How hard to find SSBN

Originally posted by Hyperen

Originally posted by devilwasp
they do but boomers should get more

What is a boomer?

a boomber is a ssbn
they call em boomers cause well they make big booms

brende is right about the natural circulation reactors... Future submarine nuclear design will use this natural circulation reactor. The Ohio class boomers defined quiet for a long time ..the new designs are based on this fact..combined with the latest technology in quiet features..this is just common sense.
However ...certain new developments in motor technology are ch anging many things about the way things are done or going to be done in the future. You can tell this simply by looking at the development of your Sony Walkman. The first models used four AA type batterys and they had a large battery drain ..the newest ones are down to two AAs or some of them the AAA batterys. This is a h uge..at least 50% drop in battery usage..nothing to scoff at and very telling. What must the latest beakthroughs be in bearing technology and electric drain.
This stuff about pinging ...with sonar..you guys really need to think this through ..you are out of date.. this technology along with new computer designs ..in interpreting data have made quantum leaps in what is happening out there. Take a walk to a piano store or a Radio shack and look at the electronic keyboards and do some thinking. No one has told me this...you just have to be observant. Orangetom

No i am not sure if everything he says is 100% accurate but he certainly knows more than anyone who's posted so far.

url=http://www.g2mil.com/thompson.htm]Is the US Navy Overrated?[/url]

And how quite are SSBN's really?

Collision of Two U.S. Nuclear Powered Submarines on March 19, 1998.

Stellar

Originally posted by American Mad Man
US subs are damn near impossable to find. My dad was lucky enough to get on the USS Pennsylvania (still have no clue how he pulled that one off being a civillian) and said that they would just go where ever the hell they wanted and other war ships had no idea that they were there.

Another known fact about the cold war: During the 80's, the US sub fleet used to tail all the Russian subs. Every once in a while, they would all ping and target the Russian SSBN's at once - all within like a 20 sec time period - just to let the Russians know who would win the sub war. US military tech is unmatched

You know we both have heard this from two different source lines. If not more. I think this one is true.

Originally posted by American Mad Man

Originally posted by devilwasp
well actually the british sub tech is actually about equal

Hate to be the one to break it to you, and this isn't to talk # or anything, but US subs - especially US SSBN's are far and away the best, quitest, most advanced ECT ECT ECT. Just the simple truth. British subs are very good, for sure, and carry powerfull nuclear missles as do the US subs, but US subs are unmatched. Period.

Not to blow sunshine up the skirts of our forth of july adversaries (and my family is Scottish), but Great Britian needs nobody to defend her. Her naval officers are the finest combat tactitions in the world. No exceptions. That being said, if anyone attacked England I have no doubt that the US would HAMMER them, Russians included.

Originally posted by Sandman11

Originally posted by American Mad Man
Another known fact about the cold war: During the 80's, the US sub fleet used to tail all the Russian subs. Every once in a while, they would all ping and target the Russian SSBN's at once - all within like a 20 sec time period - just to let the Russians know who would win the sub war. US military tech is unmatched

You know we both have heard this from two different source lines. If not more. I think this one is true.

Blind Man's Bluff is an excellent source on US Cold War operations. It's considered the DEFINING public work history of USN sub warfare in the Cold War.

Among various feats of USN SSNs, one stands out: A USN SSN was used to transport divers who exited, tapped a fiberoptic cable, then re-entered. This process was repeated for years, as a diver had to retrieve the tapes from the tap. The Soviets only caught on when a KGB spy working for USN comms gave it away.

I have also personally seen recently unclassified footage from the Cold War of USN SSN periscope cameras filming Soviet naval/air force exercises. That's how close they were, and the Soviets never knew. I'm talking Hollywood style footage of a Slava and the rest of the group just chugging by.

If you know anything about sonar/signal processing(including radar etc), you also know that the development of microprocessors and software industry were the kickoff from that kind of work. IMO our electronics(IEEE) industry is what defines how "advanced" we are.

Yeah, having iPods in every teenager's hands reflects military technological might.

Yeah, I'm coming into this late, and didn't read every single post, but a few points from what I did read.

Pinging- Pinging is used during exercises to say "Hey, you're dead!" or if you're tracking a target and wanna say "Hi stupid, if we were at war you'd be dead now!" Active sonar is ONLY used in an absolute emergency if we were in a wartime situation. It's like being a soldier at night, trying to sneak into an area, carrying a neon sign saying "Here I am!"

