block30

In particular I've been reading about these new Air Independent Propulsion submarines and the United States' "submarine gap." I think this phrase is used both in terms of not having AIP subs and a lack of quantity with the Los Angeles class retiring and fewer Virginias to replace them.


Why the US Needs Conventional Submarines | The Diplomat

Sweden Has A Sub That's So Deadly The US Navy Hired It To Play Bad Guy

Israel's Newest And Most Advanced Submarine Is Their Last Line Of Nuclear Deterrence

Also, it looks like Australia is getting a Collins replacement, built by the French and diesel powered; Australia's $39 billion submarine deal heralds new era of super-subs | Fox News

https://www.defenseindustrydaily.com...marines-05917/

The Aussies are doubling their sub fleet size from six to twelve, I would imagine that is similar to America's shift to the Pacific and more specifically to counter China (I assume.)

Just curious if anyone here follows this stuff.... probably not . I think it's fascinating.

bruhaha

I don't follow submarines specifically, but I do follow the usni news feed

It is appalling the state of maintenance of our navy/military these days, with Superhornets coming up on end of service life a lot sooner than anticipated due to extra flying due to sequestration and lots of things getting sacrificed.

I remember the days when stuff broke and I ran out of money to repair it (I.e. Fire control,radar) I just told DESRON about it. it's broke, were c4 and I've run out of money, I need help to get it fixed. A few hours later more money magically appeared and it got fixed.

These days it would probably stay broke until we came up for deployment.

I'm thrilled they've fixed the big aegis vulnerability with baseline 9, before a tbmd ship always needed a pony to protect it because a aegis or linebacker modded aegis doing bmd couldn't do normal aaw as well.

rickair7777

AIP subs are not more advanced than nukes, but they are cheaper and potentially quieter than nukes...far more useful if your goal is defend your local waterspace and never go far from base.

If you want to sprint for days or weeks at 30+ knots and rapidly relocate significant sea control and power-projection forces from one part of the world to another (essentially holding all oceans at risk), you need nukes. Same if you need to patrol a vast ocean bordered by aggressive nations.

If the US were to find itself at a stealth disadvantage due to AIP opponents I suspect the solution would be a nuke with an AIP system to allow it to shut down the reactor plant. Keep the long-range sprint, but then go slow and quiet once in the patrol area. Or maybe just go with high-end batteries and lots of them, essentially what we have now but enough battery capacity to run for a longer period of time.

We probably wouldn't need a new class, I suspect we could retrofit some AIP capability if we needed to badly enough.

Quantity of subs is always a tradeoff with other platforms and programs. Everybody agrees we can always use more subs but we also need other systems and there's only so much money to go around.

badflaps

I wonder if they still have a Dairy Freeze machine on board?

tomgoodman

Dairy Freeze maybe, but no more topless dancers.

Naval History February 2010 Volume 24 No. 1 Page 41