I’ll Take Sub Killing for 500

SE=SL-RD-NL+DI-PL

If you want to bench test an old Cold Warrior, put something like this out;

The Navy has created a new task group on the East Coast to ensure it has ready destroyers that can deploy on short notice to counter the Russian submarine threat in the Atlantic Ocean.

OK, Mallory Shelbourne's latest at USNINews got my attention.

The plan is to take destroyers that have recently completed deployments and are awaiting maintenance availabilities and make them ready for training and operations in the Atlantic. ... The creation of the new task group comes as the Navy has refocused assets and efforts on the Atlantic region due to Russia’s undersea capability. The service formally reestablished U.S. 2nd Fleet, which covers the North Atlantic and East Coast, in 2018 amid concerns over Russian submarines operating in the waters. ... The ships will be based out of Mayport and Norfolk, Va., and the task group is set for full operational capability by June 2022, according to McLane, who noted the ships will still have a post-deployment stand-down so sailors can see family after being out at sea. ... “These will allow us to work with the schedules of not only the surface ships, but the submarines, the P-8 community, and the HSM, [Commander, Helicopter Sea Combat Wing Atlantic] helicopter detachments so that we can align everybody up to take advantage of whatever training opportunities may exist, as well as tactical development exercises like in the past Black Widow, and then training opportunities like submarine command course operations. We can align those assets to go after these training environments that may exist,” Rear Adm. Brian Davies, the commander of Submarine Group 2, told reporters.

This is not a flip of the switch as there are a lot of “ifs” “buts” and “whens” … but the thinking is sound for reasons our friend Jerry Hendrix outlined in his 2017 report he co-authored on Forgotten Waters.

Jerry and I are about the same age. As East Coast JOs, we spent our ENS and LTjg sea duty saying bye to the last of the Soviet threat before that empire all fell apart. If you are under-50, you have no idea.

We experienced the Reagan build-up at flood tide. If you took a snapshot at the turn of the last decade of the 20th Century, the US Navy was well positioned for high end conflict in the Atlantic Coast. 

We had the entire great circle route from Miami to the GUIK gap covered. If you could keep the Soviet SSN/SSGN out of the open Atlantic, the convoy routes to the northern European ports would be relatively safe.

Surface ASW forces were well distributed and ready to conduct ASW or escort convoys. From south to north, we had Mayport, Charleston, Norfolk, and even a few in New York City (yes, for a brief shining moment, the sanity of strategic homeporting rules) and Newport. Land based active-duty air ASW were in Jacksonville, FL and Brunswick, ME with deployment sites all over the North Atlantic.

That was just on the US side. Canada, UK, France, The Netherlands, and Norway were all punching above their weight in the North Atlantic keeping that a very dangerous place for the submarines of the Red Banner Northern Fleet.

After 30-yrs break, we are not just a smaller force, we are a more scattered and vulnerable force. The incredibly myopic and greed based BRAC process divested the US Navy of the most effective access to the great circle routes to Europe. We evacuated the North. Brunswick gone. New York, and Newport are empty. Even Charleston in the Southeast is empty. Yes, the Russian submarine force is a shadow of what the Soviets were, but it takes a lot more effort to kill a sub than to be a sub.

If you consider the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap the essential barrier, just look at the additional time to get on station. Of course, you won’t do surface ASW at 25 knots, but if you are just looking at nice round number transit speed – all caveats apply – then Newport is the closest to Iceland. A ship based out of New York will take 4.4-hrs more to get there. Norfolk 14.3-hrs more, Charleston 26.4-hrs more, and Mayport 33.4 hrs more.

Indeed, you don’t have to be a genius to see how easy it would be to place a few blocking ships in Mayport and Norfolk – not to mention some even more dramatic events – to effectively degrade the east coast Navy for weeks or even months.

If we desire to deny the Russian submarine force access to the North Atlantic, we need more than a couple of DDG between availabilities … thought I 100% support this solid concept. 

No, we are witness to decades of neglect in ASW in the Atlantic. We have left what capability we do have concentrated and incredibly vulnerable.

Task Group Greyhound is a nice opening for a long conversation.  

First ASW Flap of FY20?

No, you can't buy training like this. Of course, this is all speculative. It could just be an amazing coincidence of events that is really just normal training exercises and pilots soaking up extra flight hours.

Or ... it could be ... something else.

Simply some amazing stuff since the end of October for those who follow @MIL_Radar on twitter.

Like what we've seen off Syria and other places, modern technology makes what was once known only to participants, something anyone can see just a percentage of. That is what we have here, so let's run with.

I couldn't take it anymore and decided I needed to put it all together for the Old Cold Warriors on the Front Porch. 

I could have just put you on to the twitter thread linked above, but I had trouble sleeping last night and thought I'd make a quick vid instead.

Now, MTH, you may want to be sitting ... because somewhere someone is just used up most of their FY20 allotment.

Now, off to Bear Island.

Enjoy!

ASW Readiness Points for All my Friends

Man oh man oh man ... to be in the Atlantic fleet in 2019 ... I love no other warfare area more than ASW, and the Russians are coming out to play.

