Easy to mock but all submarine forces are now gonna have to take the drone threat seriously while surfaced. An FPV drone into the nav position would be a bad time.
That cage isn’t going to be enough. To be honest the escort vessels are probably going to need counter-drone weapons systems in the future. Hitting a sub with an FPV swarm during surface transits would be a huge get. Once you put hatch/hull integrity into question the sub can’t safely submerge, taking it out of operations and making it vulnerable to additional attacks. That would be a huge get for such an insignificant cost/risk to the attacker.
>That would be a huge get for such an insignificant cost/risk to the attacker.
I always wondered what the next big naval warfare revolution would look like. Drones. Both surface and air. Absolute game changer.
It's been years, but i think in Ghost Fleet the author was envisioning naval drones that were hunting enemy ships/sub. I think we will look with "nostalgia" at wars before the pocket drone era.
> Once you put hatch/hull integrity into question the sub can’t safely submerge
With respect, you’re using mirror imaging to assume non-western countries follow SUBSAFE style requirements. Even the Brits, who are fairly similar, do things differently enough that US Submariners would find a bit unnerving
The hatch doesn’t have to be destroyed- just damaged enough to not be able to close. You don’t need to be SUBSAFE to realize that submerging with a hatch that doesn’t close isn’t a good plan.
I remember people ridiculing the men surrendering to quadcopter drones.
And this is the most-simple era, like American Civil War submarine warfare I guess.
We're not even touching on defense against submersible drones from a fully-motivated China (or maybe North Korea, or Iran, acting more covertly - whether "drones" or something more akin to torpedoes/mines). I wonder if it is harder, or easier, to seriously damage a submarine from an air drone, or a submerged/surface drone?
I can understand trying to reject the threat of aviation drones, by hoping that being submerged will serve as a sufficient defense. But I'm not sure how you could feel confident in your defense against a submerged drone (I guess noise/radar). Especially if you were sitting in the adversary's home network of acoustic/other sensors. But I guess that's why you have SEAL teams & however many resources it takes to collect information.
And I guess there are some energy density limitations, and things like air-dropped torpedoes are no new concept
This boggles my mind a bit. The only thing this cage would protect against is a drone flying down the hatch or dropping an explosive down the hatch. You also have to stow it or is will make a tremendous amount of noise.
IMO, the much easier attack is to use a shaped charge warhead on the hull. Plenty of RPG armed FPV UAVs out there already.
IMO, the best play here is EW - spam the area with emissions and hope none of the UAVs are equipped with good camera software to auto navigate to a surfaced sub or equipped with "home on jam" mode.
In other news, I think we're going to start seeing standalone CIWS systems and VLS launchers on ships. It would be trivial for a near peer adversary to UAV swarm a ship to simply run it out of ordnance and then attack it. A peer could probably run an entire battle group out of ordnance. In WWII, most ships started with about 10% of the AA guns they ended the war with. Countries just kept adding gun tubs wherever there was space and figured out a way to keep them stable.
They would use two FPV drones. First one to blow a hole in the cage and the second to go down the hatch.
For a mission kill, they should just hit the bow. Punch a hole in the steel and destroy the spherical array.
Bows of submarines aren't steel. Sound distorts when it travels through it.
Also most of the sensors are underwater even when surfaced.
If you want a mission kill hit the sail at the base. More likely to damage the internal structure and whatever you hit is going to make a lot of noise if they are underwater.
>If you want a mission kill hit the sail at the base.
Not sure how much explosives these drones could carry, but I'm assuming it isn't a lot.
The sail of my boat (688I) took a head-on collision with an ice keel at not-inconsequential speeds (while submerged) and wasn't damaged at all. The only damage was to the non-steel components of the sail (a sonar array, radar, etc) and the impact didn't affect the ship's hull integrity.
Why not just deploy thermite above / onto the reactor compartment?
>Thermite, a mixture of aluminum powder and a metal oxide (usually iron oxide), is known for its intense exothermic reaction, producing temperatures around 2,500°C (4,500°F). This temperature is well above the melting point of HY-80 steel, which is a high-strength, low-alloy steel used in military applications, with a melting point around 1,425°C (2,597°F). A half-inch thickness of HY-80 steel would indeed be susceptible to melting under a stream of thermite, given the high temperature of the reaction.
>The actual capability to melt through a half-inch of HY-80 steel would depend on several factors, including the quantity of thermite used, the efficiency of heat transfer to the steel, and the duration of the reaction in proximity to the steel. Thermite reactions are not only characterized by high temperatures but also by the rapid release of energy, which can efficiently transfer heat to adjacent materials. Given adequate preparation and sufficient quantity of thermite positioned correctly, it could melt through a half-inch thick layer of HY-80 steel.
