Quotulatiousness

August 29, 2011

Site of Royal Navy’s WW1 submarine disaster to be used for wind farm

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, WW1 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:16

In 1918, the Royal Navy suffered the loss of two submarines, with another three damaged along with a light cruiser. And you’ve probably never heard of it. It’s okay, I hadn’t heard of it either, and the British government went to great lengths to conceal the incident, because no enemy vessels were involved:

An underwater war grave containing the victims of one of the worst British naval disasters of the first world war has been surveyed for the first time so it can be preserved in the middle of a windfarm.

The two K Class submarines were destroyed on 31 January 1918 during the so-called battle of the Isle of May, in which 270 lives were lost. The two submarines were sunk and three more damaged along with a surface cruiser.

But no enemy ships were involved in the sinkings, 20 miles off Fife Ness on Scotland’s east coast. The deaths were all caused by a series of night-time collisions within the British fleet.

So embarrassing was the incident that even though one officer was court-martialed, the facts were not generally admitted for more than 60 years, until after the death of the last survivor.

A longer account of the accident is on the Wikipedia page. It’s pretty grim reading.

April 10, 2011

Canada’s peaceful submarines

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Military, Technology, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:02

Apparently, the navy’s purchase of used British submarines has still not been completed: the boats are in our hands, but they’re still unarmed:

The country’s stock of second-hand submarines — already beleaguered with repairs and upgrades — is incapable of firing the MK-48 torpedoes they currently own.

When Canada purchased its current fleet of four submarines from Britain in 1998, they were fitted for British torpedoes. At the time, Canada was heavily invested with the modern MK-48 torpedo system and did not want to abandon it.

Like any shopper trying to justify a second-hand purchase in the face of an obstacle, they figured it was still a good deal. They “Canadianized” the submarines, but, 13 year later, they still haven’t got around to the “weaponization” part.

“The Canadian Forces has always intended for the Victoria Class submarines to carry and fire the Mark 48 torpedo,” wrote Denise LaViolette, the director of navy public affairs, in an email. “Initial weapons certification will be progressed early in 2012 in HMCS Victoria for Pacific operations followed that year by HMCS Windsor for Atlantic operations.”

I noted the lack of torpedo armament on the Canadian sub fleet back in 2004. I had no clue that they’d still be unarmed in 2011!

Later that same year, I said:

As I’ve said in other posts, I’m not a former Navy person, so my knowledge of the situation is neither broad nor deep. I’m moderately well-read on naval mattters, but that’s the limit. On that basis, I thought the purchase of the Upholder subs was a brilliant solution for both the Canadian and Royal Navies: we got a heck of a deal and they got the subs off their inventory. It really did look like a win-win, and both sides thought they’d gotten the better of the bargain.

In the long run, this may still turn out to be true. I certainly hope so.

As several others have noted, until we find out exactly what happened on HMCS Chicoutimi, we can’t make any determination about whether the subs are going to be safe and effective vessels for our navy. And, as Bruce R. pointed out the other day, if we want to retain any claims of sovereignty over the coastal waters of this huge country, we need those subs in the water now.

Well, the subs have been in the water for several years, but without torpedoes, they’re not fully functional.

Update, 12 April: Strategy Page has a useful summary of the history of the Upholder/Victoria class submarines:

It all began in the 1990s, when Canada wanted to replace its 1960s era diesel-electric subs. This did not seem possible, because the cost of new boats would have been about half a billion dollars each. Britain, however, had four slightly used Upholder class diesel-electric subs that it was willing to part with for $188 million each. Britain had built these boats in the late 1980s, put them in service between 1990 and 1993, but then mothballed them shortly thereafter when it decided to go with an all-nuclear submarine fleet.

So the deal was made in 1998, with delivery of the Upholders to begin in 2000. Canada decommissioned its Oberons in 2000, then discovered that the British boats needed more work (fixing flaws, installing Canadian equipment) than anticipated. It wasn’t until 2004 that the subs were ready, and that one year one of them was damaged by fire, while at sea. This boat is to be back in service next year. By the end of this year, three boats should be back in service. Maybe.