Via the Barents Observer;

On Saturday, the Barents Observer reported about two of the Sierra-class submarines of the Northern Fleet sailing towards the Norwegian Sea for deep-sea dive tests and weapon tests. The two submarines are the «Pskov» and «Nizhny Novgorod», both built with a titanium-hull.

- Eight of the ten submarines now at sea are nuclear-powered, the intelligence service says to NRK.

- The intelligence service claim to have «a decent control» over where the submarines are in the sea.

- Two nuclear submarines are west of the Bear Island, between Svalbard and Finnmark, the northernmost part of mainland Norway.

Two submarines are south and east of the Bear Island, guarding the entrance to the eastern part of the Barents Sea.

Two Sierra-class nuclear submarines are training in the northern part of the Norwegian Sea.

Excellent troll by the Norwegians.

Also, my dear Mother Russia ... only two west of Bear Island?

Come on Ivan, don't be such a cuck. Come west ... come south ... come out to play.

You can't buy training like this.

Send the COD ... MTH & I will slip on a pair of coveralls and are ready to get back to work.

Sweden's Diverse Answer to ASW in the Littorals

I like the direction Sweden is going. Keeping solid, basic kill ability while incrementally making newer weapons.

I'm reviewing over at USNIBlog.

Come on by!

ASW: Making your brain hurt for 104 years

If you want to make 'ole Sal's eye twitch, write something about how ASW is going to get easy with this PPT technology.

Better yet, try to tout something as new and exciting that was around when he was a MIDN.

Go ahead ... read what I link to at USNIBlog.

A Whisky on the Rocks Chaser's Hangover in Sweden

Anti-submarine warfare (ASW) is more than just a perishable skill, it is a needy skill.

Four years later, Sweden’s defense establishment is finally hearing what those with knowledge of ASW have been yelling for years both inside and outside the SCIF.

In 2014, the Swedish Navy turned its painfully unsuccessful hunt for a "Russian submarine" into an international thriller. Today, Navy experts are blaming substandard maps of the challenging and difficult-to-navigate seascape for reducing the nation's submarine hunting capacity.

Poor measurement of the seabed poses extra problems for the country's Naval Forces, making it particularly challenging to discover naval mines or hostile submarines, the military magazine Officertidningen reported.

Have you been told or have told others that we are ready to find and kill submarines from the Baltic to the South China Sea?

Because the oceans are vast and the detection ranges are so relatively small, hunting submarines is a numbers game. It is also a game that requires a lot of different tools to play successfully and a bespoke set of kit with highly trained and focused specialists.

It is not a pickup game. It is not something you can place in reserve to restart when war comes. It is something that can be helped with technology, but needs the human to make sense of what is found. It is something that needs a constantly evolving and updated support structure to ensure effectiveness. It is not cheap to do in peace, but it is less expensive than sunk warships you can’t replace at war.

ASW requires a hunter’s instinct fused with a technologist’s intelligence. It isn’t a hunt where the hunter is going after prey; it is a hunt where the hunter is going after another hunter. The hunted knows that it is being hunted, and it knows that thing which is hunting it also knows it be being hunted in return.

There is no rapid build-up to a dramatic engagement. It is a process put together bit-by-bit by multiple parties. It is hours, days, weeks, of mind-numbing ambient inconsequence suddenly broken by a clear, bright indication that something human is out there in the inhuman chaos … or is it?

It is a game full of ghosts, tricks, phantoms, and futility. It is a game full of false paths, dead ends, lies, hidden truths, sleight of hand, wishful thinking, ignored solutions, and trusted mirages. It is not a game for amateurs or accountants. It is not the game for the easily bored or excitable.

It is needy. It is jealous. It is expensive. It hates to be ignored or neglected - it has a mean streak.

Its greatest enemy are its esoteric complications. Policy makers and warfare commanders have only a paper-thin understanding of the challenges – until they need to find the submarines that suddenly people are telling them are a danger to their entire enterprise.

In every war in the last century where a belligerent had submarines, the same pattern emerges – the ability to locate, track, and attack enemy submarines that was promised in peace simply does not work at the war.

WWI, WWII, Indo-Pakistan Wars, The Falkland Island War, all have similar patterns. There are not enough ASW capable units to effectively negate the threat; expenditures of search and kill-stores far exceed peace-time expectations. The advantage is with the submarines, causing surface ships to have less freedom of movement than expected.

Of course, this was all known prior to the beginning of hostilities, but why the shock with the reality of war?

Money and priorities. ASW is pricy, is not as “sexy” or career enhancing in peace as other areas. As such, it suffers.

It is a hard sell, and that is part of the problem – decision makers do not have the patience or background to understand the unique nature of hunting submarines. It really isn’t their fault, they just have never had to ask.

It is way too easy to conflate ASW with other kinds of warfare areas and as a result, feel that you have a handle on the challenges. You don’t, and here’s why;

- Water: Water is not air. Though there are some sexy and not so sexy non-acoustic ways of finding submarines that we simply will not discuss here or on the comments section – ahem – for the vast majority of the world and in most tactical situations, you are looking at acoustic sensors, active and passive.

