historical truth which happens to repeatedly defy your claims.

The task force was spread out. Look at the ships attacked, & where they were. Sir Galahad & Sir Tristram were offloading when attacked. Glamorgan was hit by a land-based missile. Coventry, Ardent, Antelope, Brilliant, Plymouth & Argonaut were covering the landings & beachhead in San Carlos Water when hit. I could go, listing the slight damage. Most of the ships attacked were close to land, far from the carriers.

Most of the ships attacked were attacked by unguided gravity bombs. We’re talking WW1 tech with the assistance of a CCIP/CCRP. After that, the Argentineans possessed a whole amazing FIVE air-launched Exocets. 1,2,3,4,5. That’s it. Those five Exocets were not enough to destroy even a small fraction of the task force. They also had only four aircraft with which to launch them (another one was used for spare parts). In other words, the Argies were totally unprepared and unequipped to try to take on a carrier group, and with the exception of the 5 Exocets, had almost no chance of taking out the escorts or a carrier. As a result, most of the hits were with the dumb bombs on ships that were landing or close to land, because those were the only ships they had a decent chance to hit (and survive). The fact that they were able to do the damage they did with the extremely limited equipment they possessed is shocking.

Most of the time, the Argentineans did not know where the task force was, other than that it was somewhere within the combat radius of the Harriers they could see overhead. Given the range of the Harriers, that limited the search area much more than would be the case for carriers with longer range aircraft.

According to the Argentineans, there was more to it than “somewhere within the combat radius of the Harriers.” They claim to have analyzed the flight patterns of those harriers to determine the position of the carriers, so combat radius had little to do with it. Of course, this can’t be proven, but I will state that since the Argies were able to attack the escort screen, I suspect that they at least had a decent idea of where the carriers were. They just didn’t have the numbers needed to take them out.

Sheffield & Glasgow were escorting the carriers when hit, but note that there is no evidence that the carriers had been located.

My apologies if I came across as implying that the Argentinean pilots actually knew that any specific contact they were seeing on their radars was the carrier. They were shooting their missile at contacts they could not identify on radar; however, based on their approach, the range of the Super Etendard’s radar, and pilot testimonies it has been determined that they probably did see the carriers on radar. But as I stated before, with the one or two missiles they were firing it would have been incredible luck for them to have hit the carrier and not one of the many other vessels there.

Both were between the carriers & the direction of attack, doing their job of screening the carriers.

And they were hit. Imagine now that instead of attacking with a pitiful two aircraft carrying a total of two missiles, they had ~50 aircraft. How long would the escort screen have lasted? Based on the damage two inflicted, the escort screen and carriers would likely have been annihilated by a single attack wave.

Littoral environment. Small subs are far more effective in confined waters. Exiting the Dardanelles/Aegean entry is prime territory for SSK’s. I would image that the Turks are reasonably well practised putting their SSK’s into the Sea of Marmara as well.

The Russians have said that their new SSNs will be ~5000 tons, so there will not be a great difference in size here. You have made a claim that the SSKs will be able to target and destroy such a hypothetical SSN in these waters, without having any data to backup the claim that those SSKs will actually be able to detect it unless it is right on top of them. Whilst it’s a nuke vs nuke example, I suggest reading about the 1992 Baton Rouge/Sierra collision, or the recent French-British SSBN collision to show just how limited detection ranges against modern nuke boats at low speeds really are.

Your first post on this site seemed to indicate you knew all about the challenges offered by SSK’s in tight waters. I find it amazing that you can’t see how seaspace as extreme as the Aegean entry would be tailor made for SSK’s?.

Yes, challenges offered in finding those SSKs. Trying to find a small 4th gen SSN isn’t going to be any easier. Just because an SSK can hide well doesn’t mean it suddenly has the mystical ability to find other SSKs and SSNs that can also hide well.

Would it quell your ‘righteous fury’ if I added that I think anybody’s SSN’s would get murdered in there….not just Russia’s?. Its just that the article specifically listed the Russians putting SSN’s into the Black Sea not anyone else!.

