| About the The Submarine Review |
|
The Submarine Review is a quarterly publication
with an international audience: submariners,
other armed forces personnel, participants
in the wider governmental defense and intelligence
communities, military contractors, and people
who care about national security policy and
problems. It is a forum for the discussion
of submarine matters, past, present, and future.
The Submarine Review is published by the Naval
Submarine League.
Its Editorial Review Committee
consists of retired U.S. Navy submariner captains
and admirals. The Naval Submarine League is
a professional association for submariners
and submarine supporters. It is a non-profit
organization headquartered in Annandale, Virginia.
Membership is permitted to the general public,
and includes a subscription to the Review.
Every year, the Naval Submarine League conducts
separate classified-level and open Symposia,
both of which are well attended events important
to the undersea warfare community.
The
NSL Website
|
|
|
A former partner in a top-10 global management consulting firm, Joe Buff is a seasoned risk analyst and professional writer on national security and defense preparedness. Two of his non-fiction articles received annual literary awards from the Naval Submarine League. He is also a national bestselling author of tales of near-future warfare featuring nuclear submariners and special operations forces in action at their bravest and best. Joe holds a master's degree in math from MIT, earned under a National Science Foundation Fellowship. He worked as an intern at the Argonne National Laboratory. Previously a qualified actuary for twenty years, with extensive experience at interpreting policy implications of dire "what if" scenarios, he is now a member of the Society for Risk Analysis, a non-partisan international scholarly body headquartered in McLean, VA.
Joe's father was an enlisted man in the Navy (Seabees in the Pacific Theater) from 1946 through 1951, and his uncle was a merchant mariner on the North Atlantic convoys late in World War II, before being drafted into the U.S. Army to serve in the Occupation of Nazi Germany. Joe is a Life Member of the following Navy-related organizations: U.S. Naval Institute, the Navy League of the United States, the Fellows of the Naval War College, CEC/Seabees Historical Foundation, and the Naval Submarine League. During 2004, after having been a guest luncheon speaker at their Annual National Convention, Joe became a sponsored Life Associate Member of the U.S. Submarine Veterans, Inc. He was recently made an Honorary Life Associate Member of the Navy Seabee Veterans of America, partly in recognition of his pro bono work for Operation Seabees Knowledge.
Joe
Buff Article & Column Archive
Joe Buff Contact Info:
readermail@joebuff.com
http://www.JoeBuff.com
Joe Buff Books:
Seas of Crisis (12/1/05)
Straits
of Power
Tidal
Rip
Crush
Depth
Thunder
in the Deep
Deep
Sound Channel
|
|
|
|
June 8, 2005
[Have an opinion on this column? Sound off in Military.com
at the Frontlines.]
[Read Transparent Seas? (Part II)]
Preface for Military.com: Whole New Meaning to Submarine "Relevance"
Few Americans fully appreciate the continuing and emerging vital roles of U.S. Navy nuclear submarines, and that is most unfortunate because each one is so important to our national security. Because all subs depend for their stealth in part on the optical and infrared murkiness of the ocean, and its opacity to radar, a key question is sometimes posed as to their future survivability and relevance: What would happen if some breakthrough antisubmarine technology were to render all waters "transparent" for detecting subs even when they've dived to great depth? Joe Buff has looked carefully into this, and his thorough discussion makes an excellent case that these magnificent machines, crewed by the outstanding men who live inside them, would continue to be indispensable capital ships of the 21st century.
Joe's analysis was aided by his previous work in thinking about and writing of the world of submarining. His sources of information were in the public arena and it was his interest, ingenuity and common sense which has made him a knowledgeable commentator on issues of undersea science, strategy and operations. He has done that not only in his several novels but in the pages of THE SUBMARINE REVIEW, a professional magazine for the submarine community. As Editor of that magazine I have asked Joe to write about some subjects and his own initiative has led him to investigate and comment on other substantive issues. Our readership has responded positively to those efforts.
It is particularly appropriate that those interested in general military matters have the benefit of Joe Buff's insights.
Captain James C. Hay, USN (Ret.)
Editor, THE SUBMARINE REVIEW
Introduction and Purpose
In the last few years pundits have occasionally posed a negative thesis regarding the future of America's submarine fleet: "If some new detection technology emerges that can 'see' for a great distance right through the turbid oceans of the world, submarines would be useless as warfighting platforms." (This could be taken as one of the more extreme examples of anti-submarine rhetoric alluded to in my previous Military.com essay, "ASW Silly Season.")
The present two-part article will investigate and refute this thesis, by drawing on already ongoing U.S. Navy development programs in Undersea Warfare tactics and offensive and defensive weaponry. We will assess the subject objectively from first principles, guided always by the touchstone fact:
Any new technology that would supposedly be able to locate every submarine from long range, regardless of even the best acoustic and non-acoustic stealth, would still have to obey the laws of physics and of information theory, just as every other weapon system does.
This touchstone will give us a handle on an open-ended subject, to organize the exposition into logical stages.
Let's label this hypothetical all-seeing new detection technology "MAGIC" -- to express its conjectural nature, and yet by adopting a project codename from Word War II also remind ourselves that antisubmarine breakthroughs (e.g., ASDIC, MAD, SOSUS) have repeatedly occurred in the past. Part I of this article will address the technical limitations which would inevitably apply to MAGIC, then go on to develop (mostly passive) defenses and countermeasures suggested by those limitations. Part II, next week, will consider more active defenses, and attacks, against an enemy force equipped with hypothetical MAGIC.
Technology Parameters
First, to demystify MAGIC, we note that it must have one or more of several attributes, in each of various parameters which apply to all naval target detection and tracking systems:
1. Emplacement of MAGIC: MAGIC might be based on the seafloor, "looking" around and upward; or based in the atmosphere and/or outer space, looking downward; or based on the ocean's surface, operating from surface ships; or based within the water column itself, on submarines, minisubs and robotic ocean rovers, and/or a dipping or towed variable-depth platform supported from on or above the surface; or based at least in part on land (either by choice or of necessity). The option might exist to emplace or deploy MAGIC in more than one of these ways.
2. Physical extent and portability of a MAGIC emplacement: MAGIC might employ a "single-point" small, mobile platform sufficient for making valuable observations; or might need multi-point observation nodes linked by a network to produce even minimally useful data; or might require a large fixed installation set up over a broad area to constitute just one indivisible observation point/platform/node (as in SOSUS or an ELF transmitter antenna).
|
3. Counter-detectability of MAGIC while in operation: Active, in the sense that the device itself makes emissions that could be observed via various counter-detectors; or passive, in that the device itself need not make observable emissions to perform its function. (Note the latter does not preclude the platform on which MAGIC is installed -- aircraft or surface ship for instance -- from itself being detectable.)
4. Symmetry/asymmetry of MAGIC: Can MAGIC be used by both the hunter platform and the hunted submarine, to "see" each other with equal clarity? Or is it "unilateral," in that MAGIC can be used by the hunter platform but not by the hunted, for whatever technical reasons? Symmetry/asymmetry also applies to whether one or both sides in a conflict possess the technology, and whether if only one side possesses it, the technology remains secret, i.e. its existence is not known by the other side.
The actual threat to submarines, and the specific impact on undersea warfare, would depend on exactly what MAGIC's attributes were in each such parameter. However, whatever the details, certain limitations apply implicit in these attributes, as discussed next. And as will be overviewed later, such limitations -- consistent with prior naval history -- always suggest tactics and technologies for self-defense, countermeasures, and spoiling attacks.
(continued)
|