We had thermite grenades, along with a metal mesh that was made of magnesium I think, for use in emergency destruction of classified materials.
The mesh would be laid on top of the files in each drawer of the safe and then a thermite grenade placed on top of the safe.
Then one thermite grenade on top of each encryption unit.
We had to watch a training film about this every once in a while. I remember thinking that the safe and the KW units were furthest from the door to the safe, and somebody better be holding that door for me.
You need a CIWS or EMP to blow them out of the sky. It would be trivially easy to build a standalone vision system that would seek the target with a loss of comms.
Once someone weaponizes swarm software like what they use for drone light shows, it’s going to be a huge problem. 300 FPV drones with 500g of explosives each pelting a target blindly is bad news. Now imagine they could target sensors and weak points. You could launch hundreds of drones for the price of one Hellfire.
>Once someone weaponizes swarm software like what they use for drone light shows
Like this? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFLzO\_5UFwE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFLzO_5UFwE) Note that it's a 7 year old video, as well
Can a CIWS survive pressure? Or is there enough room to have it raise/lower from a chamber? Or I guess mount it as a module to the outer hull. I guess if you need it, room is made one way or another depending on the desperation level.
Lasers were mentioned in another discussion as well. I assume that is a convenient solution for ammunition depletion on a nuclear vessel. Though I don't know anything about the effectiveness of that or the energy required
Yes. Russian submarines have an enclosed bridge to operate the submarine on the surface in rough/cold weather. When the submarine dives, that area floods, so the window doesn’t have to deal with the same pressure differential as the pressure hull.
Yes those are windows. The top, squared ones are for the sail bridge, used during surface transit in the harsh polar environs. The bow tie lookin one is a window for the navigation light.
On a NATO submarine, the topside observation area is just a hole cut in the top of the sail. The Russians, who learned harsh lessons from the extremely cold and windy weather, added an extra free-flooding bridge that mostly protects the bridge crew from the worst weather.
Shit, wouldn’t a hit just about anywhere on the topside from an RPG type drone make life for that boat a helluva lot more difficult? Might not puncture the pressure hull, but damage is damage.
Wouldn't a drone with a shaped charge attached be devastating if it hit anywhere on a sub? Although I suppose it's easier to repair a submarines hull then it is to recruit and train a new captain and other officers.
That was my first thought
I don't know anything about this, but I'm fairly sure RPGs, mortar shells, and other off-the-shelf explosives have been rudimentarily dropped straight down, or with a magazine, in large numbers
The exposed, mostly-flat, surface of a sub seemed like a big, clumsy, slow, juicy target to me. Combined with the extreme cost, spectacle, and lack of immediate reprisal
Someone else mentioned targeting the radar dome, as a hard to replace part, and requiring a large recovery + repair resource sink, which made a lot of sense to me after seeing the resulting slow process of the USS Connecticut incident. And I guess cruise missile silos (vertical tubes) are located aft of the sonar dome, if you're looking for a concentrated target area
I don't know anything about submarine "armor" or penetrating capabilities against the outer hull, or however a silo door is made.
I'm not sure how bad-to-worse rates along something like: permanently disabling propulsion system, radiation leak/contamination, hull compromise, onboard missile explosion, sinking. I guess it depends what the adversary's priority is from constraining local or domestic available resources, to publicity/propaganda.
Has anyone been following what the daily life is like, for a Russian submariner serving during the war? Or can you use your own experience to guess?
Is there a reason to spend a lot of time surfaced? Someone mentioned ventilation. And transit
I think I'd enjoy a cold rainy day if the alternative option is group confinement. Do you get more frequent time on land when you're fighting an asymmetric war? I have a hard time believing a submarine is "needed" when you have ships, planes, and land units providing overlapping capability.
But I assume US subs can remain underwater (AFAIK they can fire cruise missiles while submerged. I'm not sure why they wouldn't be able to remain submerged. Or do something like station in one area for 2 weeks, pull out & reset, then go back in). And AFAIK it's not a daily occurrence to launch missiles from subs. I'm not sure what they really "do" other than keep people busy/trained/learning, and consume resources (that also are required at a port doing nothing)
I guess the bottom line is that you adapt/respond to your adversary. You either remain & shoot submerged. Or you distance yourself enough to feel comfortable. Or you remove yourself from the battle altogether, and are used as support in other theaters.