This has little to do with Russia vs whomever. Although the new Russian SSNs will be smaller, if this scenario was changed and it was USN Virginia’s vs the SSKs in those waters my argument would not change (i.e. The SSKs would have a hard time actually finding the Virginia).

If one somehow did get through, it would be trying to survive against smaller, sneakier subs in waters perfectly made for such subs to have the edge

They will have the edge in acoustic detection vs a submarine that isn’t even built yet? Prove it.

Seriously? Do you actually know what the waters in that area are like? Shallow and confined, the idea hunting ground for SSK’s, especially ones well versed in operating in that scenario

See above. Also, I’m not aware of any exercises that involved Turkish/Greek SSKs hunting 4th gen SSNs in those waters, so I’m not sure where you got that they are “well versed in operating in that scenario.”

Let’s get something straight here; the odds that Russia will be at war with Turkey and/or Greece are miniscule. So the premise that they will get “murdered” by Turkish and Greek SSKs if they try to pass through the actual straits has little to do with reality. In peacetime, the SSNs will get through just fine in order to support operations and exercises in the Mediterranean. Since peacetime is almost certain to be all the time, I don’t see any “murdering” going on. If by some chance Russia does go to war with Turkey, the Russians would likely bombard and attempt to capture the area around the straights before trying to send anything through. If they wanted to pass anything through, they would launch mobile noisemakers to worsen the already poor acoustic conditions. They could also attempt a combined surface and subsurface transit in order to increase the chance of something getting through. But in any of those scenarios the greatest threat would not be SSKs, but mines. And again, that’s extremely unlikely to happen anyway.

Wilk,

I know very little about naval strategy and tactics, so I’ll let the experts respond to you.

I would, however, like to make two short points:
1) No foe of the USN has anything quite like SURTASS. If they did, it would make the USN’s life much more complicated.
2) The following link about NORPAC-82 will answer many of your other questions regarding operating with EMCON http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-031.htm. I found it fascinating and surprising.

Cheers!

1) All of the major naval powers employ low frequency towed array sonar on mobile platforms and both Russia and China employ fixed arrays that operate at similar frequencies to SURTASS and SOSUS.

Making the USN’s life “much more complicated” is irrelevant because the USN has not faced a capable naval opponent in war since WW2, so they have never had to face these systems in combat.

2) The article doesn’t affect my argument in any way. It makes naive assumptions that the forces involved were not detected and an even more naive assumption that if the Soviets did detect the forces that they would suddenly launch everything they had at them as if this was the middle of a war. There were many times throughout the cold war when US navy vessels operated within range of WP land based anti-ship assets and were clearly detected (by the appearance of a scout plane, for example) yet no massive simulated attacks were launched. There is also absolutely no way that the task force can claim that it did not pass by any number Soviet subs throughout the operation. It’s not like those Soviet subs would have revealed themselves by opening fire unless a state of war existed. (in which case they would have been easy targets due to being EMCON silent and dispersed).

What I would like to get across is that anyone who claims that they were not detected whilst performing maneuvers in peacetime is either incredibly arrogant, stupid, or both.

Also, I suggest you look up articles detailing WW2 naval ops to see just how often naval forces naively believed that they were not detected but were in fact being tracked.

EMCON of carrier groups in areas where they would be subject to close attention if located – been done since the 70’s. Yes CSGs can be detected by passive sonar at very long ranges – IF you have the sonar to do it. On that one there is SURTASS and SOSUS. Russia has a SOSUS-equivalent system in the far east and off their northern coast. What else is there?. Space-based sensors like what?. SAR. At what resolution?. Whats the swath depth of a SAR sweep at sufficient resolution to tell a supercarrier from a vehicle carrier and how long does it take to surveil large tracts of ocean surface at that resolution – can it be done in realtime?.

