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Countermeasures and (Mostly Passive) Defensive Tactics
Were MAGIC to indeed emerge -- whatever form it took -- the value of naval submarines would by no means disappear. If the future of military technology trends/counter-trends is at all consistent with present and past -- and even allowing for discontinuities such as the transistor or laser -- then means would be found to help submarines "disappear" from MAGIC's "radar scope." These means could derive from the following versatile toolkit:
1. Physical barriers to line of sight and signal: The atmosphere, the ocean, and outer space are subject to obstructions to line of sight, which may obscure completely, or garble/distort, or weaken detection signals. These obstructions can be permanent or transient, fixed or mobile. One example is the blend of dry-land geography and jutting seafloor terrain. An island, or towering underwater seamount, may completely block the ability to detect a submarine if the line of sight from the detector intersects this solid terrain. Over long enough ranges, and depending on the altitude of the detector platform, the earth's horizon or the entire bulk of the planet interferes. In addition, both the atmosphere and the ocean -- and the environment in orbit -- are subject to meteorologic, oceanographic, and electromagnetic (e.g., solar storm) phenomena. Clouds, heavy rain, massive waves, and undersea currents, sonar layers, and submerged "storm fronts" as well, can degrade detection technologies as well as impair the operation of their host platforms (e.g., satellites, aircraft, or surface ships). Other sources of obscuration, or concealment from MAGIC, might be man-made or artificial, such as oil slicks or plankton blooms. Note that even the gravimetric gradiometer, which relies on gravity fields to "see" through solid rock, is reportedly unable to detect a moving object -- including the mass concentration of a nuclear submarine's very dense reactor shielding and core.
2. Jamming and spoofing: When the specific characteristics of a detection system are known, such as the form of energy it emits or relies upon, it is possible to mislead or overwhelm the detection system. Just as with radar, where knowing frequency and pulse rate and pulse shape can be used to create false targets or disguise real ones, MAGIC -- whatever form such a new technology might take -- could similarly be vulnerable to intelligence on its detailed workings, combined with shrewd engineering know-how, to devise ways to delude it.
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3. Decoys and diversions: Unlike toying with the fields -- electromagnetic, gravimetric, magnetic, acoustic, etc. -- that MAGIC might utilize, the threatened target sub might deploy physical objects (decoys) to confuse the detection system or its operators. In addition, a well planned operation can include many forms of maneuvers, attacks, and distractions which would serve as diversions to defeat the effectiveness of MAGIC itself, and/or to confound the opposition-force human leadership relying on MAGIC data.
4. Low observable materials and equipment: As with items 2 and 3 above, intelligence as to the technical specifications of a MAGIC device can be used to "engineer around it." A smart and ingenious team of scientists, naval architects, oceanographers, and submariners can aim to swiftly invent materials and/or hull shapes which either absorb or deflect active MAGIC detection emissions, or repress submarine signatures on which a passive MAGIC might rely. If, for instance, it is learned that the behavior of certain types of moving parts within the submarine, such as heavy equipment which rotates rapidly, somehow can be located via "action at a distance" by MAGIC, steps can be taken to redesign that equipment, or to surround it by shielding that blocks or cancels whatever it is that MAGIC is trying to find and localize and track.
5. Maneuvering to avoid: If the location of MAGIC platforms can be identified by friendly battle formations or recon or intelligence sources, then submarines can seek to avoid detection by planning their routes and operations so as to maneuver away from MAGIC. Similarly, if the range, resolution, field of view, and search/scanning patterns and rates of MAGIC detectors are known, this information can be used to plan successful undersea warfare campaigns that stay outside MAGIC's effective detection zones.
Conclusion of Part I
Unconventional detection and tracking devices can also be countered by unconventional high-tech and low-tech subterfuges. These include:
1. Shell games in port: While MAGIC might allow tracking of submarines at sea, and possibly even identification of individual vessels, the situation in port could be different. While it is obviously impossible to install physical anti-MAGIC shielding over a large area of the ocean, to do so in a sheltered harbor or submarine base might become feasible and cost-effective if the need ever really arose. This would permit the shuffling around of different submarines of the same class under an impenetrable "awning," to help confuse the enemy, at least for a while.
2. "Glomar Explorer II": The vessel constructed in the 1960s to recover a sunken Soviet Golf-class diesel sub with nuclear missiles from the ocean floor points the way to an important question: When is a submarine not a submarine? Answer: When it's concealed inside a surface ship that serves as a covert transporter. If a stricken Golf could be swallowed whole by a ship built in the 1960s, why might a perfectly functional SSN not be swallowed whole by a ship built in the 2020s? Perhaps one way to fool MAGIC would be to covertly build several such SSN-transporter ships, and use them to play shell games at sea in the face of the enemy. These ships might prove useful in any case, such as to carry a submarine through a canal or nautical choke point unnoticed.
3. "Boomer" or SSGN?: Since four of the Ohio-class SSBNs are being converted to SSGNs (cruise missile and special ops forces platforms), and they will from any distance still appear virtually identical, another form of shell game or bait-and-switch might be used to confuse an enemy possessing MAGIC. Boomers could behave on deployment like SSGNs, at least part of the time, and vice versa. This can enhance the security of both the SSBNs and the SSGNs. An enemy not sure which was which might very well hesitate to attack either, given the potentially catastrophic strategic implications of threatening an opponent's SSBN fleet: thermonuclear retaliation.
4. Underway/undersea replenishment: The "Glomar Explorer II" concept mentioned above, combined with the need for the largest possible submarine weapons loadout in a future conflict scenario involving MAGIC, together suggest another technique worth investigation and possible development -- underway or undersea replenishment of submarine "magazines." Entry into a clandestine SSN-transporter vessel from below, while local countermeasures to MAGIC are taken, might permit an SSN or SSGN to replenish torpedoes and missiles while at sea, near the forward battle area. This would maximize on-station time, and therefore increase the overall utility of each friendly submarine hull. This in turn might compensate -- or more than compensate -- for any disadvantage caused by MAGIC in enemy hands.
Part II will show that in a future world which seems quite believable based upon informed projection from now, submarines do not require total stealth in today's sense to remain an indispensable type of war-winning capital ship.
[Read Transparent Seas? (Part II)]
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© 2005 The Submarine Review. All opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of Military.com.
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