Water, to a much greater extent than air, has density, temperature layers, and life that live in it. All impact how you can see what is there. Imagine that you were walking around town looking for a specific person and every few steps you took and each different direction you turn, the glasses you were wearing changed tint, had different polarization filters come and go, had mirrors and prisms slide in and out of view.

Sound: Drive over to a friend’s house. Have them blindfold you and drive you to an open field a few hundred yards from a train track. Listen. In 5-min, 5-hrs, or 5-days a train comes by. By listening to it, I want you to tell me what direction it is heading to. How fast is it going? Where it is relative to you when it comes closest to you? What kind of train it is? What is the production number of that kind of train is this one? That was easy. Now I want you to have one ear with an ear-bud in it playing AM radio static. I also want you sitting in the back of a flat-bed truck that is driving up and down the dirt road in a thunder storm.

Geography: Sure, the ocean looks smooth, but that is the trick it plays on you. Under the surface there are mountains and canyons that make those on land look like cute little models. There are ocean bottoms that soak up every bit of sound like a dry sponge does water. There are other ocean bottoms that do to sound what rooms of mirrors in funny houses do to light. There are walls, cliffs, dizzying drop off in to the actual abyss. There are forests as crowded and noisy as any terrestrial rain forest. People will ask you to drive a truck down a bike path. They will ask you if you can see things through mountains, to hear the whisper of a child over the roar of a waterfall.



Sensors: “Best if Used By” dates apply to more than just food. In addition to the intellectual limited shelf life and ongoing need to replenish and refurbish grey matter, especially on the air-ASW side of the house, sensors (sonobuoys) take up a lot of space and stocks deplete quickly when prosecutions are underway. How many days/weeks of stores do you have available on your ship/air station/AOR? Care and maintenance of surface/subsurface ASW sensors are as challenging as anything exposed to the sea for extended periods of time. Are your estimated usage rates based on exercise data, or what you expect in a wartime footing when nerves are touchy and the attitude is, “You can’t find a sub with a helo/MPR bird on the deck or a buoy in the tube. You can’t kill a submarine if a torp isn’t in the water.” Are your stocks instead based on what crumbs you’ve managed to collect at the edges of the POM?



Weapons: Ah yes, the toothy end of the kill chain. Let’s put the submarine’s MK-48 HWT to the side for a moment and focus on the surface and air side of the ASW house. What do you have to kill a submarine with? You only have one option, the LWT of the MK-46/50/54/Stingray/MU90 variety. Let me pose to you this question. You are a hunter responsible for feeding your family and your poor and slightly lazy neighbors. You are, unfortunately, only allowed one gun in one round. You have your ideas about what you need as you will be hunting everything from squirrels, to ducks, to quail, to deer, from deserts to leafy woodlands. However, you are not making that choice. Your Aunt Mable in town who runs the family accounts is making that call. You’re getting a single shot Stevens break open rifle in .22 short. It will work great for squirrels and moderately good for rabbits. You better be real lucky if anyone expects you to bring a bird to the table. You’re not sure how she expects you to take a deer at the other end of the bean field - but Parson Jones told her that a .22 is dangerous out to a mile – in theory – so a 200-yd shot shouldn’t be a problem. In theory with a shot through an eye socket you might be able to bring a deer home, but … well … you’ll just have to see what you can do. Does save money, in a fashion. You tried to be reasonable and asked that you could get by with a 20-ga and a .308. Didn’t have to be fancy, but … they wouldn’t hear of it. And so, that is what we have at the pointy end. You’re going on a trip to Kansas to hunt Pheasants and Montana to hunt Pronghorn next year. Make it happen. Would it be better to have a gun cabinet of .22, .243, 30-06, 6.5mm Creedmoor with a 20-ga over/under and 12-ga autoloader to choose from instead? If you wanted to be successful, yes.

Is ASW doable? Sure it is. Ask the German Navy about late ‘43-45. Is ASW hard to convince people in peace how hard it is? Sure, ask the Royal Navy from 1939-42 and again in 82.

Ask the Swedes today.

Ask the VCNO next time you see him. He’d probably enjoy the question as a welcome distraction from what he is usually asked. If you’ve listened to him speak, you can detect a man who knows his ASW.

...and yes, I know. Sputnik News ... but it is in English and besides the defense industry ads, the source document is all in Swedish.

Hat tip Bob Hein.

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.

The Shkval: Boogieman or Evolved Nightmare?

The Russian supercavitating torpedo, the Shkval, has been with us for decades. Partly because it has not been used in combat and partially because we just don't think it is all that much of a threat because of our own biases and understanding of the technology, we have not given it all that much thought.

We are very focused on defending against threats from the air, A2AD and all that jazz, and for those below, we have nifty little countermeasures and anti-torpedo defenses we are trying out - but those are focused on what we know and am comfortable with - traditional torpedoes.

