PLAN Type 035/039/091/092 Submarine Thread

[Delbert]

Re: Old Submarines (Why?)

If going against Taiwan, I am doubting the US and Japan might go to the side of Taiwan, so the PLAN must also take considerations and needed preparations to neutralize these two Navies in case of conflict.

Anyway, by maintaining old subs will be unpleasant to see, especially if you will have a statistics of 150 submarines (In fact 80 of them are Romeo's) Do you think that will be nice?

And further more, if you all use a modern submarine, like 48 Songs class, you can have a fleet laying mines, blocking harbors, at the same time have a fleet attacking the enemy... While all of them posses a good military capability.

In this scenario, those submarines can go on their own without burdening the Navy's main surface combatants or the air force to provide cover.

 

[crobato]

Re: Old Submarines (Why?)

80 Romeos? Where do you get that? Almost all the Romeos have been retired and the few boats left are being used as training boats.

 

[Delbert]

Re: Old Submarines (Why?)

I am just simple giving some figures, to show that it wouldn't be nice if a huge percentage of your fleet is old...

 

[crobato]

Re: Old Submarines (Why?)

More than half of the currently operational PLAN sub fleet is new. That's like 56 submarines, and more than half of them are Song, Yuan, Kilo, Shang, Jin as well as updated Hans. Xia appears updated too. The remainder are Mings, which are actually made mostly in the 90s. I think there are like 17 Mings.

 

[Delbert]

Re: Old Submarines (Why?)

Even Han, and Xia was upgraded, it was already an old ship. Even though Mings are built in the later part, Song class has better capabilities...

 

[crobato]

Re: Old Submarines (Why?)

The Han actually has a good hydrodynamic design with a rounded Albacore-teardrop shape and body of revolution, so the starting point is quite good. The improvements for the 091G appear at least a quiet slow turning propeller and flank sonars. The reactor should have been upgraded too. By all means it may be an old sub, but seriously updated. On the hull design, the world hasn't moved much beyond the Albacore hull "body of revolution" design first developed in the fifties.

The Mings on the other hand, has a hull design that goes back to WWII, so the hydrodynamic design is generations obsolete. The Ming is derived from the Romeo which in turn was derived from the German Type XXI Uboat that was ready to be deployed at the end of WWII. So it has the traditional long and thin hull. China got its first hand in building submarines by assembling Romeos from kits supplied by the USSR, and later learned to build the Romeo entirely by itself. For all its worth, there was nothing there that would have thought Chinese designers to make a leap and design a body of revolution Albacore type hull. The Xia is basically an extended Han with a missile compartment in the middle.

So in terms of structural design and hydrodynamics, the Han is a major leap over the Romeo and Ming, just as the Albacore was over the Gato class. The Song is the first Chinese SSK to incorporate a body of revolution design although its not the first Chinese sub per se with this design, the Han was. What surprises me about the Song is the rounded knife bow, which is kind of like the Agosta 90s, compared to the Han class which has a rounded spherical bow. Then the Kilo came to China and the Yuan goes back to the rounded bow, going back full circle what the Han had originally.

FYI, the first generation of nuclear subs the US and USSR had were the long and thin ones, like the Skate, Nautilus and November classes. Body of revolution designs began with the USA with the Skipjack class for the SSN, Barbel class for the SSK, and for the USSR, with the Victor class for the SSNs. Traditionally Soviet SSKs were also long and thin, like the Foxtrot and Tangos, it was the Kilo that first had the body of revolution design.

In the design sense, here, we like to call the "old" subs the ones that had the long thin design (e.g. Romeos, Mings, Golf), vs. the "modern" subs that have the teardrop body of revolution design (Han, Xia, Song, Kilo, Yuan, Shang, and Jin). All of the Han's problems have been internal---reactor reliability and noise, etc,. But if the internal problems are addressed, this sub can slice cleanly through the water. The Ming on the other hand is fugly to the water as it is to the eye, and no matter how you fix the internals, you can't fix the outside.

 

[dlhh]

Re: Old Submarines (Why?)

