Um artigo massivo sobre o assunto Nuclear vs. AIP, que merece ser postado aqui.
http://www.g2mil.com/thompson.htm
Is the US Navy Overrated?
Is the US Navy Overrated?
A Discussion Paper
DRAFT: 15.5B
The US Navy is the largest, most impressive navy in the world, but is it really undefeatable? (Some Disconfirming Findings)
An Updated Knightsbridge Working Paper
Copyright 2005 By Roger Thompson, Professor of Military Studies, Knightsbridge University
This is a draft. Do not quote without permission from the author. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and are not to be construed as the opinions of Knightsbridge University. This is a work in progress and supercedes all previous versions. Former US Navy submariner Dr. Robert Williscroft cited an earlier version of this paper in his article “Is the Nuclear Submarine Really Invincible?” DefenseWatch, Oct. 4, 2004.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr. Andy Karam, former US Navy nuclear submariner and author of the book Rig Ship for Ultra Quiet; Captain John L. Byron, US Navy (retired), former nuclear submarine commander; Dr. Robert Williscroft, former US Navy Nuclear Submarine officer; Colonel Douglas Macgregor, US Army (Retired), author of the book Breaking the Phalanx; Lieutenant Colonel David Evans, USMC (Retired), former Military Correspondent for the Chicago Tribune; Rear-Admiral Fred Crickard, RCN (Retired); Jon E. Dougherty, investigative journalist and former US Naval Reserve sailor; Squadron Leader J. R. Sampson, RAAF (Retired); Henrik Fyrst Kristensen; Carlton Meyer, former USMC officer and Editor of G2mil Magazine; and Dr. Emilio Meneses (who provided me with much information on exercises between the Chilean Air Force/Navy and the US Navy), for their input, comments, suggestions, and constructive criticisms of earlier versions of this paper. I would also like to thank Captain Dean Knuth, US Naval Reserve (Retired) for providing me with background information on the sinking of two aircraft carriers in Exercise Ocean Venture 81 and for reviewing the section titled “David vs. Goliath”, Colonel Everest Riccioni, USAF (Retired), the father of the F-16 fighter program, and Lt. Col. Pierre Rochefort, Canadian Forces (Retired) for their advice on fighter combat, Major Lew Ferris, Canadian Forces (Retired) and Major Leif Wadelius, Canadian Forces (Retired) for their advice on ASW matters, Lieutenant Commander Aidan Talbott, RN, for his comparisons of the US Navy and the RN, and Captain Jan Nordenman, Royal Swedish Navy (Retired) for information on Swedish diesel submarines. My special thanks also go to Dr. Debora Shuger of the UCLA English Department, who kindly gave permission to use her late husband Scott Shuger’s unpublished book manuscript Navy Yes, Navy No. Finally, I offer my thanks to all my other sources, who will remain safely anonymous, for their generous assistance.
“The power of the United States in the early twenty-first century is greatly overrated. It is true that it deploys amazing cultural, economic, and military resources, but their efficacy is very limited. Culturally, there is no instrumental power. Economically, U.S. power is awesome and is very good for forcing bad deals on Third World countries, yet it too is difficult to bring to bear consistently and directly, especially on the other great powers. And the United States is as dependent on the world economy as the world economy is dependent on it. But it is in terms of military power that the United States is most overrated.” (emphasis mine).
Professor Chris Hables Gray, 2005
As far as his comments in general, he feels that the Navy systems are oversold, overpriced, and undercapable. He is generally more pleased with the Air Force, but sprinkled criticism of us rather freely.” – Major General Perry M. Smith, USAF (Retired), reading his notes on a 1974 job interview with Secretary of Defense Dr. James Schlesinger.
Dedication
Let me begin by stating that the US Navy is an important fighting organization, but it is not a person. It is not the flag, and it is nobody’s mother or child. It is an employer of hundreds of thousands of people, but importantly, one that has extracted billions of dollars from the taxpayers. It is not a religion, it is not sacred, and as such, it can and must be subjected to rigorous criticism when warranted. It is in the spirit of sincere and constructive criticism that I write this paper. I say this because, despite good intentions, and extensive documented evidence, often provided by current or former US Navy officers who want to turn this organization around, there are some who are apparently incapable of engaging in constructive but intellectually honest discussion on their current or former service. To these folks, the US Navy is America, and to criticize the former is to mock the latter. I dismiss this paradigm, along with any and all counterarguments that are based on emotion, hyperbole, willful ignorance, fideism, that rely on the Ad Hominem Abusive, the Ad Hominem Circumstantial, Ignoratio Elenchi, those without specific and documented countervailing arguments (in other words, those based on assumed facts that are not in evidence, better known as the old “I think you took these statements out of context, but I cannot rebut them because I do not know the actual context, and basically I do not like your argument so I am just grasping at straws to deflate it” gambit), and those based on disingenuous and unauthenticated contumacy or prevaricating bromides that do not wash with reality, common sense, or precedent.