Via The Economist, I'm not quite sure we are that ready for this;

WHEN introduced 40 years ago, the Soviet Shkval (“Squall”) torpedo was hailed as an “aircraft-carrier killer” because its speed, more than 370kph (200 knots), was four times that of any American rival. The claim was premature. Problems with its design meant Shkval turned out to be less threatening than hoped (or, from a NATO point of view, less dangerous than feared), even though it is still made and deployed. But supercavitation, the principle upon which its speed depends, has continued to intrigue torpedo designers. Now, noises coming out of the Soviet Union’s successor, Russia, are leading some in the West to worry that the country’s engineers have cracked it.
...
In October 2016 plans emerged for a new supercavitating torpedo, Khishchnik (“Predator”). Few details have been released, except that the work is being carried out by Elektropribor, a design bureau specialising in high-precision systems for submarines. Combining a General Dynamics-style sonar with a better motor could, however, result in a weapon that the world’s navies would truly have to fear.

Such a motor is possible, according to Georgiy Savchenko of the Institute of Hydromechanics at Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences. His supercavitation-research group estimates that with the right fuel (perhaps lithium, which packs more energy per kilogram than magnesium) a new torpedo could have ten times the range of Shkval. It would still be noisy, but, added to its speed, such a combination of range and tracking ability would make it hard to evade. Moreover, there is no theoretical reason why Khishchnik should not travel quite a lot faster than Shkval does. In laboratory tests, supercavitating projectiles have clocked more than 5,000kph.

That means you need to kill the archer if you can't do anything against the arrow.

Yea, about that ...

Modern Submarines Too Quiet? Don't Try to Listen Then

The Economist in the last six months published a series of interesting articles on the challenges of anti-submarine warfare.

As long time readers may have figured out, I love - from a professional perspective - ASW. Neglected and unloved by most, but to me a passion. Though few really cared outside fellow fetishists, I was actually damn good at it - for an officer.

It is all math and a little bit of instinct built by experience, but since I got too old to play tactical and was needed elsewhere - and then after leaving AD totally out of it - I've had to nibble what I can off of open source.

For those of you who share this passion, one thing we are always looking for is where technology is going. ASW is hard and is always getting harder in the Darwinian measure/counter-measure hide-n-seek that defines this warfare area. You cannot sit still and expect to win.

Though some 100# heads tell you they have "war winning" technology - even when briefed in you soon realize that, well, ... there are holes in the tactical applications. That being said, the more tools the better - and operational experience tells us that you need lots of different tools in order to successfully prosecute enemy submarines through search, localization, track, and attack. 

Not everything works everywhere against all targets - so bring a big toolbag.

As such, this little bit had me reaching for the circular slide rule;

...modern submarines are very quiet, and neither side has gained a definitive upper hand.

There are other options. Submarine-spotting aircraft carry “magnetic anomaly detectors” (MAD) which pick up disturbances in the Earth’s magnetic field caused by a submarine’s metal hull. Those disturbances are tiny, which means MAD is only useful at ranges of a few hundred metres.

There may, though, be a better way. Thanks to something called the Debye effect, it might be possible to hunt submarines using the magnetic signatures of their wakes. Seawater is salty, full of ions of sodium and chlorine. Because those ions have different masses, any nudge—such as a passing submarine—moves some farther than others. Each ion carries an electric charge, and the movement of those charges produces a magnetic field.

The Debye effect has been known since 1933, but its effects were thought to be tiny. The American navy set out to explore it nonetheless in 2009, giving research grants to three firms to check whether it could be used for submarine detection. One, Cortana Corporation of Falls Church, Virginia, found a significant effect. Cortana was given a second grant in 2011 to continue the work, which was expected to produce a sensor which could be deployed from a ship. Since then the navy has continued to award Cortana grants for hush-hush jobs.

Neither Cortana nor the navy will discuss exactly what they are up to. But it is likely that the technique can only detect certain submarine movements in some situations. Submarines produce many different types of wake. As well as the familiar V-shaped wake they leave underwater disturbances known as “internal waves”, flat swirls called “pancake eddies” and miniature vortices which spin off from fins and control surfaces. These all depend not only on speed and depth but also on the submarine’s hydrodynamics (the underwater version of aerodynamics).

Read it all. Exciting stuff.

Add to it some of the things ... well ... things still locked away, and I like new ways to work the early part of the kill chain ... as long as those sneaky bastards keep moving ...

As a side note, why does The Economist keep putting stuff out about ASW? One has to remember, the island nation was twice in the last hundred years almost starved to death by submarines.

She knows.

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Boat?

Well, I am - in a fashion.

The little bastards too.

I'm discussing over at USNIBlog. Come by and give it a read and tell me what you think.

OK MTH and AW1, I Have My Circular Slide Rule. You Ready?

I'm sorry - I know a lot of people hate Anti-Submarine Warfare ... but I loved the stuff. I especially liked it as a wee pup when you were just a day away from playing with a Soviet.

Targets are tougher, technology advances ... but I'm a quick learner and its only been a bit more than decade and the fundamentals have not changed. 

Sigh. 

Great mission - even if you can't smoke anymore while doing it.

I'm pondering the return to the North over at USNIBlog. 

Come on by ...

Undersea Lawfare, on Midrats

Since its ascendency to the premier maritime power, the US Navy - especially in the area of undersea warfare - has been at the leading edge of using technology to get a military edge.