[. . .]

The problem is that the subs were bought without a through enough examination. It was later found that most major systems had problems and defects that had to be fixed (at considerable expense). Thus these boats have spent most of their time, during the last decade, undergoing repairs or upgrades. The final fix will be to get the torpedo tubes working. In any event, a Canadian [submarine] has never fired a torpedo in combat, mainly because the Canadian Navy did not get subs until the 1960s. Lots of Canadian surface ships have fired torpedoes in combat, but the last time that happened was in 1945. The sole operational Victoria class boat is on patrol in the Pacific, listening for trouble which, if found, will be reported to the proper authorities.

April 9, 2011

Someone deserves a medal here

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:57

If this Guardian report is true, I hope that Royston Smith is on the next honours list:

Southampton city council leader, Royston Smith, was visiting the submarine with other dignitaries while it was berthed at the Eastern Docks on a five-day visit to the city.

He described how he “wrestled” the gunman to the ground in the submarine’s control room as he tried to stop him.

“Two shots were fired, straight after he entered the control room again and began shooting again,” Smith told the BBC.

“I ran towards him, I pushed him against the wall, we wrestled to take the gun from him. He fired again, I wrestled again to get the weapon from him. I pushed him to another wall, I wrestled him to the ground and managed to take the weapon away from him then others came to help to restrain him.”

He said a group of schoolchildren had left the submarine shortly before the attack.

That’s a civilian, charging a gunman armed with a battle rifle, and disarming him before the trained military personnel could intervene. There are very few people who could have reacted so quickly — and correctly — in that situation. That’s heroism.

April 7, 2011

Unmanned sub hunter

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:25

Lewis Page looks at the Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV):

No doubt regular readers will recall the US military’s cunning plan to develop unmanned submarine-hunting robotic frigates — warships which would prowl the oceans like automated Mary Celestes, remorselessly tracking enemy submarines regardless of how their pale, sweaty, malodorous captains might twist and turn.

The Anti-submarine warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) project is intended to produce “an X-ship founded on the assumption that no person steps aboard at any point in its operating cycle”. The uncrewed frigate would have enough range and endurance for “global, months long deployments with no underway human maintenance”, being able to cross oceans and fight its battles largely without any human input — communications back to base would be “intermittent”, according to DARPA.

As you might imagine, there are lots of potential issues to sending an armed, unmanned ship out into the ocean, including how to handle interactions with other users of the sea lanes. It’d be worse than embarassing to the US Navy to have one of their fancy new ACTUV vessels get tangled up in a fishing net or get caught in the middle of a regatta.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, it has been decided that the best way to hammer out a set of tactics for ACTUVs is to develop a game-style simulation pitting ACTUV against submarine and get people to play it — so crowdsourcing the methods and tactical principles that will then be coded into the robo-frigates’ AIs.

The new game — from which these visuals are drawn — is called ACTUV Tactics. The game engine is used in various military sims and in the Dangerous Waters commercial release of 2005. [. . .]. In it, a player tries to find and track an enemy submarine while avoiding collisions with commercial vessels and the like. Various different proposed models of ACTUV robo-frigate are available: Gator, Remora, Seahorse, Shark and Triton.

March 21, 2011

The nuclear power industry’s technological lock-in

Filed under: Economics, History, Science, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:20

Leon Neyfakh looks at how light water reactors became the “default” choice of the nuclear power industry:

Japan’s reactors are “light water” reactors, whose safety depends on an uninterrupted power supply to circulate water quickly around the hot core. A light water system is not the only way to design a nuclear reactor. But because of the way the commercial nuclear power industry developed in its early years, it’s virtually the only type of reactor used in nuclear power plants today. Even though there might be better technologies out there, light water is the one that utility companies know how to build, and that governments have historically been willing to fund.