USN SSBN/SSGN- During the cold war, there was *A* tracking of an Ohio that I ever heard of, and it was for about 15 minutes, because they had a problem with a pump that was making noise. The only way to find the Ohio was to listen for a hole in the ocean, and it's almost impossible to track that IF you can find it.

Russian SSNs- The latest flight Akulas are actually as quiet, and quieter than the USN 688I boats. One of the big leaps forward the Soviets made, was when the Japanese gave them the tools and tech to make better props. The boats that came out after that happened made a huge leap forward in noise levels. The mid-flight Akulas could and did sneak up on early flight 688Is.

USS Virginia- USS Virginia SSN-774 entered service last year. She is by far the most advanced sub in any ocean. She is designed to be as quiet as Seawolf, with a new layout for her sonar arrays that gives much better coverage, a dual towed array for better stern coverage. She's slightly smaller than Seawolf, doesn't carry as many weapons, dive as deep, and isn't as good under the ice, but she was designed for brown water operations, as well as blue water ops. She will conduct covert ops, such as dropping SEAL teams off, and covert observation ops. USS Texas SSN-775 will be comissioned into USN service in April or May, USS Hawaii SSN-776will be delivered this year, and USS North Carolina SSN-777 next year.

As an interesting note, there was an early flight LA that successfully slipped underneat a Typhoon, at less than 100 feet, and hull mapped her and took pics of her hull, before slipping off without them even knowing she had ever been there

[edit on 2/2/2006 by Zaphod58]

Both Uk and US subs are well known for sneaking up on soviet subs and surface vessels inkorder to picture their underwater shape and propeller designs (from which you can figure out the actual performance of the vessel). To do it in a sub they have to be very quiet to get close enough and the crew needs serious balls to get away with it.

In a similar vein i remember hearing about when a russian cruiser visited Gibralter for a goodwill visit, the RN chained some divers on their backs to the seabed in the harbour mouth just before she came in. They got pictures of the entire underwater hull of the vessel from about 10ft away as it passed directly over them. Now that beats doing it in a sub anyday!

Originally posted by ORIEguy

Originally posted by Sandman11

Originally posted by American Mad Man
Another known fact about the cold war: During the 80's, the US sub fleet used to tail all the Russian subs. Every once in a while, they would all ping and target the Russian SSBN's at once - all within like a 20 sec time period - just to let the Russians know who would win the sub war. US military tech is unmatched

You know we both have heard this from two different source lines. If not more. I think this one is true.

Blind Man's Bluff is an excellent source on US Cold War operations. It's considered the DEFINING public work history of USN sub warfare in the Cold War.

Among various feats of USN SSNs, one stands out: A USN SSN was used to transport divers who exited, tapped a fiberoptic cable, then re-entered. This process was repeated for years, as a diver had to retrieve the tapes from the tap. The Soviets only caught on when a KGB spy working for USN comms gave it away.

I have also personally seen recently unclassified footage from the Cold War of USN SSN periscope cameras filming Soviet naval/air force exercises. That's how close they were, and the Soviets never knew. I'm talking Hollywood style footage of a Slava and the rest of the group just chugging by.

If you know anything about sonar/signal processing(including radar etc), you also know that the development of microprocessors and software industry were the kickoff from that kind of work. IMO our electronics(IEEE) industry is what defines how "advanced" we are.

Yeah, having iPods in every teenager's hands reflects military technological might.

And I'm sure all this is cannot be backed up by sources, aye? unclassified enough for the american public to know about, but too classified for anything of that sort to be available on the internet.

There are these things called "books" out there. They came along before the internet was here. They use paper and print words on them, and you actually hold them and read them.

Not everything in the world is on the net, there actually ARE sources out there offline.

Yeah, well, while we're on a "INTERNET" forum, and say things that can be questioned, it would be wise to at least state these "books" you talk of.
Or are we talking Tom Clancy here?!

Little is known--and less has been published--about American submarine espionage during the Cold War. These submerged sentinels silently monitored the Soviet Union's harbors, shadowed its subs, watched its missile tests, eavesdropped on its conversations, and even retrieved top-secret debris from the bottom of the sea. In an engaging mix of first-rate journalism and historical narrative, Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew, and Annette Lawrence Drew describe what went on.