And you’re claiming the Russians don’t have the sonar to do it? Yes, all those low frequency arrays are just for pretend. Yes Russia does have SOSUS like arrays, but AFAIK, all of the locations and numbers have never been revealed publicly.
-There is OTH radar, which I’ve mentioned before.
-Resolution is irrelevant. As long as you can get a general idea of where the group is that is all you need to send ssgn’s, strike aircraft, and ASMs. If the group is dispersed, and as you say, the carrier is acting like a vehicle carrier, then that does make detection hard. But, it also makes the carrier much easier to sink if found, and makes it much easier for a submarine or even a group of ASMs to avoid detection by the escorts and hit the carrier with ease. So the commander of the CVBG must make a tough choice. Either the group is in formation (and hence much easier to detect) or dispersed but incredibly vulnerable if detected. I don’t recall anytime in wartime where a commander of a major carrier group chose option #2. So overall I think the “pretend you’re a vehicle carrier” option isn’t likely to happen much in a real conflict.

Quote:

An EMCON silent CVBG has dramatically reduced ability to detect attack and yet the attacker still has a variety of effective ways to detect the group.

SURTASS has trained for ops in support of CSG’s for years and practiced it in at least one exercise serial I know of in the Atlantic with, to quote one of the warfare officers involved, ‘amazing results’. Offboard surveillance works for the battlegroup too. Where is the opfor SURTASS ship or would you suggest that a subs tactical array is the equivalent of SURTASS?.

Well you rather completely avoided my point there. The gist of your original argument was that the attacker will have a hard time finding the carrier but that the carrier would easily find the attacker (see the 300km 949 detection claim). Now your claiming a specific example with SURTASS. First of all, I don’t care that a warfare officer said “amazing results”. I’ve heard the same things from used car salesmen. Anyone can make any claim but unless that claim is backed up by hard facts and preferably numbers it is still nothing but a claim. Of course I’m sure if a Russian officer claimed “amazing results” in detecting stealth aircraft with a new radar you would believe him too, right?

But let’s get to your point:

1) Since the carrier is the one attacking, that puts it in the region where the hunter has his fixed sonar arrays. Hence, the hunter does not need a SURTASS-type ship since the arrays will do just fine.

2) The subs tactical array does operate on similar frequencies, so there is not some kind of gargantuan difference between the two. I won’t make the claim that the sub’s array is going to be as capable as a dedicated ship with a mile-long array, but I have absolutely no reason to believe that it will suddenly allow the CVBG to detect a submarine (which is many tens of decibels quieter than the carrier group) at a longer range the the submarine can detect the group.

BTW, your very own Royal Navy claim that the new Astute class will be able to detect contacts at many thousands of kilometers away, so it seems that the ability to have SURTASS-like performance on an SSN is not impossible.

OK. With passive sonar. See earlier point who else has SURTASS?.

Why does it matter who else has SURTASS? We’ve already established that they have fixed sonar networks (which are likely even greater than SURTASS in detection capability) and towed array sonars which, while probably not as capable as SURTASS are still capable of detecting a carrier group at many hundreds of kilometers. So SURTASS here is irrelevant.

Why if its decoying responder systems into a SAM trap?. Could you not have a second passive E-2 up closer to the carrier on COMINT/ELINT tasking?.

Sure you can have another E-2 that’s closer to the carrier. But if it’s not emitting, how does that help you against an attacker that goes EMCON silent too? Or a swarm of ASMs? Answer -> It doesn’t.

If I’ve located a CVBG passively and confirmed that it is EMCON silent, why would I have my attack force go active?

Very good. Triangulation of a moving air vehicle – needs multiple platforms in just the right places!. Then whats the angular resolution of your system?. A degree plus or minus – at 400km downrange do the maths. You get a target box and not a fixed contact.

Realtime datalinks exist for a reason. This is not WW2 where pilots would take photos then land and compare them over a cup of tea. As for resolution, you don’t need an accurate fix. We’re not trying to hit the carrier with an artillery piece, are we? As long as the resolution is enough for your ASMs or torpedoes to find the target then that’s all you need.

How on Earth is it double standards when only one side has the damned system. Yes Russia can develop SURTASS and put themselves right back in the game….as soon as Legenda came apart thats what I would have been racing to do. They havent though. No Russian SURTASS!.

We’ve covered this before. See my points above. The Russians have plenty of low frequency arrays, both fixed and mobile. They are enough to detect the carriers at long range. On the topic of Legenda, I could not care less. I have barely factored space-based assets in my argument. Satellites are a nice alternative option for detection but are absolutely unnecessary as long as you have low frequency passive sonar or OTH radar. Until someone builds a carrier that is at least as quiet as even the noisiest SSN and has a radar signature no larger than a fishing boat, my point stands.

