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Mr. Luddite

On 3/9/2015 2:14 AM, wrote:
On Sun, 08 Mar 2015 23:58:39 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Sun, 8 Mar 2015 17:08:19 -0700 (PDT), True North
wrote:

We used to read stories of our previous class of diesel electric submarines getting within torpedo range of 'merican carriers. Didn't realize the newer Upholder class did the same thing.

BTW ..it was four submarines we took off British hands. Three are based in Halifax in various stages of operational readiness.

===

Those guys are so good at submarine tracking and identification that
they probably knew they were coming 100 miles away. The propellor
and hull noise of every ship and sub is totally unique, just like a
finger print or DNA sample. There are world wide networks of
underwater microphones that track ships and subs everywhere. The
noise signature of every one is in a database.

Those are by other subs. Certainly if there is a couple hunter killers
in the group, a foreign sub won't be getting close but the towed
arrays on the surface vessels are not as good (at least as far as we
know)
They are pretty close mouthed about sub detection capability.

I knew some submariners and they said there are only two kind of ship.
Subs and targets.
I know those rusty old tubs I was on had simply given up. We had state
of the art ASW torpedoes on the 02 deck but the procedure if we got
the "this is not a drill" was to manually enter the preset search
parameters, pull off the tompins and pull out the salt water plugs.
When the 02 deck went under, the fish would go kill the sub that sunk
us.

The towed array systems have become *very* good ... to the point where
the land based, SOSUS systems have been phased out. You can have more
of them, since they are installed on just about every Navy combat ship
and sub.

I belong to an organization of former SOSUS and Towed Array Navy types
and stay in touch with some of the people who were involved in the land
based systems and the ship based systems that have replaced
them. Specific capabilities remain classified and I wouldn't know
what the current systems are capable of however I know they are much
more advanced than the initial shipboard system I was involved with.