During the Cold War, significant and steady progress in the first two steps of the kill chain against submarines, location and tracking, made the prospect of engaging superior numbers of Soviet submarine forces manageable.

We continue that tradition today, but to keep ahead of growing challenges, we have test. Build a little, test a little, learn a lot will stop dead in its tracks without testing in the real world. Computer simulation is only so good.

When it comes to submarines especially, you have to get in the water with them.

Knowing our technological track record an operating a generation or two ahead of some potential adversaries - are there ways they can negate our edge - or at least buy time while they catch up?

Are we vulnerable to potential challengers using national and international law against us? Undersea Lawfare?

Our guests for the full hour this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern to discuss will be Rear Admiral J. Michael "Carlos" Johnson, USN (Ret.) and Captain Michael T. Palmer, USN.

As a stepping off point, we will be using their article in the latest Naval War College Review; UNDERSEA LAWFARE - Can the US Navy Fall Victim to This Asymmetrical Warfare Threat?

RADM Johnson retired after 33 years of service as a naval aviator that included combat in Vietnam, Libya, the Balkans, and the Persian Gulf. He commanded the John F. Kennedy Battle Group, CVW-8, and VFA-86. Ashore he served on the staffs of the CNO as Director of Aviation Plans and Requirements) and the J3 of EUCOM.

Captain Palmer is an active-duty JAG and an adjunct assistant professor at ODU. He served as environmental counsel to the CNO; U.S. Fleet Forces Command; and Commander, Navy Region Mid-Atlantic.

Join us live if you can with the usual suspects in the chat room and offer up your questions for our guest, but if you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio or Stitcher. 

If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here.

So Sal, if the Balloon Goes Up - What Keeps You Up at Night?

As a side-bar on yesterday's Midrats, I mentioned one of the areas that I believe is being almost criminally left behind in the whole "distributed lethality" and "warfighting first" talking points - the Lightweight Torpedo.

As is the lesson in all wars of the last century and even recently with the Swedes playing with Russians - if you only have one tool on the terminal end of your anti-submarine warfare kit, you are set up to fail.

In a combination of arrogance and complacency, we have been drifting for decades with only one way for a non-submarine to kill a submarine, the lightweight torpedo.

I need to stop right there. Those who know, know exactly what I am taking about when it come to this issue from both a quality, quantity, and ... well ... enough said.

With that out on the table, if these following paragraphs don't make you pray for peace, I don't know what will.

In 2013, the Navy ordered the MK-54 MOD 0 array and transmitters. The MK-54’s sonar array and transmitters hadn’t been produced since the Navy completed MK-50 production in the mid-1990s, as the MK-54’s common parts were just taken from older MK-50 stocks. The new MOD 0s are substantially the same design, but obsolete parts and material have been switched for modern electronics. A new receiver is also part of Northrop Grumman’s contract, and the technology refresh and proof of design testing were accomplished by Advanced Research Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University (ARL PSU).

The MK 54 MOD 1 LWT kit is an upgrade that adds a new sonar array assembly, and improved processing capability. The full kit includes a 112-element array, transmitter, receiver, Processor Group Assembly (PGA), Modular Recording and Exercise Control System Second generation (MRECS2), and associated cables. It’s still a developmental product, under a SBIR Phase III framework. Progeny Systems Corporation, of Manassas, VA owns the intellectual property rights, so they’ve been the sole-source for all contracts.

In the name of all that his holy.

If you want my revised and extended remarks, reactivate my clearance and let's go behind the cipher door. Until then, until this is fixed, pray for peace.


Hat tip Lee.

Boeing Should Send Russia a Gift Basket

Remember the quaint little exercise we saw the mother country go through over the last few months?

In just a few weeks’ time, the government’s strategic defence and security review is expected to put the requirement for maritime patrol aircraft to protect the UK’s nuclear deterrent back on the list of spending priorities. With Russian submarines last year suspected of patrolling close to Faslane — the Scottish base for Britain’s Vanguard submarines carrying Trident nuclear missiles — the time has come to close the gap.
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But the world’s defence industry is increasingly concerned that even before the government works out what the aircraft should do, the competition over who should build it has already been won.
Boeing, with its P-8 Poseidon aircraft operated by the US Navy and based on a 737 airliner, “would be considered the favourite”, said one Ministry of Defence source.
Royal Air Force crews are currently serving on US Poseidons, a decision taken after Nimrod was cancelled to maintain British expertise in maritime patrol. That, and the fact the P8 could be delivered quickly, has given Boeing a strong edge.

The global defence industry is resisting a Boeing shoo-in, however. Some of the world’s biggest defence companies last week called on Britain to pledge an open, transparent competition for a contract that could be worth £2bn.

“We need an objective capability assessment as to what the UK truly needs,” said Nicholas “Flash” Gordon, director international programmes for L-3, which is offering a variant of Bombardier’s Q400 regional turboprop aircraft against the P-8. “Is it protection of the deterrent, long range search and rescue, counter terrorism or all of these?”

Keith Muir, business development manager of Lockheed Martin, said: “We would very much like to see that it is a fair competition.”

