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From: kinney@wku.edu (Mark Kinney)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Obsolescence of the Surface Fleet
Message-ID: <1991Mar30.020556.28498@amd.com>
Date: 29 Mar 91 20:39:53 GMT
Sender: military@amd.com
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
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From: kinney@wku.edu (Mark Kinney)

Regarding Charles Bergman's post about subs and mines, I contend that
submarines and mines are highly overrated.

Re: German conventional subs quieter that nuke boats: Conventional subs
generally *are* quieter that nuke boats anyway. Conventional subs (CS herein)
can turn the engine off and sit there waiting for targets, while the nuke boats
(NB) have to keep the reactor running. Incidentally, a friend of mine thinks
that the Komsomolets accident was the result of an attemped reactor shutoff by
the Soviets (I think he's out of it in this case). At any rate, CS's pay for
their quiet by having to spend extended periods on the surface to recharge
batteries, while NB's can stay down indefinitely.

Re: Subs in general: The carrier defense plan accounts for subs. Coordinated
action with aircraft using MAD's and dipping sonars or sonobuoys can find the
subs in many cases, and anti-sub aircraft can be deployed to the area (or may
already be there) or a nearby destroyer can fire a standoff torpedo such as
ASROC at the contact. In some cases, nearby friendly submarines can be directed
against the threat.
	It's also worth noting that the German submarine campaigns in the World
Wars didn't stop supplies from reaching England/Europe. Sure, lots of ships
were lost I'm sure, but stuff still got there.
	Finally, most subs available to third world nations are ancient
Soviet subs or derivatives thereof, usually D-E. The more recent Foxtrot/Tango
class subs hadn't gone out for export yet last time I checked. At any rate,
when they're still, they're quiet. Everything I've seen indicates that one
can hear the bulkheads opening, so unless you sit there with loaded, flooded
torpedo tubes with the bulkheads open and wait for something to go by, they
can hear you (espacially with the older Soviet boats, but that's another story).

Re: Mines: Mines are nice, but have this annoying bug, in that they attack
*everything*. So you have your beaches mined? Great, but if you aren't
organized about it, what happens when you have to send ships through your own
minefield. And it you are that organized, what happens when enemy intelligence
obtains the outlays of your minefields?
	Clearing mines can be a pain. If the above scenario happens, though,
it'll be *you* clearing *your* mines to either move your ships or rearrainge
the minefield respectively. And this leads to a feasability question:
	In a world conquest game a friend of mine ran once, the following
scenario happened: Country X needed to move stuff through the Red Sea. Country
Y mined the Red Sea. Country X proceded to fill several supertankers with
styrofoam and send them into the Red Sea before his fleet. The theory was that
the styrofoam would keep the ship afloat despite mine detonations, and would
clear corridors for the fleet. Possible or not?

Mark Kinney
kinney@wku.edu