dChan
Anonymous ID: 77b966 July 13, 2024, 6:42 p.m. No.21195307   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>5355

Jeff Vandenengel

Vandy Angel Comms

 

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Anonymous ID: 77b966 July 13, 2024, 6:45 p.m. No.21195355   🗄️.is 🔗kun

>>21195307

The direction from submarine force leadership past and present is clear: “Prepare for battle.”1 Part of those preparations is determining how U.S. submarines should engage Chinese and Russian submarines when called upon. Naval history must guide that effort, but there is little recent submarine combat to learn from, and the lessons from the world wars are limited because of the fundamental changes introduced by nuclear power.

 

Instead, the Age of Fighting Sail is the best resource to prepare the submarine force for one-on-one undersea fights. Both the Age of Fighting Sail and modern submarine operations feature independent warships with short scouting and weapon ranges, poor communications leading to a heavy emphasis on mission command, and unlimited propulsion methods. Analyzing the lessons of the Age of Fighting Sail, with a focus on single-ship actions, can provide insights into how U.S. submariners can be ready to defeat their Chinese and Russian counterparts in battle.

 

Left: Uss Constitution, U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive; Right: Uss New Jersey (Ssn-796), U.S. Navy

Left: USS Constitution, U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive; Right: USS New Jersey (SSN-796), U.S. Navy

‘The Most Opaque of All Domains’

As Vice Admiral Michael J. Connor observed in a 2015 statement before Congress, “The undersea arena is the most opaque of all warfighting domains.”2 To prepare for submarine-on-submarine combat, officers and sailors could seek lessons from undersea naval history. They could study the world wars, but submarine combat then was significantly different from what it likely will look like today. The world wars featured “submersible warships,” able to dive for only short periods, that focused on the antisurface warfare mission. The 1982 Falklands War offers a more modern case study, but it also provides few insights into submarine-on-submarine combat; in the first—and only—case of a nuclear-powered submarine (SSN) engaging in combat, a British submarine sank a single surface warship but never encountered any Argentinian submarines.3

 

The history of undersea warfare is a valuable reference in officers’ and sailors’ efforts to prepare to sink surface warships, but it offers little to study for submarine-on-submarine engagements.

 

Instead, submariners could turn to other warfare communities’ modern history, such as that of the surface fleet. However, massive differences in scouting and weapon ranges, communications, and endurance mean there are fundamental differences between platforms on or above the seas and those operating beneath them.

 

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Today, aircraft and warships benefit from near-ubiquitous sensing, high-bandwidth communications, and weapons with incredible ranges, allowing for powerful networks of platforms able to scout and attack the enemy like never before. In contrast, submarine scouting and weapon ranges are comparable to what they were in 1945, and their communications, while much advanced, are still impaired by the challenges of underwater physics and submarines’ emission control practices.4

 

Finally, fuel tethers most surface and air platforms to an aircraft carrier, a supply ship, or a port—a constraint nuclear-powered submarines do not have. Thus, while submariners should study other communities’ recent history and current operations, their applicability to submarine-on-submarine combat is limited. Overall, it appears difficult to directly apply the 20th century’s lessons in naval history to submarine duels today.

 

Instead, the single-ship actions of the Age of Fighting Sail are the best resource for officers and sailors looking to prepare for undersea fights. The opaque nature of the undersea domain, limiting submarines’ detection ranges and communications, is well represented by the technological limits of the Age of Sail. Ships of that era, relying on visual searches, had short scouting and weapon ranges comparable to those of submarines today—and unlike most other modern platforms that can be detected and attacked by enemies hundreds of miles away.

 

The slow and unreliable communications of the Age of Fighting Sail typically meant that, when encountering the enemy, friendly support could not be summoned before the battle was over. Again, this is more likely to be similar to submarines’ situation today, and unlike most other warships and aircraft with near-constant networked communications. Single-ship fights in the Age of Sail featured two of the same types of platforms facing off against each other in the same domain, just as with two submarines battling today—and unlike submarine-vs.–surface warship battles during the world wars, when two different types of platforms fought from two different domains. Finally, ships in the Age of Fighting Sail and U.S. submarines today have unlimited propulsion sources: wind and nuclear power.