Economists call this problem “technological lock-in”: The term refers to the process by which one new technology can prevail over another for no good reason other than circumstance and inertia. The best-known example of technological lock-in comes from the 1970s, when VHS and Betamax, two different kinds of videotape, competed in the market until VHS gained a slight lead and then leveraged it to total domination. Whether the VHS format was actually superior to Betamax didn’t matter. After the lock-in, consumers no longer had a choice.

Much more is at stake in nuclear power. Some reactor designs are safer than others in an accident; some are more efficient than others in their use of fuel and produce less nuclear waste. The fact that the industry settled on light water over any number of alternatives was determined in the years after World War II, when the US Atomic Energy Commission and Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover made a series of hasty decisions that irreversibly set the course for how nuclear power plants around the world are built today.

“There were lots and lots of ideas floating around, and they essentially lost when light water came to dominate,” said Robin Cowan, a professor at the University of Strasbourg and the University of Maastricht who wrote a 1990 paper in The Journal of Economic History about the nuclear industry’s technological stagnation. “The market tends to choose a dominant design before it’s optimal, and it tends to under-explore.”

November 9, 2010

Submarines, and the things they run into, literally

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:49

It’s always a subject of uninformed joking, but submarines can and do have collisions with all sorts of things. HMS Astute is the most recent case of this, fortunately with only minor damage and no reported casualties. Strategy Page puts this and other incidents into perspective:

British media and politicians made much of the recent grounding of their new nuclear submarine HMS Astute. On October 22nd, the sub got snagged on a sand bank off Scotland for ten hours. This was during sea trials, and after it was freed, Astute collided with one of the tugs, causing more damage. Members of Parliament demanded to know, among other things, how often this sort of thing happened. They were told there had been seventeen collisions since 1988. One in that year, two in 1989, one in 1990, one in 1991, two in 1996, one in 1997, two in 2000, one in 2002, one in 2003, one in 2008 and two in 2009 and two, so far, this year. This made it clear that such collisions are not as rare as most people think.

This has to do with how the media deals with these events. For example, five years ago a U.S. SSN (nuclear attack sub) collided with an underwater mountain. The sub survived, but its sonar dome was smashed in, and one sailor died. This was big news, but most collisions are minor, and don’t make it to the media. The navies involved like to keep it that way, if only to keep secret where, and when, their submarines operate. Most of the American collisions involve snagging fishing nets of large fishing vessels, or other lines (towing, anchor) hanging from surface ships. There were also lots of bumping into piers or buoys. Bumping into other ships or subs was also common. Most of the time, damage was minor, making it easier to keep such incidents quiet.

After all, submarines don’t have windshields or portholes you can look out to see obstructions . . .

October 19, 2010

UK defence cuts announced

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Military — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:57

As I blogged yesterday, quoting a Guardian article, the British government will be cutting their armed forces substantially:

I want to be clear there is no cut whatsoever in the support for our forces in Afghanistan.

The funding for our operations in Afghanistan comes not from the budget of the Ministry of Defence but instead from the Treasury Special Reserve.

So the changes to the Ministry of Defence that result from today’s Review will not affect this funding.

That will help the morale of the troops on the ground in Afghanistan, but the army overall is still being reduced.

Our ground forces will continue to have a vital operational role so we will retain a large well-equipped Army, numbering around 95,500 by 2015 that is 7,000 less than today.

We will continue to be one of very few countries able to deploy a self-sustaining properly equipped Brigade-sized force anywhere around the world and sustain it indefinitely if needs be.

And we will be able to put 30,000 into the field for a major, one off operation.

In terms of the return from Germany half our personnel should be back by 2015 and the remainder by 2020.

And tanks and heavy artillery numbers will be reduced by around 40%.

The garrison in Germany is a relic of the Cold War, and it’s amazing that they’ll still be there until 2020.

We will complete the production of six Type 45 destroyers one of the most effective multi-role destroyers in the world.

But we will also start a new programme to develop less expensive, more flexible, modern frigates.

Total naval manpower will reduce to around 30,000 by 2015.

And by 2020 the total number of frigates and destroyers will reduce from 23 to 19 but the fleet as a whole will be better able to take on today’s tasks from tackling drug trafficking and piracy to counter-terrorism.