Lockheed argues its proposal would be significantly cheaper, as it is based on converting the Hercules C-130 transporter already operated by the RAF.

Airbus, Finmeccanica, Saab and even Japan’s Kawasaki Heavy Industries are all hoping for a chance to compete with widely differing proposals. Northrop Grumman is lobbying hard for its unmanned version, in use by the US Navy.

Economics, foodtroughism, or military requirements; which would win the day?

But there may be even more pressing political imperatives. Boeing’s rivals point out that the P-8, with barely 5 per cent of its content by value sourced in the UK, hardly fits with the government’s prosperity agenda.

Mr Fallon was clear last week: “The government’s priority is to boost our export successes in what is an increasingly competitive [defence] marketplace.”

Lockheed claims its converted Hercules C-130 would have as much as 80 per cent UK content by value. It would also enhance the UK’s defence sovereignty by using mission systems developed in Britain for the Merlin anti-submarine helicopter, argued Mr Muir.

“Ours allows the customer more freedom through life for upgrading, without referring back to the US,” he said. “We will be able to turn that round into UK exports.”

L-3 says that up to 40 per cent of the value of its maritime patrol offer would be UK sourced, if servicing were included, and Airbus puts its British content at 50 per cent.

People familiar with Boeing’s proposal acknowledge that this is a concern for the P-8. The group is believed to be considering the addition of certain UK sourced sonar sensors to increase the proportion of British content. It could also promise to maintain and service in the UK Poseidons sold to other European countries, providing work to British technicians.

That recognition, more than any cries of foul play from defence rivals, suggests that the political mood could be shifting.

“Will jobs, growth and UK exports be one of the major drivers of the programme?”

Well, in come the Russians to supply some clarity.

A feather of disturbed water was all it took to reveal the presence of a Russian submarine off the west coast of Scotland.

Betrayed by its high-powered periscope, the vessel then disappeared, triggering a fruitless search that sent all manner of unwelcome messages to the Westminster Government.

Firstly, it is a reminder that the UK's armed forces lack a suitable maritime patrol aircraft after scrapping the Nimrod equivalent in 2011 and, secondly, the uncompromising message that Russia has the capacity to mount aggressive Cold War-style reconnaissance missions unhindered against Nato countries will have been noted in London.

The first issue was resolved by Nato allies sending their aircraft to Scotland to join the hunt. They included two US navy P-3 Orions, a Royal Canadian Air Force CP-140 Aurora and a Dassault Atlantique 2 of the French navy - but the problem of Russian aggression will be less easily resolved. Ever since Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency in 2012 he has made it his business to keep Nato on its toes by using his armed forces to further Russian interests across the world.

The UK made the right call.

The Prime Minister will announce a £178 billion investment in defence equipment and support over the next decade when he unveils the government’s 5 year National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security review in the House of Commons later today.

The £12 billion uplift in funding will be focused on investments that will help to ensure the UK can respond to diverse threats in an increasingly dangerous and uncertain world. These will include:

Aircraft
Nine new Boeing P8 maritime patrol aircraft for maritime surveillance, anti-submarine and anti-surface ship warfare will increase further the protection of our nuclear deterrent and our new aircraft carriers. These roles require an aircraft that can carry torpedoes, as well as being fitted with a broad range of sensors, including radar and sonobuoys, which are operated from the rear of the cabin by a team of specialists. These aircraft will also provide maritime search and rescue and surveillance capabilities over land.

They need capability now as they are reminded that they are the “UK” in the GI-UK gap.

They have the crews to start things moving, now they just need the aircraft.

P-8A 431 might be a U.S. Navy airplane, but on the April 7 flight, the crew was from elsewhere.

Two Royal Air Force officers sat at the controls, and their British crew of six warfare operators — four airmen and two officers — worked the stations in the back, dropping sonobuoys and listening for the churning of a submarine.

The April 7 flight wasn’t their first attempt to take part in the competition. A flight the day before ended abruptly when smoke was smelled in the cockpit.

“It was quite frustrating to have to just turn around and land,” said Royal Air Force Squadron Leader Mark Faulds, one of the pilots.

Their luck turned 180 degrees the next day, when they spotted the periscope and tracked the submerged sub for a couple of hours, launching four simulated attacks.

“We really felt like we nailed it,” said Faulds, whose crew serves as instructors at Patrol Squadron 30. “We don’t get to operate as a crew much these days, so it’s nice to get out there and actually do the mission we’re here teaching others to do — nice to know we’ve still got it.”
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Though stationed at the Jacksonville-based VP-30 and spending most of their time teaching new U.S. P-8 crews how to fly and fight, the reason Faulds and his compatriots are stationed here is to help the Royal Air Force maintain its maritime patrol tactics.

The RAF has maritime patrol crews but no maritime patrol aircraft to fly. Their last patrol platform — the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod — left service in 2010.

Since then, they’ve farmed out many of their crews overseas, to the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

“We’re being called ‘seed corn,’ ” said Sgt. Steve Dixon, one of the crew’s enlisted warfare operators and a 24-year RAF veteran. “It’s wonderful that our leadership sees the value in retaining our skills, because it’s the kind of thing that’s very perishable.”