"Most of the stories in Blind Man's Bluff have never been told publicly," they write, "and none have ever been told in this level of detail." Among their revelations is the most complete accounting to date of the 1968 disappearance of the U.S.S. Scorpion; the story of how the Navy located a live hydrogen bomb lost by the Air Force; and a plot by the CIA and Howard Hughes to steal a Soviet sub. The most interesting chapter reveals how an American sub secretly tapped Soviet communications cables beneath the waves. Blind Man's Bluff is a compelling book about the courage, ingenuity, and patriotism of America's underwater spies. --John J. Miller --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly
In an unusually successful amalgam, veteran journalists Sontag and Christopher Drew combine a gripping story with admirable research to relate previously unknown information. Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. depended heavily on submarines for intelligence gathering, whether tracking Soviet missile subs, monitoring Soviet harbors and missile tests or, in some cases, retrieving lost Soviet equipment. The U.S.S.R. responded with everything from comprehensive espionage operations to depth charge attacks on particularly intrusive snoopers. The broad outlines of this clandestine confrontation are relatively familiar, but the details have largely remained secret. Although the authors have based their book largely on interviews with submariners, intelligence operatives and politicians, they recognize the possibility of distortion and back up personal accounts with an elaborate and convincing system of verification. While necessarily incomplete, the resulting work depicts what was arguably the most successful long-term, large-scale intelligence operation in American history. From captains to seamen, the participants combined technical proficiency, insouciant courage and a cheerful scorn for regulations that often interfered with their missions. That mind-set was hardly calculated to avoid direct confrontations, and accidental collisions were not uncommon. The authors nevertheless make a solid case that the risk of a destabilizing incident was far outweighed by the gains of the campaign?especially given the depth of mutual ignorance during the Cold War.

www.amazon.com...=1-1/qid=1138874616/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-8580650-1660065?%5Fencoding=UTF8

In the future I'll remember that we can only use INTERNET sources, and stay away from something that might require actual work or research.

[edit on 2/2/2006 by Zaphod58]

Thats more like it..
So I take that this is purely non-fictional?

Here is a anonymous review:

When the Navy came out with an official message stating that "The upcoming book Blind Man's Bluff is not an official book and the stories contained in it are the authors opinions. The U.S. Navy lends no authenticity to this book" I knew that the book has some truths to it. I bought the book and read it and was throughly entranced. The story is well written and the authors do a good job of being objective. Since I am currently in the Navy and have worked on the USS Parche before, I thought it would be interesting to hear about some of its exploits. It was also interesting to hear the theories on the only losses of U.S. Nuclear powered submarines, USS Thresher, and USS Scorpion. In the Navy's Nuclear Propulsion field there are many speculations as to what happened. This book provides some very interesting ideas that may prove to be factual. This book would be a great gift for anyone who subscribes to a "Conspiracy Theory".

Yes it's stricly non-fiction. a lot of people finally started talking about a few of the things they did during the cold war on submarines. There is still much that isn't talked about, but they finally let a few things out of the bag, that were already open secrets.

you posted:

"Pinging- Pinging is used during exercises to say "Hey, you're dead!" or if you're tracking a target and wanna say "Hi stupid, if we were at war you'd be dead now!" Active sonar is ONLY used in an absolute emergency if we were in a wartime situation. It's like being a soldier at night, trying to sneak into an area, carrying a neon sign saying "Here I am!"

You need to think this through ..alot..

Thanks,
Orangetom

Well most of the things being claimed since my post should probably be seriously looked at. If mordern American submarines still run into each other and sink fishing vessals by accident one has to seriously questions how effective they are /were at their primary jobs wich were abit more complex than evading civilian fishing vessals. Did anyone bother reading the links i provided as i see no mention of the incidents mentioned.

Stellar

[edit on 2-2-2006 by StellarX]

I read the link It was very intresting both for what was there and what was missing.

By the way...I worked on the USS Baton Rouge when she was being built. Also on the first of that series..the USS Los Angeles.

A incident like the ones you mention happened off California when the USS Huston ...also a boat I had the privilege to work on ...was enroute to the filming site for the Hunt for Red October when she snagged the cable between a tugboat and a barge the tug was towing. The Tugboat was quickly dragged backwards and sunk. THe crew..being navy men with a macabre sense of humor painted a tugboat on the side of the sail until ordered to remove it. This incident can be found on the web with enough searching. I first heard of this at work from some Navy personel attached to the boat I was working at the time.