In this age of rampant jingoism in the US, in which even the most thoughtful and well-reasoned criticism of the US military is sometimes inexplicably equated with contempt or polemical disrespect, some reactionaries might even go so far as to claim a paper such as this must ipso facto be tinged with “anti-Americanism.” Indeed, Michael Parenti said recently that “With the link between militarism and patriotism so firmly fixed,” in America, “any criticism of the military runs the risk of being condemned as unpatriotic.” I eschew this simplistic, linear thinking as well, but as a counter to those who do not, I do offer much praise for other branches of the US military, especially the US Air Force, for their professionalism, relatively high selection standards, and excellent aircraft. To borrow a phrase from a well known Jack Nicholson movie, if “you can’t handle the truth,” or are one of the many who are “blinded by hype about our technological and ethical superiority” then I suggest, respectfully, kindly and sincerely, that you go no further. No one should take what I am about to say personally. Besides, if you disagree with my thesis, and if the US Navy’s way of doing things is somehow validated in a future war, without too much “dumb luck” involved, then you have nothing to worry about, and hence, nothing to be angry about, either. If I am right, however, you have reason to be angry – at the US Navy, the Pentagon, the Congress, the President, and the defense contractors – but not me, for I am merely the narrator, and I will be kind enough not to say “I told you so.”
Thankfully, there are many US Navy officers (serving or retired) who are willing to speak about their navy’s failings. These men and women are the true patriots, not the credulous and defensive “Everything’s just fine, we’re the best, thank you” types who populate the Brobdingnagian US military-industrial complex, the Pentagon spin-doctors pumping out warmed-over double-talk, and all others who cannot see the reasonable forest for the trees. These reformers and thinkers try to make a difference, and they are the ones who are truly loyal for they realize that one does need to be an unquestioning reactionary to be a loyal and effective officer or sailor. One will find such men and women in the pages of the US Naval Institute Proceedings from time to time, but the most influential in these ranks are such men as the Late Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Admiral Stansfield Turner, the Late Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll, Captain John L. Byron, Captain Dean Knuth, the Late Scott Shuger, and former F-14 Radar Intercept Officer Jerry Burns, all of whom are quoted in this paper. To these men, and the men and women like them in the US Navy, I respectfully dedicate this paper. You have heard all the hype about the US Navy, I am sure, so this paper will give you the other side, the side that does not often make it into the mainstream media, or the US high school textbooks.
Introduction and Objective (Quaere Verum)
“I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.”
- Harry S Truman
For many reasons, Americans are a justifiably proud people, and it goes without saying that many Americans take great pride in the US Navy. Pride, naturally, is not always a positive thing, however, especially when it is excessive or misplaced. Excessive pride, or hubris, can blind its partisans and lead to overconfidence, and jingoism. Jingoism, substantiated by a prosperous economy and worldwide interests, a more warlike familiar to traditional national pride, was once very much in the domain of the British Empire. Now it has found a more affluent and comfortable home in America, the only major industrialized country that was lucky enough not to endure large scale attacks on its homeland in World War II. A goodly number of our American friends have made, over the past 60 years, many over-the-top statements about the prowess of their Navy and their armed forces in general. In recent years, as an example, I have rolled my eyes after seeing young Americans wearing t-shirts proclaiming: “United States Navy: The Sea is Ours.” American presidents and statesmen routinely assert that the US military is “the best trained, the best equipped, the best led…” (One American admiral (Skip Bowman) recently claimed that US sailors are also the “best-educated” in the world!) and a substantial number of Americans have bought into this boosteristic choplogic. These folks, unlike their more liberal countrymen, are sometimes quite unabashedly hawkish, and some brag that their grand fleet of supercarriers, cruise missiles, nuclear submarines and surface ships absolutely and unquestionably rules the seas now as Britannia once did, and more than that, that this fleet is practically unchallengeable. After all, they say, with the former Soviet Navy largely immobile, divided, decaying, deceased, or remaining indefinitely at dockside, who can challenge American naval dominance today?