None of the crew could say what kind of aircraft the RAF might buy — or when.

American patrol pilots and operators train up and progress in their careers as individuals. But in the RAF, these crews train and stay together for much longer periods of time — a model that may have borne out in the results.

“It’s really a fantastic honor for us to even compete in the competition, let alone win,” said Faulds, whose rank is equivalent to a U.S. Navy O-4, after his crew received top honors. “It’s not like we ran away with it — from what I understand, the scoring was very close.”

For his part, Faulds credited their success to the state-of-the-art systems on the P-8. He and his team will be in the U.S. until 2016. They plan to be back next year to defend their title.

Just to be petty; if the UK is going to buy some P-8, can we contract build a dozen Type-26 frigates? OK, we'll build 8 if you want to be cheap.

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Oh and Boeing ... you need to up your game. No pics of a P-8 in RAF colors? I have to deal with a model builder for my pic? Harumph.

Oh, that threat ...

Our friend James, R. Holmes over at TheDiplomat ended last month with a nice reminder, Relearning Anti-Submarine Warfare.

Even in the best of times, when every day above, below, and on the sea we were conducting non-permissive ASW - ASW was hard. It look a lot of personnel, equipment and training and even then, well ... it was spotty.

Arguably the best ASW forces of the Cold War period were the Brits, and we all know what one Argentinian sub did to them - not unlike whatever was off the coast of Sweden was doing to the Swedes.

In ASW, the talented are constantly sweating the load, the less experienced just flop around. It ain't pretty when you need to do it. I won't wait for you to trade out mission modules or get a crew ready. 

That DATUM is cold and you are late, even when you are perfect.

So, are we about to return to the Cold War level of ASW? No. Is the holiday season from ASW over? Perhaps - though the argument can be made we were never on holiday, just enjoying he luck of looking the other way.

In short, the naval establishment needs to send a countervailing signal, overriding the one it sent back in the early 1990s. You’d think resuscitating the ASW culture in the U.S. Navy would be a simple matter. After all, Admiral Jon Greenert, the chief of naval operations or America’s top uniformed naval officer, is a submariner himself. Why not just give the order to restore ASW to its former prominence? But think about it. …From the Sea appeared in 1992, making that a convenient year to date the navy’s turn from war at sea to power projection ashore. That’s fully twenty-two years—meaning ASW has been a subsidiary function for a generation now.

That means a generation’s worth of naval officers and enlisted technical specialists entered the service and ascended the ranks during an age when ASW was an afterthought. Nor did the surface navy in particular do itself any favors around 2000, when it shut down junior-officer training for several years. Newly commissioned officers were issued stacks of CDs and told to learn such skills as ASW while also doing their shipboard—i.e., full-time—jobs. Thankfully, the surface community partially corrected this practice some years back, restoring some classroom training. But several years’ worth of officers have reached or are approaching mid-career—the time when they form the backbone of any crew—without that foundational training. One hopes the DIY training took.

So it remains to be seen who will spearhead the revolution in ASW tactics, techniques, and procedures. Doubtless today’s crews can bombard land targets with aplomb, or police the sea, or render humanitarian or disaster aid. That’s what they’re trained to do and have done all their careers. But have they learned the reflexes and habits of mind needed to prosecute elusive submarines in densely populated waters? That’s another matter.

Heck of a time to try to get fully in to the business, when we are in a budge struggle - but the good news is that we never really left it. We still have significant legacy capability, and some new stuff as well. Perhaps not in the depth you would have in a perfect world - but we're not cold iron either. Think of it in readiness terms; we may be straddling C3/C4 and need to be C1/C2 - but for now, let's shoot for a C2/C3 straddle.

If we watch and adjust, we can scale to meet the threat. But ....

Holmes does touch on one thing that may give us false hope. You can do so just much in a simulator. ASW does not lend itself well to simulations or a few hours in front of a computer on the ground. People who tell you otherwise have never done real ASW successfully. 

Real ASW takes place for days, weeks, and even months - on station in actual aircraft, ships, and submarines - one turning over to another and then taking it back again. Simulation is good for procedures, motor memory, and to build crew coordination - but are only so good for knowing the no-kidding ability to do ASW IRL.

One of my concerns continues to be this; the terminal end of ASW. We have too few tools in our tool box. We have a hammer and a phillips-head screwdriver. That is about it - and the philips-head is not the size needed to fit most of the screws it needs to "service." No need to go further, but more attention here is warranted. There are options, unsexy but available, that are unfunded but should be in our toolbox. Not all "good" needs to have a "perfect" pricetag. Many times, if you are short of money, one good pair of vice-grips will do if a set of socket wrenches is beyond the budget.

All we really need to make us a top-notch ASW force is for someone to come out and play more often than they do. That is really the only way you know how good you may or may not be - and in peace is quite fun to do. We'll call it a retention tool.

Hat tip Stuart.

Coastal ASW - yes, it's that hard

Like many of you, I've been enjoying trying to read between the lines over the weekend as Sweden plays hide-n-seek with their old nemesis, Russia.

