Not entirely certain what you mean here?
Not sure how much of the original Mk48 is left, to be honest.
How so? The otto fueled weirdness works pretty well. (It's basically a hydraulic motor but running on external combustion)
Disagree, the electric torpedoes are slower and shorter ranged. And that's usually running silver-zinc batteries which have equal or better energy density to Lithium batteries! The only advantage lithium has over AgZn in batteries is rechargability, which only matters for exercise torpedoes. On the other hand, having rechargeable ExTorps is not a bad thing.
I don't think those have the discharge rate that AgZn or Li do. So they have great range but bad speed. Good for recon UUVs, bad for torpedoes.
Something the size of a Mk37 would be good for subs hunting skimmers. Half the length of a Mk48 so you can stow two of them in the same space.
Ah-ha!
Price-wise they appear very complex. About $1mil + for a late model AMRAAM vs $5mil + for a late model Mk 48.
Wasn’t the Mk 48 engine considered loud enough that in close quarters it would be a detriment as it would immediately alert its target? Wasn’t there a STEP Stealth Torpedo upgrade/replacement mentioned along the way?
Aren’t these boats equipped with powered torpedo reload systems? How many can be guided at once and against how many targets?
Outside my knowledge, I was boomers only.
If there was, I missed it. Got out in 2006.
They do, but you can only guide one weapon per tube via the wires. Then you get to spend a couple minutes at an awkward down bubble to slide the tube-end of the wire spool out of the tubes before you can reload the tube.
I phrased it wrong. I meant if you have say 4 loaded tubes, can you fire all 4 torpedoes and guide them at 1,2 or 4 separate targets?
I ... don't actually remember now (where's that embarrassed emoji?). You can certainly fire 2 and guide them at one target. Only 1 tube per side at a time, though, due to how the impulse pump is set up.
Note that that article is 41 years old and from the Sub League newsletter--they'll publish articles from any rando scrub so don't assume there's much due diligence or genuine expert commentary in them. Some of the assertions in that article are pretty silly.
I see some prominent names when you use their search feature
Truth be told--especially back then the whole "shooting a torpedo will give you away" narrative is mostly a bunch of Clancyesque nonsense. Unless you're dealing with a adversary that is 100% alert and expecting to be shot at, you'd be surprised at what they miss.
I'm not certain who is claiming a 100% kill ratio, but unless you're very close in shallow water you're never hitting a submerged target with a supercavitating torpedo.
Isn’t that what arctic sub warfare would be like? As subs on the Soviet side got quieter wouldn’t that require US subs to get in closer to passively detect them? Would a submarine know for sure that a super cav weapon fired back their way response to their torpedo would miss?
Not necessarily, with modern submarines your primary means of detection will be narrowband--they simply don't emit much broadband energy. These detection ranges can vary wildly.
Almost certainly. First, you're going to fire from an advantageous position that an adversary can't immediately counterfire upon, and anything they fire upon is going to be a place you're no longer at.
Yeah, they aren't cheap. Despite what some may say, this isn't WW2--the primary mission of any SSN is to destroy other submarines, we're not gonna waste our time and resources plinking at hapless skimmers. To do this job, you need a weapon that is reliable 100% of the time, and a Mk48 is as close as you're feasibly going to get.
The difference btw subs as ASW vs WW2 anti surface ship combat is the distance btw stars.
Would this apply to ANY underwater launched ASWweapon?
How far off target can a sub go b4 it breaks the wire?
There's always angular uncertainty in sonar and beams get wider as frequencies get lower. This is before you even consider depression/elevation uncertainty caused by sound speed changes. It's why we use guided weapons.
As long as your initial solution was half-decent it really doesn't need the host platform anymore. Hell the weapon is likely smarter than the operator sitting at BYG.
Of all the post WW2 weapons that have been developed and used and to whatever extent judged one way or another, the ASW sub and to a lesser extent surface/air launched torpedo is the one with an almost non existent track record.
Yeah, one torpedo is going to disable any submarine. Whatever the weapon doesn't destroy, the water will, and no amount of damage control is stopping it.
Yeah, absolutely, but there's generally little reason to.
I kept coming across this criticism of the noise levels of the 48. Would be interesting to compare it with noise levels of the Mk 48 Mod 0 (the turbine version that wasn’t picked)/Spearfish (which used an upgraded version of that turbine engine).
What you'd detect is the impulse pump firing. That's (relatively) loud, even on an Ohio with a turbine impulse pump.
But the ranges you'd be looking at for taking that shot, usually from in someone's baffles, are more like the outer edge of the range of OG Shkval.
You can maneuver some, but not a whole lot. About as much as you can with your towed arrays out, so it's not that big a deal
Not automatically, no.
The TMD remains in the tube after the weapons is fired and is retrieved once the shutter and muzzle doors are shut and the tube is drained.
No, nothing online. I suspect the details are classified.
Did that change at some point? Had to hang like a 5deg down bubble for a minute or two post torpedo shots when I was driving.
1989 USN sub wouldn’t know that. Maybe on the inside submariners know differently but from what I’ve read and it’s fairly extensive on the outside under ice combat would involve getting real close and getting shot back at almost as quickly as you shot first.