Oh for crying out loud. How does the defender launch a feint attack if he doesnt know where the damned battlegroup is in the first place!. You are assuming information that the defender just cannot develop.

Err… Your original post claimed that the carrier group could draw the attackers away or trap them. You do realize that the attacker can also draw away elements of the carrier group, right? Even if that the defender has not detected the group, assuming he is aware that an attack is coming (war declared) or has just been attacked, then he can launch fake attacks in an attempt to:

1) Get the carrier or at least elements of the group to reveal themselves, which may lead to finding the carrier.

2) Get elements of the escort (aircraft or ships) to pursue the decoy attackers and so draw some of the escort away from the carrier.

In fact #1 is similar to what happened at Midway, where a group of US dive bombers followed an IJN destroyer which led them to the Japanese carriers.

Of course you can. Or, even better, you can go yourself and talk to the people who did it. Like I have.

You’ve talked to Soviet personnel and officers who were there? Tell me more 😀

No seriously, I really don’t give a damn if they thought they were detected or not. There are thousands of examples throughout history where naval forces had absolutely no idea they were being tracked, and there’s no reason
to believe that this was any different.

Back to the Falklands, the Argies, with their comparably pathetic sensor capabilities, were able to locate Royal Navy ships to attack, including the carriers (although they apparently could not properly identify them on radar in the very short amount of time they had before ASM launch). Unfortunately for them, they had far too few missiles and the Brits wisely placed the escort ahead of the carriers (and so in between them and the attacking fighters). As a result, the escort and other vessels were hit, and not the carriers. Of course, if the Argentinians had had more than a handful of Exocets, things might have been very different. It should be noted that the Soviets certainly did not suffer from such limited numbers of missiles…

As an interesting note, the Argies apparently used long range surveillance radars to find the carriers by tracking the aircraft flying around them. So I hope that you’ve retired all your E-2s and replaced all your Hornets and Harriers with F-35s, otherwise, I’ve got another way to detect your undetectable CVBG :diablo:

OK you tell me this then. Would, in a shooting conflict, a carrier battlegroup put itself in the Persian Gulf (were this drone detect happened) without reducing Irans ability to engage first?. Try and answer objectively and honestly.

You have missed the point. The point is that the USN was unaware that they were being tracked (or at least, publicly, that’s what they revealed). If Iran could pull this off, then the Soviets could likely do it with ease. If the USN was fooled into believing that they were not being tracked by Iran, then how can they claim with certainty that they were not being tracked by the Soviets at any point in time?

But yes, I agree that in a shooting war the USN would attempt to reduce Iran’s capability find and engage the carrier. But that kind of argument opens up a whole different debate (how well could Iran or any other country defend itself against such an attempt). It also assumes that the carrier is the one doing the initial attack, instead of the possibility that the defender suspects an attack is coming and launches a preemptive strike. Ton’s of factors there.

..and they let those 688’s and S-class SSN’s sit off Gadzhievo, Zap Litsa and all the others because they liked the company presumeably?. Lulled NATO into that warm fuzzy feeling while damn near evey sortie was catalogued. Yep they had NATO 688’s tagged all the way. Just like they had SOSUS fooled when they were running the Delta’s across underneath merchies!.

So? What could the Soviets do? Sink them in peacetime? Why would they do anything? For a time the Soviets had an old noisy SSBN parked off the US coast just to show to the Americans that they could blow up Washington in minutes. Did the USN do anything about it? No. I’m certainly not going to claim that the Soviets knew where most of the 688s were at any one time. I’m simply providing a counter-example to your own claims. As far as I’m concerned, the Soviets probably new where the 688s were about as much as NATO knew where the 671s actually were. In other words, most of the time neither side had any idea where they actually were.

Well the sound traces of the detonations in the torpedo room were quite clear. Wonder how they got a decoy to explode, just on cue, in exactly the same fashion as numerous seismographs say that the tragic accident aboard Kursk happened?!.

