300knt torpedo

Interceptions

STILL A FANTASY. They can't even do this for conventional torpedos. What makes you think they can do it for something that's moving five of six times faster?

1. How will the defender know the speed of the torpedo?

1. How will the defender know the depth?

2. How will the defender get the depth charge to the right depth at the right time in JUST FIFTEEN OR TWENTY SECONDS?

Supercavitating weapons have been proposed as a method for intercepting CONVENTIONAL weapons, not the other way around.

P.S. There has never been a confirmed instance even under experimental conditions of a Mach 10 missile EVER being intercepted by another missile.

 

Same way they calculate the speed and direction of any ship or submarine audible to sonar.

If you know the distance and the angle of approach, which they have been able to do since WW2, simple trigonometry will give you the depth.

If they can fire a patriot fast enough to intercept an incoming scud, they can fire a subroc fast enough to intercept a high speed torpedo. Anyway, you don't have to intercept it very far out - just far enough out to prevent damage to the ship. Actually, you don't even need to destroy the weapon - it's unguided, so all you need to do is deflect it.

Who said the intercept weapon has to be as fast as the torpedo? Is a fielder's glove moving as fast as a line drive?

http://www.janes.com/regional_news/africa_middle_east/news/jdw/jdw051205_2_n.shtml

You really need to learn to think outside the box.

 

1. How will the defender know the speed of the torpedo?

Who cares , get the defense explosion on the way as the torpedo is detected.

1. How will the defender know the depth?

Why bother , if its set too deep it will miss , so the protection Zone is not much more than the vessels depth & the bomb kill radius

2. How will the defender get the depth charge to the right depth at the right time in JUST FIFTEEN OR TWENTY SECONDS?

Shoot the defense detonation in at the closest "safe" distance from the ship , so when it goes it will destrouy the torpedo aim, not neccesarily the torpedo.

Mere Blast damage requires VERY close explosions.
A std depth charge must be with in 15! ft of a sub for an assured kill.
At least that what I was told when I flew ASW aircraft.

FAST FRED

 

The Real World

"If they can fire a patriot fast enough to intercept an incoming scud, they can fire a subroc fast enough to intercept a high speed torpedo." Since when? What navy on this planet?

Unfortunately, life ISN'T A COMPUTER GAME.

The REAL WORLD is a LOT more complicated.

"If you know the distance and the angle of approach, which they have been able to do since WW2, simple trigonometry will give you the depth." How? With what instruments?

Since WWII, the submarine that LAUNCHES the torpedo is the one that knows the distance and the angle of approach and does the trigonometry NOT THE TARGET SHIP.

 

Blast Damage

"Mere Blast damage requires VERY close explosions.
A std depth charge must be with in 15! ft of a sub for an assured kill."

NEWSFLASH, genius.

300 knots is over 400 FEET PER SECOND.

If you're trying to intercept a supercavitation torpedo with a depth charge what navy in the world has any chance of placing a depth charge even remotely close enough?

 

Hey, Troll Frank,

It's real easy to just sit there and say "can't be done". Of course, if the human race ever paid attention to that kind of weak-minded crap, we wouldn't even be having this conversation because no one would have bothered to invent the torpedo in the first place. Or gone to the moon, or broke the sound barrier, or invented the airplane...

I have two patents pending. If you have an unknown fingerprint you need to identify, against a database of 400 million fingerprints, and the computer is only capable of scanning 20,000 fingerprints per second, how do you cut down the average search time to less than 6 seconds? I didn't sit on my butt and say "It can't be done! It's mathmatically impossible!" I wore a hole in the carpet 'til I figured out how to do it.

See my sig.

 

Living in a fantasy world

It's real easy to sit down and say it can be done when you don't make the slightest attempt to understand the physics or environmental conditions.

Why do submarines have wire guided torpedos?

Why do submarines have homing torpedos?

Why are there torpedos that combine wire guidance with the homing feature?

Why don't submarines just listen with their sonar to determine the speed and direction of the target? (The one ping they do make before shooting is to confirm distance.)

Why aren't there any surface ships or submarines any where in the world that have anti-torpedo weapons instead of countermeasures which merely aid evasion?

If what you propose is so easy, why is one of the proposals for supercavitation technology a cannon or machine gun that fires unguided supercavitating projectiles or bullets to shoot down torpedos like a Phalanx system shooting down missiles?

 

this super cavitation is what interest me more than measures and counter measures
than again only in that hypothetical real world there is interest in super cavitation

 

Supercavitation Technology

I would love to see what could be done with supercavitation technology applied to racing boats, perhaps in the form of a pencil or missile shaped hull supported by supercavitating pods. This would overcome the aerodynamic limitations of planing hulls and the speed limitations that cavitating imposes on hydrofoils.

 

Here are some references to papers by my colleagues:

D.C. Scullen, High-speed projectile cavitation:
Implementation of three-dimensionality, Scullen & Tuck Pty Ltd (2003).

E.O. Tuck and D.C. Scullen, High-speed projectile cavitation:
Axisymmetric flows, Scullen & Tuck Pty Ltd (2002).

D.C. Scullen, High-speed projectile cavitation:
Preliminary numerical investigation, Scullen & Tuck Pty Ltd (2001).

D.C. Scullen, High-speed projectile cavitation:
Literature survey, Scullen & Tuck Pty Ltd (2001).

These were taken from:
http://internal.maths.adelaide.edu.au/people/dscullen/Web_pages/publications.html

Regards,
Leo.

 

Why are you trying to distract me with irrelevant questions?

Who said you have to use passive sensors to target the weapon? You hear it on passive, then ping it to pinpoint it.

Economy. If the countermeasures work well enough, why would you need another weapons system? Anyway, how do you know there isn't something like that? They have anti-missile missiles, anti-torpedo torpedos seems a logical progression from that.

Sounds reasonable to me. I was thinking about that very idea yesterday, but I didn't know how far you can shoot a bullet underwater.

 

Good stuff.

Thanks, Leo.

 

Addendum: Apparently, someone has thought of a way to calculate range, speed and depth using passive sonar. Not that it matters in this discussion, but it certainly supports the attitude of keeping an open mind.

 

Relevant Questions

"Why are you trying to distract me with irrelevant questions?" Because if you understood the physics and technology behind these questions you wouldn't be making the silly proposal that intercepting supercavitation weapons is simply a matter of people deciding to do it.

Economics is irrelevant to the Navy. They spend billions to deliver to their targets weapons that cost less than a million dollars. A nuclear attack submarine costs over a billion dollars simply to design and build. Building a supercarrier takes a decade. Either one can be destroyed with a weapon that costs less than a million dollars. If it's so easy and practical, why isn't the Navy equipping these ships with anti-torpedo weapons that can assure their survival? Why is their entire strategy for defense against torpedo attack the tremendously expensive and risky concept of anti-submarine warfare instead of anti-torpedo warfare?

 

Yeah, and I'm sure JFK had to become a rocket scientist before he could propose sending men to the moon.

That's not what I said. I said if the current systems work, there's no need to waste money on something fancier. The money can be more productive somewhere else.