Those are the same Type 45’s that haven’t actually had effective main armament, according to The Register.

We have decided to retire the Harrier which has served this country so well for 40 years.

The Harrier is a remarkably flexible aircraft but the military advice is that we should sustain the Tornado fleet as that aircraft is more capable and better able to sustain operations in Afghanistan.

RAF manpower will also reduce to around 33,000 by 2015.

Inevitably this will mean changes in the way in which some RAF bases are used but some are likely to be required by the Army as forces return from Germany.

The retirement of the Harrier is a simultaneous victory for the RAF against their two most dangerous enemies: the army and the Fleet Air Arm. The Harrier was the one aircraft that could provide both naval and ground support, and was therefore considered readily dispensible by the fighter jocks in the Royal Air Force.

We will build both carriers, but hold one in extended readiness.

We will fit the “cats and traps” — the catapults and arrestor gear to the operational carrier.

This will allow our allies to operate from our operational carrier and allow us to buy the carrier version of the Joint Strike Fighter which is more capable, less expensive, has a longer range and carries more weapons.

We will also aim to bring the planes and carriers in at the same time.

That is probably finis for carrier operations in the Royal Navy: but expect both of these ships to show up again in the fleet of India within 5-10 years.

. . . we will retain and renew the ultimate insurance policy — our independent nuclear deterrent, which guards this country round the clock every day of the year.

[. . .]

…extend the life of the Vanguard class so that the first replacement submarine is not required until 2028;
…reduce the number of operational launch tubes on those new submarines from 12 to eight…
…reduce the number of warheads on our submarine at sea from 48 to 40…..
…and reduce our stockpile of operational warheads from less than 160 to fewer than 120.

September 16, 2010

Army, RN, RAF, and Trident replacement: pick any three

Filed under: Britain, Military, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:03

The British coalition government has declared that they will retain the nuclear option (that is, buy replacements for their current Trident submarines), but still seem to think that you can take £20bn from the Defence budget (in addition to the 10-20% savings you’re already demanding be made) and still have three viable services. Perhaps it’s a strange form of new math:

The £20bn replacement of the UK’s Trident nuclear deterrent could be put off until after 2015, according to reports.

The BBC said ministers were considering delaying the planned 2014 date in an effort to reduce short-term costs and head off a pre-general election political row.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said no decisions had yet been taken on the future of the submarine-based missile system, which is currently the subject of a value-for-money review.

It has been formally excluded from the ongoing strategic defence and security review (SDSR) but the Treasury has made clear the under-pressure MoD budget will have to pay for it. An influential committee of MPs yesterday warned that that decision would have very significant consequences for future defence spending.

Just as the coalition took office, it was mentioned that the previous Labour government had committed to spend £37bn on various new weapon systems, but had not actually provided the funding to make those purchases. Add a Trident replacement bill on top of that and there is no way to successfully pay the bills out of the current military budget.

There are always economies that can be made in military spending: it’s not unreasonable to assume that savings of 10% can be found in any military force. 20% is pushing the envelope too much unless a scaling-back of commitment is also part of the reduction. 20% cuts, no reduction in tasks, and the Trident replacements (even if you reduce the fleet from four to three) can’t be done.

Update: Lewis Page thinks the Trident replacement is essential:

Proper new Trident, with submarine-launched ballistic nukes, is the right call for the UK. Its cost is tiny compared to UK government spending — just half of a single year’s Department for Work and Pensions budget would buy new Trident boats, arm them, crew them and cover their running costs for decades.

Compared to the MoD’s much smaller budget the costs look bigger, but they are still small — and ICBM submarines represent far and away the best value for money in the MoD. For perhaps £20bn to £30bn in acquisition costs you get an unstoppable, unfindable nuclear hammer capable of shattering a nation in an afternoon. When one reflects that we have spent the same money to get the Eurofighter — a wildly expensive and now rather oldfashioned pure air-to-air platform — new Trident looks like a steal.