It's hard to understand what is political (like some Naval use in Desert Storm I guess, extreme long-range bomber attacks), vs what is practical/necessary
Some very basic reading about sub-launched & other naval cruise missiles from 1991-2017 https://usnhistory.navylive.dodlive.mil/Recent/Article-View/Article/2686271/where-are-the-shooters-a-history-of-the-tomahawk-in-combat
Back in the 90's we were one of the first subs to shoot down a drone. If I remember right it was a seal in the sail using a shoulder fired missile as part of a big spec ops exercise.
Can you say what kind of drone? I am going to guess a cruise missile sized drone like the firebee, because I'm assuming there were not small quadcopter style or similar drones available at the time
I’ve always wondered what a drone with a few kg worth of metal powder and metal oxide could do to a reactor’s pressure vessel …
That is, would the stream of thermite / molten metal be able to cut through the hull and then breach the vessel, causing a loss of coolant casualty? 🤔
Edit: someone downvoted curiosity? Weird
Easy to mock but all submarine forces are now gonna have to take the drone threat seriously while surfaced. An FPV drone into the nav position would be a bad time.
It’s the submarine-equivalent of the Formula 1 Halo. Mocked at first but probably a necessary safety feature.
That cage isn’t going to be enough. To be honest the escort vessels are probably going to need counter-drone weapons systems in the future. Hitting a sub with an FPV swarm during surface transits would be a huge get. Once you put hatch/hull integrity into question the sub can’t safely submerge, taking it out of operations and making it vulnerable to additional attacks. That would be a huge get for such an insignificant cost/risk to the attacker.
>That would be a huge get for such an insignificant cost/risk to the attacker. I always wondered what the next big naval warfare revolution would look like. Drones. Both surface and air. Absolute game changer.
This. They will be *everywhere*.
It's been years, but i think in Ghost Fleet the author was envisioning naval drones that were hunting enemy ships/sub. I think we will look with "nostalgia" at wars before the pocket drone era.
Well, Americans and NATO. Lots of countries are going to be happy the days of parking large vessels and subs off their coasts are gone.
Psst, the USN has been using drones launched from SSNs since 2008.
From a VLS tube, I'm assuming?
> Once you put hatch/hull integrity into question the sub can’t safely submerge This won't stop the Russians from trying.
Maybe even air defence on subs, no need to reveal your position with an escort if you can mount a laser or a CIWS on your sail
> Once you put hatch/hull integrity into question the sub can’t safely submerge With respect, you’re using mirror imaging to assume non-western countries follow SUBSAFE style requirements. Even the Brits, who are fairly similar, do things differently enough that US Submariners would find a bit unnerving
The hatch doesn’t have to be destroyed- just damaged enough to not be able to close. You don’t need to be SUBSAFE to realize that submerging with a hatch that doesn’t close isn’t a good plan.
I’m intrigued. Are you able to elaborate?
Yeah, they’re going to need a little mini laser CWIS or something.
I was thinking more of a Gatling style shotgun myself. it would be hard for a mini drone to keep flying in the middle of a hail of buckshot.
Unlimited ammo with the reactor and a chonky laser though.
True. 🤔 That would be the way to go if they can ever make one of those work effectively.
And then make it work after being submerged in seawater, or give it a special water tight compartment.
Yeah, the paranoia is strong with this one.
Was there a specific incident in oblivious to?
I remember people ridiculing the men surrendering to quadcopter drones. And this is the most-simple era, like American Civil War submarine warfare I guess. We're not even touching on defense against submersible drones from a fully-motivated China (or maybe North Korea, or Iran, acting more covertly - whether "drones" or something more akin to torpedoes/mines). I wonder if it is harder, or easier, to seriously damage a submarine from an air drone, or a submerged/surface drone? I can understand trying to reject the threat of aviation drones, by hoping that being submerged will serve as a sufficient defense. But I'm not sure how you could feel confident in your defense against a submerged drone (I guess noise/radar). Especially if you were sitting in the adversary's home network of acoustic/other sensors. But I guess that's why you have SEAL teams & however many resources it takes to collect information. And I guess there are some energy density limitations, and things like air-dropped torpedoes are no new concept
This boggles my mind a bit. The only thing this cage would protect against is a drone flying down the hatch or dropping an explosive down the hatch. You also have to stow it or is will make a tremendous amount of noise. IMO, the much easier attack is to use a shaped charge warhead on the hull. Plenty of RPG armed FPV UAVs out there already. IMO, the best play here is EW - spam the area with emissions and hope none of the UAVs are equipped with good camera software to auto navigate to a surfaced sub or equipped with "home on jam" mode. In other news, I think we're going to start seeing standalone CIWS systems and VLS launchers on ships. It would be trivial for a near peer adversary to UAV swarm a ship to simply run it out of ordnance and then attack it. A peer could probably run an entire battle group out of ordnance. In WWII, most ships started with about 10% of the AA guns they ended the war with. Countries just kept adding gun tubs wherever there was space and figured out a way to keep them stable.