The Han actually has a good hydrodynamic design with a rounded Albacore-teardrop shape and body of revolution, so the starting point is quite good. The improvements for the 091G appear at least a quiet slow turning propeller and flank sonars. The reactor should have been upgraded too. By all means it may be an old sub, but seriously updated. On the hull design, the world hasn't moved much beyond the Albacore hull "body of revolution" design first developed in the fifties.

I noticed with some of the utube videos of the Song that they have 2 periscopes with 2 people looking through it at the same time. Subs advantages is its stealth and subs are suppose to identify the enemy through passive sonar. With the latest airborne radar able to spot and track sub periscopes at long distances, its a very risky way to identify ships.

One problem is the PLA Navy does not patrol outside its littoral waters so its subs does not have sound tracks of potential enemys propellers sounds.

 

[Pointblank]

Re: Old Submarines (Why?)

I noticed with some of the utube videos of the Song that they have 2 periscopes with 2 people looking through it at the same time. Subs advantages is its stealth and subs are suppose to identify the enemy through passive sonar. With the latest airborne radar able to spot and track sub periscopes at long distances, its a very risky way to identify ships.

One problem is the PLA Navy does not patrol outside its littoral waters so its subs does not have sound tracks of potential enemys propellers sounds.

You still need visual confirmation to shoot at targets at times. Sometimes, you cannot tell if a ship is friendly or enemy and must observe visually to ascertain intentions and type. Furthermore, most submarines use two periscopes; one attack periscope, and a observation periscope.

 

[man overbored]

Re: Old Submarines (Why?)

You still need visual confirmation to shoot at targets at times. Sometimes, you cannot tell if a ship is friendly or enemy and must observe visually to ascertain intentions and type. Furthermore, most submarines use two periscopes; one attack periscope, and a observation periscope.

Not true. You can id a threat ship or sub by purely acoustic means. The US and Nato allies were able to identify not only the class of Soviet sub through acoustic means, but to identify individual units within a class, as each ship and sub has some unique acoustic quirk, such as a noisy pump, a rough shaft bearing or a nick in a propeller whose acoustics will show up distinctly on your waterfall display. A threat library will automatically identify the class and unit. Generating the threat library required allied subs and ASW airplanes to trail every threat unit as it left each overhaul to record it's individual acoustic signature. This was standard practice during the cold war when I served and was done with great care as our lives depended on this information.
Merchant ship id required poking a periscope up of course. This is hazardous to do, as the P-3, Nimrod or SH-2F and SH-60B had a radar designed specifically for finding periscopes and snorkels on the surface.
A diesel boat dieseling to it's patrol area is noisy as all heck. It is no trouble to track. Once it reaches it's patrol area it can go pretty silent, but you will know it's location when it begins it's patrol. You mark this position, draw the correct sized circle around it and avoid the area. Diesel subs on their diesels are about the noisiest things imaginable, plus they have a nice IR signature even some satellites can track. Diesel boats are far too slow to operate offensively against a carrier strike group, the carrier and her escorts could simply outrun any DE boat ever built, and even a few torpedos ( yes, some French torps are that slow ) and doing so they would make an awful racket. Only a good quiet SSN like Russia's Akula's or Sierra class are a real threat to our carriers. They can spend the hours necessary to stalk the carrier and set up their shot and not make too much noise doing so. The reality is both sides use considerably less than maximum speed to maintain silent running. Escorts will use "sprint and drift" techniques. The problem is that a modern surface combatant with skewed props and a bubbler system to attenuate internal noise ( something like Prairie Masker which coats the surface of the hull and props with a thing layer of air bubbles ) are very darn quiet, and for a diesel sub to keep up for any amount of time will necessitate using it's diesels. At that point the game is very much over for that sub. It will be pinned down while the carrier leaves the area. During the cold war we would park a frigate on top of Soviet subs and ping the living crap out of the crew with our sonar. Most humilating. In an actual war we would have torpedoed this sub.

 

[crobato]

Re: Old Submarines (Why?)

None of this eliminates the need for a periscope, like in times you want to surface but you don't want to do it from the bottom of a fishing boat, which already did happen to one sub. Periscopes themselves have undergone their own revolution, going away from traditional designs, to "photonic" ones, which are basically electronic with digital video cameras.