One major reason that the Eurofighter is such poor value for money, of course, has been repeated delay so as to achieve short-term savings in the past. This is also true of nearly every other procurement project in the MoD: cumulatively, past politicians failing to grasp nettles are now costing us billions every year. It has to stop, and stop now — as a taxpayer, quite frankly I don’t see why I should pay still more billions down the road just to keep Mr Cameron in Downing Street and Mr Clegg in the Cabinet today.

September 10, 2010

The bitter choices facing Britain’s new National Security Council

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:40

The new National Security Council will have its first meeting next week. It’s expected to report on Britain’s defence priorities next month. For any kind of government body, that’s a breathtaking pace to set — and the decisions to be taken will have a huge impact on Britain’s armed forces for decades to come.

Thanks to poor decision-making on new defence purchases, the current government has to cut spending by an estimated 10 to 20%. Each service has major new equipment already in the pipeline, which means cancellation won’t automatically mean monetary relief for the government. The RAF has their priority purchase of 40 more Typhoon aircraft (costing £2.8 billion). The RN is desperate to keep their two new aircraft carriers on schedule for 2016 and 2018 (costing £5.2 billion for the ships and a mind-bending £10 billion for the F-35B aircraft to load on to them). In addition, the nuclear option needs to be renewed or (saving £20 billion) scrapped.

The Economist anticipates the bulk of the cuts going to the RAF and the army:

The RAF looks certain to be hit hard. Douglas Barrie, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, reckons that the air force will shrink dramatically, losing perhaps 200 jets through the early retirement of Tornadoes and Harriers and a scaling back of the plan for a 160-strong Typhoon fleet. Attack helicopters and unmanned drones will increasingly be used to support ground operations instead. The order for F-35 jets, which are to be shared between the navy and the air force, looks certain to be more than halved to around 60, saving more than £5 billion in purchase costs and at least as much in maintenance.

Theoretically, one or both of the navy’s aircraft carriers could be cancelled. That would drastically reduce Britain’s expeditionary capability; but the advanced state of construction, the amount of money already spent and the 10,000 or so jobs at stake make it unlikely. Ditching just one of them is impractical, since two are needed if one is to be continuously available for operations. Despite some excitable recent talk of sharing a carrier with France, the difficulty of agreeing what to do with such a shared vessel make that idea unworkable. Dr Fox has ruled it out, though he is exploring other areas of co-operation.

[. . .]

And despite Afghanistan, the army will not escape entirely. A growing emphasis on special forces in ground warfare, combined with rising scepticism about the future utility of heavy armour should allow two or three battalions of infantry to be eliminated, the mothballing of most of the army’s main battle tanks and thus big savings in manpower and logistical support. A smaller army — comprising perhaps 95,000 soldiers rather than the current 107,000 — would also make it possible to repatriate most of the roughly 19,000 British troops still stationed in Germany without building new bases or housing.

Can anyone adequately explain why Britain still has nearly 20,000 troops in Germany at this late date? What possible strategic value are they, sitting in the middle of Europe?

September 5, 2010

No longer “underhand, underwater and damned un-English”

Filed under: Britain, Military, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:38

BBC News looks at the newest nuclear-powered attack submarine in the Royal Navy, HMS Astute:

It is the stealthiest sub ever built in the UK, able to sit in waters off the coast undetected, listening to mobile phone conversations or delivering the UK’s special forces where needed.

The 39,000 or so acoustic panels which cover its surface mask its sonar signature, meaning it can sneak up on enemy warships and submarines alike, or simply lurk unseen and unheard at depth.

The submarine can carry a mix of up to 38 Spearfish heavyweight torpedoes and Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise missiles, able to target enemy submarines, surface ships and land targets, while its sonar system has a range of 3,000 nautical miles.

[. . .]

HMS Astute itself should never need refuelling over the next 25 years, thanks to the latest nuclear-powered technology which means it can circumnavigate the world submerged.

It even creates the crew’s oxygen from seawater as it sails, meaning that the air on board is no longer heavy with diesel fumes, as submariners used to complain of older vessels. The only limit to how long it can stay underwater is the amount of food on board, enough for 90 days at sea.