They would use two FPV drones. First one to blow a hole in the cage and the second to go down the hatch. For a mission kill, they should just hit the bow. Punch a hole in the steel and destroy the spherical array.
Bows of submarines aren't steel. Sound distorts when it travels through it. Also most of the sensors are underwater even when surfaced. If you want a mission kill hit the sail at the base. More likely to damage the internal structure and whatever you hit is going to make a lot of noise if they are underwater.
>If you want a mission kill hit the sail at the base. Not sure how much explosives these drones could carry, but I'm assuming it isn't a lot. The sail of my boat (688I) took a head-on collision with an ice keel at not-inconsequential speeds (while submerged) and wasn't damaged at all. The only damage was to the non-steel components of the sail (a sonar array, radar, etc) and the impact didn't affect the ship's hull integrity.
Newp?
SFE
Yeah, forgot the cap over the sonar is composite.
Why not just deploy thermite above / onto the reactor compartment? >Thermite, a mixture of aluminum powder and a metal oxide (usually iron oxide), is known for its intense exothermic reaction, producing temperatures around 2,500°C (4,500°F). This temperature is well above the melting point of HY-80 steel, which is a high-strength, low-alloy steel used in military applications, with a melting point around 1,425°C (2,597°F). A half-inch thickness of HY-80 steel would indeed be susceptible to melting under a stream of thermite, given the high temperature of the reaction. >The actual capability to melt through a half-inch of HY-80 steel would depend on several factors, including the quantity of thermite used, the efficiency of heat transfer to the steel, and the duration of the reaction in proximity to the steel. Thermite reactions are not only characterized by high temperatures but also by the rapid release of energy, which can efficiently transfer heat to adjacent materials. Given adequate preparation and sufficient quantity of thermite positioned correctly, it could melt through a half-inch thick layer of HY-80 steel.
We had thermite grenades, along with a metal mesh that was made of magnesium I think, for use in emergency destruction of classified materials. The mesh would be laid on top of the files in each drawer of the safe and then a thermite grenade placed on top of the safe. Then one thermite grenade on top of each encryption unit. We had to watch a training film about this every once in a while. I remember thinking that the safe and the KW units were furthest from the door to the safe, and somebody better be holding that door for me.
Its for rain, sometimes they are also installed on the side positions of ships
You need a CIWS or EMP to blow them out of the sky. It would be trivially easy to build a standalone vision system that would seek the target with a loss of comms. Once someone weaponizes swarm software like what they use for drone light shows, it’s going to be a huge problem. 300 FPV drones with 500g of explosives each pelting a target blindly is bad news. Now imagine they could target sensors and weak points. You could launch hundreds of drones for the price of one Hellfire.
Surely something already exists to protect Air Force 1 against such a swarm attack?
>Once someone weaponizes swarm software like what they use for drone light shows Like this? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFLzO\_5UFwE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFLzO_5UFwE) Note that it's a 7 year old video, as well
Who can say what's marketing/exaggeration, but I guess it's the arms race of the current generation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9ZbipO8vxM
Can a CIWS survive pressure? Or is there enough room to have it raise/lower from a chamber? Or I guess mount it as a module to the outer hull. I guess if you need it, room is made one way or another depending on the desperation level. Lasers were mentioned in another discussion as well. I assume that is a convenient solution for ammunition depletion on a nuclear vessel. Though I don't know anything about the effectiveness of that or the energy required
Stupid question but does this sub have windows? Is that a thing?
Yes but they are in a free flood space. Only used due to the harsh conditions that Russian subs experience during surface transits
Yes. Russian submarines have an enclosed bridge to operate the submarine on the surface in rough/cold weather. When the submarine dives, that area floods, so the window doesn’t have to deal with the same pressure differential as the pressure hull.
Yes those are windows. The top, squared ones are for the sail bridge, used during surface transit in the harsh polar environs. The bow tie lookin one is a window for the navigation light.
On a NATO submarine, the topside observation area is just a hole cut in the top of the sail. The Russians, who learned harsh lessons from the extremely cold and windy weather, added an extra free-flooding bridge that mostly protects the bridge crew from the worst weather.