Here is something you and others need to know ..about sonar..and submarine ranging..using sonar. Sonar is accurate mostly when it is used actively. Submarines are loath to use their sonar active for obvious reasons. They listen and know when a object is foreward, aft , port or starbord, above or below them...but they often dont know exactly how far is is ..especially up close. They have a good idea when objects are near or far but not necessarily that accurate range wise when in close. ...this should be obvious in the silence of the posts on accidents. What is missing from the posts.
A submarine riding on the surface or just below the surface is also picking up wave noise...degrading its listening ability. Waves crashing against the hulls. etc.
Throw in the other problems like water temperature levels degrading the sonar and you have many reduced areas or blind spots with which crews have to contend. This is just the way it is..and crews know the risks. Whatever they are doing out there with the boats is well worth the risks because many nations continue to build them.
Quietly in the trade this is known as the cost of doing buisness. All nations know this risk with submarines.

Oh and this buisness about being blind in the baffles...ok!!!..if you folks say so. !! Hollywood...LOL LOL.


Thanks,
Orangetom

Originally posted by StellarX
Well most of the things being claimed since my post should probably be seriously looked at. If mordern American submarines still run into each other and sink fishing vessals by accident one has to seriously questions how effective they are /were at their primary jobs wich were abit more complex than evading civilian fishing vessals. Did anyone bother reading the links i provided as i see no mention of the incidents mentioned.

Stellar

[edit on 2-2-2006 by StellarX]

If you seriously question the superiority of the US (and western) submarine warfare technology during the cold war, and at least equality since the cold war, then you must seek help immeadiatly. You are not in touch with reality, and grasping denial in futility.

Originally posted by Daedalus3

Originally posted by ORIEguy

Originally posted by Sandman11

Originally posted by American Mad Man
Another known fact about the cold war: During the 80's, the US sub fleet used to tail all the Russian subs. Every once in a while, they would all ping and target the Russian SSBN's at once - all within like a 20 sec time period - just to let the Russians know who would win the sub war. US military tech is unmatched

You know we both have heard this from two different source lines. If not more. I think this one is true.

Blind Man's Bluff is an excellent source on US Cold War operations. It's considered the DEFINING public work history of USN sub warfare in the Cold War.

Among various feats of USN SSNs, one stands out: A USN SSN was used to transport divers who exited, tapped a fiberoptic cable, then re-entered. This process was repeated for years, as a diver had to retrieve the tapes from the tap. The Soviets only caught on when a KGB spy working for USN comms gave it away.

I have also personally seen recently unclassified footage from the Cold War of USN SSN periscope cameras filming Soviet naval/air force exercises. That's how close they were, and the Soviets never knew. I'm talking Hollywood style footage of a Slava and the rest of the group just chugging by.

If you know anything about sonar/signal processing(including radar etc), you also know that the development of microprocessors and software industry were the kickoff from that kind of work. IMO our electronics(IEEE) industry is what defines how "advanced" we are.

Yeah, having iPods in every teenager's hands reflects military technological might.

And I'm sure all this is cannot be backed up by sources, aye? unclassified enough for the american public to know about, but too classified for anything of that sort to be available on the internet.

The unclassified periscope videos? Just because they're unclassified doesn't mean they get put out for the American public to see. Quite honestly, it wasn't very exciting, for most of it all you see is ships just sailing by, Backfires flying low, etc. Not exactly high quality PR.

Also, it was at a briefing for USN midshipmen, where the sub community was trying to "sell" their community to future officers. Not just Dick or Jan on the Internet.

Maybe you could make a FOIA request though.

Originally posted by orangetom1999
you posted:

"Pinging- Pinging is used during exercises to say "Hey, you're dead!" or if you're tracking a target and wanna say "Hi stupid, if we were at war you'd be dead now!" Active sonar is ONLY used in an absolute emergency if we were in a wartime situation. It's like being a soldier at night, trying to sneak into an area, carrying a neon sign saying "Here I am!"

You need to think this through ..alot..

Thanks,
Orangetom

For the record...that is an almost direct quite from a crewmember of a 688. He served on them for many years and we discussed many things that went on during his tours on them.