The US Navy is absolutely the biggest and most expensive navy in the world, that is true, but if one looks back over time, and is objective, emotionally detached and, most importantly, intellectually honest, one can plainly see an embarrassing pattern of failure and underachievement, with pivotal combat climacterics (such as the victory at Midway) resulting mostly from the miscalculations of enemies rather than from any other single factor. The purpose of my disquisition is to describe and edify this historical pattern of failure and underachievement (not just the issues facing today’s Navy), and then to ask a very pertinent but controversial question: Is the US Navy truly the most capable navy in the world, or is it closer to being an overrated paper tiger whose dominance can be at least partially attributed to the mistakes of former adversaries? This is a touchy subject, and I will touch a few nerves in the process, but rest assured I will do my best to perform the task at hand with all due respect and sensitivity. Please also note that this is not so much a comparison test between the US Navy and any or all others, as a “Let's look at the claims made that these people are absolutely the best and see if we cannot find some examples of them not being so”. Thus I am not arguing that the US Navy is, for example, inferior to the Chinese Navy, or any other per se, but I do wish to challenge the basic and widespread assumption that American sea power is as singularly dominant or powerful as some people claim. This paper will be a “reality check” for a great many people.
I will begin by discussing various international naval exercises that have pitted the supposedly hegemonic US Navy against foreign diesel submarines (SSKs), with many ending with very poor results for the Americans, and how US Navy officers are told to lie about exercise defeats, especially those involving aircraft carriers. I will also discuss how the US Navy benefited handsomely from the mistakes of both the Germans and the Japanese, plus the ASW experience and equipment of the British and Canadians, to buy enough time to establish itself as the dominant naval power, but one with many subtle and not so subtle weaknesses. I will describe the US Navy’s nearly continuous neglect of ASW, and how its obsession with supercarriers and nuclear submarines has retarded the combat capability of the surface navy, and forced the US Navy to rely on allies for essential services. I will demonstrate through historical case studies how bigger is not better in war, and that US naval pilots frequently do not measure up to those from various air forces. I will also discuss how racism, overwork, and the unpopularity of the Vietnam War eroded US naval power in the 1970s, which led one admiral to confess the US Navy would have lost a war against the Soviet Union. I will discuss how drug addiction, a bloated personnel structure, and an overweight and poorly educated populace has undermined the fighting skills and capacity of the US Navy, and how other, “lesser” navies have done better in some ways.
Throughout, I will provide examples, some based on unscripted exercise scenarios, and others from real life, that illustrate the many unfortunate and often ignored (or deliberately concealed) deficiencies of the US Navy. Among other things, it will become painfully apparent that unscripted or free-play exercise evolutions strongly suggest, almost ineffaceably, that foreign diesel submarines are quite dangerous to the US Navy, and that it needs the help of smaller allies in several key areas of naval warfare. I will also suggest that there is good reason to believe that the mighty US Navy is, with all due respect, simply overrated; a golden calf. In doing so, I will present a long list of woes that have afflicted or still afflict the US Navy, and one should keep in mind that these woes should not be viewed in isolation. Other navies have similar problems, or even worse; the Soviets/Russians are well known for having alcohol and morale problems, the Japanese, for all their ferocity in battle and iron discipline, have a tradition of thinking inside the box only (in other words, creativity and independent decision-making are not their strong suit). The difference is that not every other navy goes out in the world and tells everyone, and instills in its personnel, the notion that they are unbeatable, and then makes sure to gloss over or even hide deficiencies. The US Navy and the Pentagon seem to be the leaders in this particular realm, and my job here is to call them on it.
Before asking you to consider the documented examples below, I would like first to offer a counter to the most likely argument against my findings.
The “Exercises Aren’t Real” Argument: My Riposte
The examples below are from exercise scenarios, but some will say that one cannot draw conclusions from exercises because they cannot fully duplicate the reality of combat. Some might also say, erroneously, that exercises are only instructional, or academic, using scripted situations with predictable conditions and rules to train the crews on drills and procedures rather than to actually “fight the ship.” According to the DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, a controlled exercise is “an exercise characterized by the imposition of constraints on some or all of the participating units by planning authorities with the principal intention of provoking types of interaction.” In this kind of exercise, the crews are basically just practicing their various skills, such as gunnery, Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW), damage control, and learning how to operate damaged or degraded systems. In other words, they are about learning about combat, not engaging in it. In these controlled, unimaginative, scripted exercises, there are not supposed to be any winners or losers, and certainly no one worth his salt calls the media to report a “success” in such exercises. This is just part of the complex exercise equation, and it is not the part that interests me (except in those cases in which the rules, while appearing on paper to be restrictive or unfair, truly reflect the political realities faced by democracies in war, or that conform to the historical reality that many expensive weapons often do not work as advertised.)