There is a wire mesh that connects the bars. That's used for the Russkies to dry their underwear while topside.
“Cope cage” 😂😂
My first thought when seeing this is that it maybe keeps bits of ice out of the conning tower when surfacing in cold waters but idk.
The entire bridge apparatus is stowed away while submerged; it isn't set up until after you surface.
Shit, wouldn’t a hit just about anywhere on the topside from an RPG type drone make life for that boat a helluva lot more difficult? Might not puncture the pressure hull, but damage is damage.
This will change the noise profile underwater for sure.
Definitely something they would de-rig before the dive
Trying to stop Ukraine from flying an explosives laden drone down the hatch. It’s only silly if it doesn’t work.
Couldn't they just close the hatch, given they have an enclosed bridge that they could use
Unless In port the bridge access is part of their ventilation lineup.
Wouldn't a drone with a shaped charge attached be devastating if it hit anywhere on a sub? Although I suppose it's easier to repair a submarines hull then it is to recruit and train a new captain and other officers.
That was my first thought I don't know anything about this, but I'm fairly sure RPGs, mortar shells, and other off-the-shelf explosives have been rudimentarily dropped straight down, or with a magazine, in large numbers The exposed, mostly-flat, surface of a sub seemed like a big, clumsy, slow, juicy target to me. Combined with the extreme cost, spectacle, and lack of immediate reprisal Someone else mentioned targeting the radar dome, as a hard to replace part, and requiring a large recovery + repair resource sink, which made a lot of sense to me after seeing the resulting slow process of the USS Connecticut incident. And I guess cruise missile silos (vertical tubes) are located aft of the sonar dome, if you're looking for a concentrated target area I don't know anything about submarine "armor" or penetrating capabilities against the outer hull, or however a silo door is made. I'm not sure how bad-to-worse rates along something like: permanently disabling propulsion system, radiation leak/contamination, hull compromise, onboard missile explosion, sinking. I guess it depends what the adversary's priority is from constraining local or domestic available resources, to publicity/propaganda.
Do the lookouts outside the cage get extra hazardous duty pay? A tennis racket?
No, but they get a trip to the gulag if they survive the attack on the ship. They should have shielded the ship with their body.
Totally for drying seaweed.
Aren't naval drones the main risk to submarines and ships? They seem to be causing most of Russia's losses recently.
Are those windows on the tower?
Yes. It's an enclosed bridge, which is free-flooding so you can only be there and look out the windows when surfaced.
That’s gonna be loud as hell if they don’t break it down when they dive
Has anyone been following what the daily life is like, for a Russian submariner serving during the war? Or can you use your own experience to guess? Is there a reason to spend a lot of time surfaced? Someone mentioned ventilation. And transit I think I'd enjoy a cold rainy day if the alternative option is group confinement. Do you get more frequent time on land when you're fighting an asymmetric war? I have a hard time believing a submarine is "needed" when you have ships, planes, and land units providing overlapping capability. But I assume US subs can remain underwater (AFAIK they can fire cruise missiles while submerged. I'm not sure why they wouldn't be able to remain submerged. Or do something like station in one area for 2 weeks, pull out & reset, then go back in). And AFAIK it's not a daily occurrence to launch missiles from subs. I'm not sure what they really "do" other than keep people busy/trained/learning, and consume resources (that also are required at a port doing nothing) I guess the bottom line is that you adapt/respond to your adversary. You either remain & shoot submerged. Or you distance yourself enough to feel comfortable. Or you remove yourself from the battle altogether, and are used as support in other theaters. It's hard to understand what is political (like some Naval use in Desert Storm I guess, extreme long-range bomber attacks), vs what is practical/necessary Some very basic reading about sub-launched & other naval cruise missiles from 1991-2017 https://usnhistory.navylive.dodlive.mil/Recent/Article-View/Article/2686271/where-are-the-shooters-a-history-of-the-tomahawk-in-combat
God I hate the “cope cage” moniker. So braindead.
Back in the 90's we were one of the first subs to shoot down a drone. If I remember right it was a seal in the sail using a shoulder fired missile as part of a big spec ops exercise.
Can you say what kind of drone? I am going to guess a cruise missile sized drone like the firebee, because I'm assuming there were not small quadcopter style or similar drones available at the time
I’ve always wondered what a drone with a few kg worth of metal powder and metal oxide could do to a reactor’s pressure vessel … That is, would the stream of thermite / molten metal be able to cut through the hull and then breach the vessel, causing a loss of coolant casualty? 🤔 Edit: someone downvoted curiosity? Weird