The Echo of DRUMBEAT

Of course, it never really left - it has always been there.

For a little over a quarter century it drifted below the ambient noise, off our vernier perhaps, as we basked in the Cold War victory and then distracted by the Long War ... but it was always there.

It stood still for a bit, but it watched, matured, and grew.

For those who tried to keep it in their scan, it popped up now and then. If you got your bandwidth/binwidth right and you knew where to look, you could track it.

It's becoming easier to track now. Even the French are hearing it.

France launched May 2 an upgrade of systems and weapons on three La Fayette frigates, notably adding an anti-submarine capability to the stealthy warship, the arms procurement office said.

The Direction Générale de l’Armement (DGA) announced the award to DCNS for the modernization of three of the five La Fayette class frigates in service with the French Navy. Work will start in 2020 and will be done in Toulon, southern France, when the frigates go into dock for scheduled overhaul, the procurement office said. A first upgraded frigate will be delivered in 2021.

The anti-submarine capability will be fitted with a hull-mounted sonar and anti-torpedo countermeasures, the DGA said. A spokesman declined to comment on the value of the contract.

This class of frigate was commissioned between '92 & '99. These are not young ships.

Smart people here are hearing it as well.

In the sad but unlikely case you missed it in the the Russia-Russia-Russia broadband noise in the last few weeks, along with his co-author Julianne Smith, our friend Jerry Hendrix published earlier this month the must read, Forgotten Waters: Minding the GIUK Gap.

Read it all, but here's a few meaty bits;

...as Russian submarines have become more capable, while Allied anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities have atrophied over time. Defense experts now caution that the “GIUK Gap”—a line stretching between Greenland and Iceland to the United Kingdom—is a potential flashpoint between NATO and Russia, whose Murmansk-based Northern Fleet must transit the Gap to reach the Atlantic.1 So that Russia’s maritime assets might project force and support its interests, Putin revamped Russia’s national security strategy in 2016 to stress unfettered maritime access to the Atlantic. This partially explains why the GIUK Gap has seen more submarine traffic and higher tensions in recent years. Although Russia recently announced cuts to its defense spending, the authors believe that it will continue to devote resources to advanced nuclear submarines and other platforms that promise asymmetric advantages.3 Russian submarine patrols in the area hit recently a post–Cold War high; low-level, high-speed Russian aircraft flybys of U.S. naval warships have increased. As a result, focus on Allied maritime capabilities that could deter these actions has heightened.

Much of our ASW equipment is far from state of the art. Even the "advanced" tools are decades old - better than most out there with some nifty stuff hidden here and there - but more or less treading water since I was a LT. That is just on the Search/Location/Track side of the house. You don't even want to talk about the weaponeering end of the chain.

Neither the individual member states, nor the alliance as a whole, presently possess the ability to conduct a comprehensive and coordinated anti-submarine warfare campaign under either peacetime or wartime conditions. The Atlantic-facing members of NATO now possess far fewer frigates—the premier class of surface vessels designated to conduct ASW operations—than they did 20 years ago. Where they collectively had around 100 frigates in 1995, that number hovers at 51 today. Similarly, these nations had, in 1995, 145 attack submarines—those dedicated to anti-shipping and anti-submarine warfare missions—but that number has plummeted to a present low of 84. Moreover, most of the 52 U.S. attack submarines are presently being “pivoted” to the rising threat in the Asian Pacific region.6 In addition, the United States has placed its large underwater Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) in a standby condition, where data remains available but is unmonitored, while the U.S. Navy’s Surveillance Towed-Array Sensor System (SURTASS) fleet is being cut from nine to five ships. As a result, NATO’s ability to monitor and track threats in the underwater environment has been badly degraded, just as a revanchist Russia is re-emerging to challenge NATO interests in the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.
...
Today, in addition, key economic infrastructure are undersea, including communications cables and energy wellheads and pipelines. Ninety-nine percent of all transoceanic communications flow through undersea cables; nearly one third of all oil global and natural gas production is drawn from undersea wells.12 These are persistently under threat. Forgotten Waters revealed both how crucial these investments are to the daily lives of alliance members and the paucity of thought that has been devoted to their defense. Assumptions that care and maintenance of undersea assets are the responsibility of the commercial sector break down during wartime conditions, when the presence of enemy combatants can prevent commercial ships from making the repairs necessary to maintain communications and energy flows. In a global economy that is increasingly dependent upon access to the undersea environment, the NATO alliance must adapt rapidly to these new conditions.

You need to read it all.

As a datapoint about what a few submarines can do, most people know about "OPERATION DRUMBEAT" - the Happy-Time for German U-boats off the East Coast of the USA right after Germany declared war on the USA. How many are aware of how few U-boats were actually involved?

Thanks to the incredible people over at U-boat.net, we have a nice summary;

Dönitz wanted to strike with 12 type IX boats, the only boats capable of cruising that far. But he was forced to reduce that number to 6 boats due to other engagements of Hitler's preferences of the Gibraltar area. One of the 6 boats marked for this operation, U-128 was in need of urgent repairs and could not make it in time. Thus only 5 boats sailed.

That is right; 5.

What were just 5 boats in the first wave able to do?

U-125 (Folkers) was the first to sail on 18 Dec, 1941, followed by U-123 (Hardegen) on the 23rd and U-66 (Zapp) on the 24th, finally the last two of the Paukenschlag boats, U-130 (Kals) and U-109 (Bleichrodt) sailed together on the 27th. It would take then just over 2 weeks to reach US waters. They were under strict orders not to attack anything on the outbound cruise unless a especially attractive target was located (this meant a big warship like a cruiser, carrier or a battleship, but like Dönitz said "We never let a 10,000 tonner pass us by").
...
The Drumbeat boats ended operations of the coast of America on Feb 6 and headed home. They sank 25 ships for a total of 156,939 tons. Hardegen (U-123) sank 9 ships for a total of 53,173 tons.

That is what 5 German U-boats were able to do in just a few short weeks. They sunk all that with no losses.

Before WWII, I am sure many would have claimed it would be impossible for such an audacious operation to be conducted right under the lights of the East Coast, but it did.

In a short, sharp war - how would we do with (I know, everyone wants a short & sharp but never gets one) just a few Russian Northern Fleet SSN off our coast, say a couple each Sierra and Akula along with - for old time's sake - their last Victor III as well? Throw in the Severodvinsk off Norfolk for fun?

Once the Russians break in to the open Atlantic, things get sporty. A lot has changed since the German U-boats broke in to the Atlantic, but the danger of the submarine has not.

We've enjoyed a bit of a holiday. We've become a bit complacent, supine, and slothy. Heck, the nation that used to be the best at ASW, the UK, can't even defend their coastal waters anymore.

History is a jealous, needy lover, and she is parked down the street with her lights off waiting for you to wake up.