Errr, I made no claim that the actual explosions would not be detected. Explosions can be heard for thousands of kilometers. You’re claiming Kursk itself was detected. After the explosion, SOSUS operators could easily have given the rough location of the Kursk. However, that doesn’t mean that Kursk was detected before the explosion. Kursk was operating with a number of much noisier surface vessels at around her. Due to the combination of the range and low frequency what SOSUS may recorded from that area may have been several noisy surface vessels, and not Kursk, and once the explosion occurred, that would have been greater than any other source of noise anyway.

KURSK was under exercise conditions conducting weapons firing drills. I dont know how they did things aboard that ship, but, Russian standard procedure is the same as everyone elses in that you close the ship up when you are firing weapons just in case something goes wrong.

See above.

With 650km of range?. You are suggesting that Oscar-II’s tail can provide bearing and range details at 650km range to enable the deployment of its P-700 missiles are you?. Maybe its ESM suite can do that then?. Or the radar installed in the tower….goes up on a REALLY long mast does it?!!!.

I never claimed it would launch the missiles at 650 km! Why would they launch at max range anyway? Does the USAF launch AIM-120s at their max range in combat? The 650 km gives the 949 a number of tactical options:

1) The ability to set waypoints to the missiles and have them come around and attack the carrier group from a different direction from where the sub is. This means that the escorts will not be able to follow back the attack to the submarine. It also means that an attack can be launched on what appears to be a less protected side of the CVBG (eg. If the carrier is shielded by more escorts from one side than the other, hit the less shielded side).

2) The ability to attack from multiple directions at once but with all missiles launched from a single platform.

3) The ability to launch at extreme range if off-ship targetting is available.

Whether a 949 can detect a CVBG at 650 km is unknown. I certainly know that it’s not outside the realm of possibility (see the Astute above). With that said, at that range angular resolution on low frequency passive sonar would be horrible, so you might miss, unless you tried doing something really fancy like firing a shotgun-like “spread” of datalinked Granits.

There have been plenty of collisions. The thing you have to remember is who ran into whom?!. The Russian sub running into the back of an American sub tells one story. An American or British sub running into the back of a Russian tells a very different one. I genuinely cannot recall of a British SSN ever returning to port with stern or rear casing damage. I will check on that though….seeings as you say the 671’s were so quiet!.

Oh I do recall a Soviet sub dragging away HMS Splendid’s sonar array. Who was chasing who there? Of course the best one is still the Kitty Hawk ramming that 671 that had somehow gotten right in front of her without the escorts or the carrier noticing.

OK. ASW for Beginners 2009 edition it is then. Blue water ASW and Littorals ASW are two entirely different things!!. In fairness in 1982 that was a major suprise to us. Our torpedoes proved to suffer from seeker oversaturation and the sonars, that were quite competent out against clunking Echo class boats and the suchlike in deep water, were unsuited to shallower waters. No big surprise looking back but then neither, really, was the poor performance of several of our radar systems, also designed for open water environments, when they failed to deal with detection against land clutter. Horses for courses.

Of course, of course. Like I said, I’ve heard it all before. Whenever there’s a spectacular failure or under performance of a system (or many, many systems as was the case in the Falklands) there’s always some kind of excuse invented. The reality is however that the Falklands proved, amongst many other things, that:

– CVBG detection wasn’t that hard. If the Argentinians could do it, then the Soviets/Russians can too.
– The alleged ability to locate and even precisely identify individual submarines that the USN/RN boasted about was in reality non-existant. Not only could the RN ASW forces not detect a single sub that wasn’t on the surface, they were apparently unable to tell the difference between a submarine and a school of fish, so they dropped 150 torpedoes on fish, but never on a submarine.
– ASM hard-kill systems were practically useless.
– The accoustic homing torpedoes on both sides were worthless. The Argentinian ones couldn’t hit anything, and the British ones were so unreliable that the captain of the Conqueror decided to use world war 2 era torpedoes instead of them.