There are fears of Russians and it is October, but it's not a Tom Clancy novel. It is a case of international naval intrigue off the Swedish coast that brings back memories of the Cold War.

The Swedish military on Monday intensified a search in the ocean off Stockholm for an underwater mystery vessel, but stopped short of calling it a submarine. Civilian vessels were ordered to stay at least six miles (about 10 kilometers) away from the Swedish warship conducting the search, the English-language website The Local reported.

The search began Thursday after Swedish intelligence picked up an emergency radio call in Russian, reported The Local, citing the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.

The radio transmissions were being sent to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, 330 miles (530 kilometers) south of Stockholm on the Baltic's southern shore, according to The Local report.

There were also reports that a foreign vessel was spotted in the waters near Stockholm.
Russia on Sunday denied it has any vessel in Swedish waters. Moscow suggested the vessel may belong to the Netherlands and have been involved in naval exercises off Sweden, according to a report from Russia's Itar-TASS news agency.

The Dutch were quick to respond, saying a sub involved in the exercises was anchored in Tallinn harbor of NATO-ally Estonia for the weekend, according to a report from Agence France-Presse.

What I have found most instructive about this exercise is that it should remind all that ASW is a "come as you are" type of evolution. There is no training time out for you to get your act together; you had better have the training and equipment you need to find the sneaky little bastards when they show up in your back yard.

Of course, after the Cold War, the "Awfully Slow Warfare" was often left to wither and starve with many of the unsexy but important things. Looking at what the Swedish Navy has ASW wise, well, I'm glad I'm not trying to find that Russian with their toys. Letting ASW waste away that close to the bear? Not smart, and to paraphrase Comrade Trotsky,

You might not be interested in submarines, but submarines are interested in you.

Over at FP, Elias Groll has done a great job seeing the larger picture of how Sweden found herself playing blind man's bluff, and why.

On Sunday, Oct. 19, the Swedish authorities released a photograph showing what looks to be a periscope peeking above the surface.

The man who took that photo has since come forward and says he is certain that it shows a submarine. Moreover, the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet reported that Swedish authorities intercepted an encrypted distress signal from the area in which the submarine is believed to be located. That signal was reportedly bound for the Russian naval base in Kaliningrad.
One working theory is that the submarine has been damaged and is unable to navigate out of Swedish waters. The incident comes on the heels of the Northern Archer military exercise in the Baltic Sea, which involved Swedish and Dutch forces, and some analysts have speculated that the sub was in the area to observe the exercise and gather intelligence.
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But in carrying out their search, the Swedish authorities are being severely hampered by their lack of sonar-equipped helicopters. Because the Stockholm archipelago is a dense island landscape, it has become something of a notorious playground for submarines, which have ample natural features behind which to hide and evade surface vessels. Unlike ships moving on the surface, helicopters have a distinct advantage in tracking down submarines, which have great difficulty monitoring aircraft while underwater. A helicopter can quickly cover large areas, surprising submarines by dropping sonar sensors. But Sweden's fleet of anti-submarine helicopters were phased out in 2008, and the replacement isn't expected until 2018.
The cuts were part of Sweden's broader reduction in defense spending in the aftermath of the Cold War.

You know my fetish for the story a nation's defense spending as a percentage of GDP tells, regardless of the size of its economy. Well ... here is your story;

The Swedes just voted in a gaggle of leftists, so we'll see what they do, I'm not optimistic in the medium or long term. Western leftists always fold in the face of power. 

Sweden's neighborhood has been getting more interesting for awhile.

This weekend's submarine incident is a sort of grim cherry on top. "What's been happening in the Baltic Sea, including airspace incursions, shows that we have a new, changed situation," Peter Hultqvist, the Swedish minister of defense, said to Svenska Dagbladet.

As a result, Sweden may very well be recalibrating its defense spending. "I would be extremely surprised if what has happened this summer and is possibly now happening in the Stockholm archipelago hasn't had an impact on all parties' budget priorities," Allan Widman, a defense spokesman for one center-right party, told Svenska Dagbladet.

Well Svendska, you're out of power now. We'll see what you do if or when you get back from the wilderness. Until then, perhaps the Swedish politicians should just shrug and say, "Sometimes you hunt Russians with the navy you have, not the navy you wish you had ... or even need."

Until then, and to my former students and colleagues I offer you this - "You can't buy training like this!"

And to our Russian shipmates, I hope you have managed to sneak home; otherwise you have drowned, or if the Swedes capture you - when you get back to Mother Russia, you're going to have a bad day.

On balance though, I'm with the Swedes. Go get 'em. Here's your Joint Action Area (JTAA).

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UPDATE: Elias just made my day and makes my heart even warmer for my friends in the Swedish military;

The Swedish Navy continues to stalk the waters off the coast of its capital for a foreign -- all but certainly Russian -- submarine, and the country's military brass on Tuesday sounded an exasperated note to describe the unsuccessful hunt. "This is very serious," Sverker Göransson, the country's top military commander, told reporters. "I would even go so far as to say," he continued, "to say that it's fucked up."