Rather a big step up from the diesel-electric clunkers we bought from them, wouldn’t you say? H/T to Adrian MacNair for the link.

February 26, 2010

US Navy SEAL teams to use British mini-sub

Filed under: Britain, Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:53

Lewis Page discovers that the latest minisub for the US Navy’s SEAL teams is actually made in Britain:

A groundbreaking new miniature submarine in use by the US Navy’s secretive, elite frogman-commando special operations force was actually designed and built in old Blighty, the Reg can reveal.

We reported first on the S301 mini-sub two weeks ago, noting from federal documents that the famous US Navy SEALs had leased a demonstration model for “doctrinal, operational, and organizational purposes”. This was followed up last week by the Honolulu Advertiser, which had spoken to Submergence Group, the American firm listed by the US government as provider of the S301.

It emerged that the S301 — now in trials with the SEALs in Hawaii — had cost just $10m to develop, which contrasted especially well with the $885m+ spent on the ill-fated Advanced SEAL Delivery System (ASDS).

The ASDS, from US defence behemoth Northrop Grumman, had been intended to supersede the SEALs’ current Mark 8 Mod 1 minisubs, which are carried in a “Dry Deck Shelter” (DDS) airlock docking bay fitted to a full-sized US Navy nuclear submarine — either a normal attack boat or an Ohio-class dedicated Stingray-style special-ops mothership. The Ohios, nuclear missile subs retired from their old job under arms-reduction treaties, have space aboard for a large force of SEALs and pack a powerful armament of conventional-warhead cruise missiles for precision shore bombardment.

February 5, 2010

China ramps up submarine activity

Filed under: China, Japan, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:39

Strategy Page reports on increased activity around China’s maritime periphery:

Recently, the Taiwanese Navy detected an unidentified submarine outside one of its major naval bases. Ships and helicopters pursued the contact, but the suspected submarine left the area. A Chinese boat was suspected, mainly because for the last decade, Chinese subs have increasingly been showing up close to Japan and South Korea as well.

[. . .]

Chinese Song class diesel electric and Han class nuclear powered boats have been detected and tracked with increasing frequency over the last few years. In that time, one of each of these was spotted stalking the American carrier USS George Washington, as it headed to South Korea for a visit.

China is rapidly acquiring advanced submarine building capabilities, and providing money (for fuel and spare parts) to send its subs to sea more often. Moreover, new classes of boats are constantly appearing. The new Type 39A, or Yuan class, looks just like the Russian Kilo class. In the late 1990s, the Chinese began ordering Russian Kilo class subs, then one of the latest diesel-electric design available. Russia was selling new Kilos for about $200 million each, which is about half the price other Western nations sell similar boats for. The Kilos weigh 2,300 tons (surface displacement), have six torpedo tubes and a crew of 57. They are quiet, and can travel about 700 kilometers under water at a quiet speed of about five kilometers an hour. Kilos carry 18 torpedoes or SS-N-27 anti-ship missiles (with a range of 300 kilometers and launched underwater from the torpedo tubes.) The combination of quietness and cruise missiles makes Kilo very dangerous to American carriers. North Korea and Iran have also bought Kilos.

October 23, 2009

Wreck of WW1 British submarine found in Baltic

Filed under: Britain, History, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:48

BBC News reports on a recent discovery by the Australian descendent of the only survivor of the sinking:

The wreck of a British naval submarine lost for more than 90 years has been found in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Estonia.

HMS E18 – with its complement of three officers and 28 ratings – went out on patrol in May 1916 and was never seen again.

The submarine was one of a handful sent to the Baltic during World War I by Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, to disrupt German shipments of iron ore from Sweden and support the Russian navy.

E18 left its base in the Russian port of Reval – now Tallinn, the capital of Estonia – on the evening of 25 May 1916 and headed west.

The following day she was reported to have engaged and torpedoed a German ship.

A few days later, possibly 2 June, she is believed to have struck a German mine and sunk with all hands.

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