One wonders how, in the even of hostilities, NATO CVBG ASW teams would have sunk any Soviet SSNs. After expending most of their torpedoes targeting fish, if they actually found a Victor, would those oh so reliable torpedoes have actually managed to hit the thing? I suspect that the Soviets would have lost more subs from spontaneous reactor explosions than hostile fire. (Don’t take that seriously, I’m being facetious… or maybe not :dev2:)

You can make the “Blue water vs Littorals” excuses all you want. You can’t explain how almost every single system that was boasted of so highly failed so spectacularly.

So forgive me if I and others here are less than convinced by all your claims of “amazing results.”

So much fantasy in this thread, I don’t know where to begin…

You still haven’t answered:

a)how you’ll find a carrier group that is EMCON slient without being detected yourself
b)how you’ll find the carrier within that group
c)how you take out the Hawkeye and similar without giving the game away

A) No CVBG is going to go EMCON silent in a war zone unless it is suicidal. An EMCON silent CVBG can still be detected by low frequency passive sonar at hundreds if not thousands of kilometers. CVBGs are amongst the noisiest contacts at sea. On the surface, OTH radar can do the job. Space based sensors are another option.

An EMCON silent CVBG has dramatically reduced ability to detect attack and yet the attacker still has a variety of effective ways to detect the group.

b) While the carrier has a unique sound/radar/visual/etc signature which you could target the best option is just to hit the whole CVBG and hope the carrier is one of the casualties. At the very least, there will be less escorts around for the next attack.

c) Why would you have to take out the Hawkeye? If you are using sub-surface detection and attack then the hawkeye is irrelevant. Otherwise, if a Hawkeye is airborne and emitting that may help you locate the CVBG. The Hawkeye’s main advantage will be detection of an inbound group of aircraft or possibly anti-ship missiles. If you try to destroy the Hawkeye before you launch you’ll just alert the carrier group. So the best option for the attacker is to just ignore it unless an opportunity to destroy it presents itself.

Point 1 – nope. USN E-2’s fly and train passive every bit as much as active. The onus is on the hunter to go active to find the carrier group not the other way around.

The hunter is certainly capable of detecting the group passively so your claim that the hunter must go active is absolutely FALSE.

Point 2 – If you do get a passive sniff on a Hawkeye’s set who’s to say its orbiting its carrier?. E-2’s practice offsetting as the most basic information denial procedure.

If it’s not orbiting the carrier then its capability to detect an attack on the carrier is reduced. Double-edged sword here.

Point 3 – passive intercept of a moving air vehicle does not give you a fixed set of coordinates for that vehicle – it gives you a ‘target box’ based on the angular resolution of your esm equipment and range between emitter and receiver.

Yes it does. It’s called triangulation. Look it up. Not to mention that modern digital ESM can use a variety of techniques to potentially get a very accurate fix even with few detectors in a close space.

A risk of a sub getting a sniff?!. Yes passive sonar is probably the best tool for OTH ship detection and classification, but a submarine sonar…even a towed array…is limited in range and resolution. A sub would, except for uncommon and unreliable accoustic conditions, have to get uncomfortably close to get a hit. Not to mention be lucky to be in the right place at the right time to get the group within passive detection radius. Its not exactly reliable as a detection tool to base your anti-carrier capability on.

Then, just a few posts later…

You mean the Oscar that is publically acknowledged as being tracked at 300km by SURTASS under exercise conditions and the 671’s who’s performance absolutely depended on the presence of a surface-duct?.

How anyone can have such double-standards is beyond me. CVBGs are vastly noiser than any SSN, even first generation. An SSN will detect a carrier group long, long before the CVBG can counter detect. And both sides can use low frequency arrays like SURTASS, with the difference being that the CVBG will still get detected at much greater ranges than the sub when using such equipment.

Somehow in your fantasy example the CVBG has such incredible assets to allegedly detect hunters at hundreds of km’s yet the stealthier hunters cannot use similar equipment to detect, track and attack the CVBG at similar or greater ranges. Ludicrous!

So you knew you were meaning within a radius of about 500nm then?. With the possibility of it being a deliberate decoy to draw off or even trap opfor recon forces?.

And yet the attacker also can’t launch decoy attacks? Double standards again.

The Soviets knew on many occaisions that US CVBG’s were operating off Vladivostok and off the North Cape. They didnt find them.

