Ask anything Thread

[gelgoog]

I could see them building 8 nuclear submarines per year but 18 seems excessive.
With the end of the Cold War the major powers limited the amount of nuclear submarines they operate.
Russia's nuclear submarine fleet is bound to shrink further in numbers of the next decade and may only recover after that.
Both Russia and the US are operating older submarines way beyond their originally expected design lifetimes.

You also have to remember that nuclear submarines today are much larger and have larger displacements. So one single submarine has a lot more firepower available to it than older types. This is similar to what happens in aviation where with each generation each aircraft grows more capable and total acquisition in terms of number of aircraft tends to decline. Some people call this Augustine's Law after Norman Augustine who used to head Lockheed Martin.

 

[banjex]

In my view, anything over 3-4 nuclear submarines a year is pushing it. Modern nuke subs are very complicated and expensive, especially SSBNs. And given China's relative weakness in nuclear submarines, it is extremely unlikely in my view that they'll lay down any more than 3-4 SSN/SSBN a year for the foreseeable future.

Russia's nuclear submarine fleet is bound to shrink further in numbers of the next decade and may only recover after that.

Doubtful - they're upgrading the Akulas and Oscars, and building more Yasens and Borei. Plus the whole Delta IV fleet is still in service, with a few boats overhauled in recent years.

 

[gelgoog]

...
Doubtful - they're upgrading the Akulas and Oscars, and building more Yasens and Borei. Plus the whole Delta IV fleet is still in service, with a few boats overhauled in recent years.

Only a couple of the Akulas and Oscars are getting major upgrades. The others only had minor maintenance done to them which means they will remain obsolete in weapons and systems so by the end of the decade are likely to be decommissioned. The Borei program is the most advanced in terms of construction thanks to them reusing those Akula hulls for the first three units. I do not expect the SSBNs to be an issue. But Russia is way behind in terms of attack subs.

The US has the opposite problem in that they have a mostly obsolete SSBN fleet and relatively modern attack submarines. But even then they are still operating some Los Angeles attack subs which is kind of ridiculous. Those hulls are really old by now.

Then again given the recent scandal about low quality steel being used in US submarines by forging the inspection certificates for submarines over the last couple of decades, perhaps they are better off retaining those relics after all.

 

[banjex]

There are only a couple of Akulas and Oscars left so they don't need to modernize many to maintain the fleet size

 

[SoupDumplings]

Hi, does anyone have any new information of the railgun? It seemed like there hasn't been any updates after they put it on the ship. Thanks.

 

[Tam]

Hi, does anyone have any new information of the railgun? It seemed like there hasn't been any updates after they put it on the ship. Thanks.

No updates lately at all. The ship is moored at Wuhan and it doesn't seem to be as easy getting pictures there.

It can be that Chinese robo-censors can be automatically deleting pictures of it from the social networks.

 

[caudaceus]

Hello folks, I'd like to know the state-of-the-art of PLA's anti-submarine warfare.
Read a lot of Twitter and elsewhere that US Navy Virginia class submarines are still untouchable by PLA or something like that.

 

[gelgoog]

Hello folks, I'd like to know the state-of-the-art of PLA's anti-submarine warfare.
Read a lot of Twitter and elsewhere that US Navy Virginia class submarines are still untouchable by PLA or something like that.

Patent BS. Modern Chinese naval vessels from corvettes to cruisers have bow sonar, variable depth sonar, and towed sonar arrays.
The Type 056A, the Type 052D, the Type 055, etc. China also made large investments into ASW versions of aircraft like the Y-8.

 

[subotai1]

Patent BS. Modern Chinese naval vessels from corvettes to cruisers have bow sonar, variable depth sonar, and towed sonar arrays.
The Type 056A, the Type 052D, the Type 055, etc. China also made large investments into ASW versions of aircraft like the Y-8.

And that is all the obvious stuff. What is not so obvious and even more important is sub-meter global imagery, tracking of all global shipping, average wave models, ocean height monitoring, surface temperature monitoring, magnetic anomaly detection, massive passive sensor arrays; all coupled with much more capable computer power and machine learning models. With that, ASW and sub tracking is not nearly as hard or mysterious as it used to be.

 

[panzerfeist1]

Are they planning to have full coverage of the earth. Just trying to determine the strike capabilities with certain missiles.