You have provided absolutely ZERO evidence to prove that the Soviets weren’t tracking every CVBG at every minute they were operating in those areas. Not that this is something that could be proved anyway unless you had very detailed records of Soviet naval operations from that time period. So unless you can provide these, myself and anyone else who is not a deluded fanboy can simply assume that you are pulling these facts out of your rear end.

Reminds me of that Iranian drone tracking a US carrier not too long ago. The US Navy denied any such thing happened. Then the Iranians decided to show the evidence. Oops! If a US carrier group didn’t know that they were being tracked by Iran, then they had absolutely no idea whether or not the vastly better equipped Soviets were tracking them.

Battle exercise of having the bloody submarine at action stations!. Do you think the crew are allowed to run up and down having a party when they are undertaking firing drills?!. SURTASS caught Kursk at 300km and that is PUBLIC record when Kursk was at action stations i.e closed up!. The 650km range of P-700 is valueless because they cannot self designate. Relying on offboard targetting is a mugs game because it ties a discrete asset into going INdiscrete in order to receive enabling capability for its weapons. Absurd!.

And the Russians claim they can detect 688s at hundreds of km’s too. Heck, it seems everytime they have a naval exercise they are dropping depth charges around the LA’s as a nice way of telling them to get lost.

But let’s do something different and pretend NATO has an exercise on near the Russian border and and afterward the Russians claim to be able to detect an F-22s at 300 km with a shiny new S-400. Obviously, based on your clear agenda you will claim that as rubbish and say that they are lying. The truth, however, may be:

1) They actually did track it.
2) They were in fact lying.
3) They picked up something else and mistook it for an F-22, although an F-22 happened to be in the area at that time.
4) They did detect an F-22 but it was using equipment to increase RCS so it’s not a useful measure for wartime.
5) It was actually a decoy to make the Russians think they could detect an F-22 at those ranges.

Hence, it would be impossible to know. The only way we could possibly determine the truth is if further events occurred such as if the F-22 strayed into Russian airspace then we could examine the Russian response.

That was an aviation example. When it comes to submarines, this is even harder to do since a visual ID is impossible unless the target comes to the surface.

So, what SURTASS caught or didn’t catch is anyone’s best guess. For all they know, the Russians simply launched a decoy. Or it was a Shkval. Or they picked up something else in the area. Or they simply said they did for propaganda purposes.

Regardless, there is no credible reason to believe the 300km detection range against a 949 that is performing a stealthy detection and attack.

The 650km range of P-700 is valueless because they cannot self designate.

What? Are you living in an alternate universe? As long as the launch platform can form a track via sonar, radar, esm, or other sensor then of course it can self-designate! Unless you’re going to claim that a 949 has none of those sensors.

Do some research on the detection levels deliverable from a mid-late 80’s 671RTMK w/tail without a surface duct and then with a surface duct present. The results will be instructive on your claim that “That the Victor III effectively practiced tracking US forces”.

Oh yes, the “noisy” Victors. The same Victors that were so noisy that American carriers and submarines were ramming them to show them how well they could detect them! I have to chuckle at all these claims of ridiculous detection ranges, yet somehow time and time again these “noisy” Victors could get inside CVBGs without reaction from the ships in the group, or collide with American SSNs that somehow decided against detecting the Victors at 300 km’s and preferred physical detection at 0 m.

For an example of detection ranges in actual war, we have the Falklands. The British ASW forces (generally acknowledged as the “best” ASW forces in NATO) launched ~150 ASW attacks and failed to sink (and apparently even detect) the single modern Argentinian sub that was operating against them. They were only saved by the sub’s defective torpedoes which failed to hit the British ships they were targeted at. I’m sure you’re going to make up an excuse for that too. Don’t worry, I’ve heard it all before (“It was a super duper quiet SSK”; “we weren’t used to the acoustic environment”; “we could detect it at 300 km, but we wanted to give the Argies a chance!”). I’ll just laugh and say that you might as well blame this spectacular failure on a “French spy” who gave the captain of the San Luis the position of all of the ASW assets at every moment throughout the entire war.

Sorry for the long post.