Furthermore, I am engrossed by those controlled exercises in which enemy submarines disregard the rules to see if the US Navy is really as good as it claims to be. Such was the case in the September 1998 UNITAS exercise, which involved the US Navy and several South American navies. During the exercise, enemy diesel submarines were supposed to keep running at all times, making them easier targets for American sonar teams. This script was unrealistic and so enemy diesel submarine commanders decided to violate the rules by sitting silently on the bottom, which, apparently, nuclear submarines cannot do. According to reporter Bradley Peniston, the Americans were irritated by this unscheduled and uncalled for realism. “Local pride can get in the way of useful practice. Helicopter crewman Harder was eager for the rare opportunity to hunt foreign diesel submarines but found some of the Unitas navies weren’t playing by the rules, which insist the subs keep moving. ‘It’s all pride,’ the helicopter sensor operator said. ‘If they’re on battery sitting on the bottom, I’m not going to get them.’” The American actually complained that his side would have found the diesel submarine and attacked it -- if only the enemy submarine and her devious commander had cooperated! Harder was vexed that what was supposed to be an unrealistically easy target had a mind of its own, just like a bona fide enemy. This is just like playing darts and expecting the bulls eye or triple 20 to move about in order to be where your dart impacts, then making a fuss when you find they do not play according to unrealistic expectations.
I am also very interested in the so-called “force-on-force” exercises (or evolutions, during otherwise controlled exercises) in where there are indeed victors and the vanquished. In these exercises, which closely simulate combat, no ship, submarine or aircraft has any special advantage or disadvantage. NATO and DOD define a free play exercise as “an exercise to test the capabilities of forces under simulated contingency and/or wartime conditions, limited only by those artificialities or restrictions required by peacetime safety regulations.” The purpose of these evolutions is not to train crews, but to fight and hopefully win. As Robert Coram put it, “In a free-play exercise – no scenario and no rules – the orchestrated performance was tossed out. There is no better way to select and test combat leaders than by free play. Free play means winners and losers; it means postexercise critiques…Careerists hated free-play…True combat leaders loved it.” In these evolutions, rival crews do their very best to win, as there are considerable bragging rights endowed to the winners. Realism is important in these exercises. Exercise Tandem Thrust 99, an unscripted multinational “free-play” exercise, was “as close to war as we can possibly get,” said Commander Al Elkins, US Navy. “We’re in this exercise like we’re in a hot war. When our aviators take off, they have no idea what kind of threat is coming.”
No reasonable person would suggest that a ship that regularly fails in free-play or unscripted exercises is nevertheless in good shape for combat, and vice-versa. Now assume for just a moment that, rather than a list of failures, I will present a detailed list of US Navy successes in exercises instead. Suppose a modern US Navy destroyer had “sunk” an “all gun” World War II-vintage Turkish destroyer in a hypothetical free-play exercise. It would be outrageous for the obviously outmatched Turkish Navy to say “Yes, but exercises aren’t reality. In a real battle, my old ship and her guns would have clobbered that new American destroyer and her Tomahawk missiles.” That would be preposterous, and so is the claim that free play exercises, like the ones described below, are inherently meaningless. The fact is that consistent unscripted exercise results (successes or failures), are useful, meaningful, and provide reasonable analytical tools. And if free play exercises are not meaningful, then why does the US Navy invest so much time and money to participate in them? Because these types of exercises frequently reveal both the good and the bad news about how a navy might fare in a real war. I would propose referring a couple of the many interesting quotes one gets when googling 'purpose naval exercise'. I did not see a single 'just having a good time' and ‘shooting the breeze' statement. While not always the case, the standard, antediluvian excuse employed by the Navy’s apologists that all defeats (even in free play or unscripted exercise evolutions) are purely because the US ships or aircraft involved were operating under some sort of artificial restriction, unrealistic limitation or handicap is also often rather spurious, exaggerated, overly convenient, deceitful, and just a cop-out, and I will deal with that matter in due course.
I also do not fully accept the whole “These exercise defeats only involved allied submarines, and our allies are much better than our potential rivals,” argument, either, for the US certainly has a long tradition of underestimating its enemies (North Korea, China, and North Vietnam come to mind), and besides, if a friend driving a quiet diesel submarine can sink a carrier or nuclear submarine, what’s to prevent a rival from developing the same skills to do so? Courage, motivation, training, leadership and professionalism are not proprietary objects owned and trademarked by the western countries. The technology can be purchased from any number of countries, and the skills can be developed by any nation with the political will to do so, be they big or small, rich or poor, friend or foe.
On yet another level, some will also claim that since exercises are conducted in relatively small areas, it is easier for diesel submarines to detect and attack surface ships. In real life, the oceans are much bigger and it is more difficult for a diesel submarine to position itself to attack a much faster carrier battle group. I would ask those who support this argument to consider two things.
Firstly, many US surface combatant ships were sunk in the open ocean by slow, primitive diesel submarines in World War II, including the carriers USS Yorktown, USS Wasp, the escort carriers USS Liscombe Bay, USS Block Island, the cruisers USS Indianapolis and USS Juneau, the destroyers USS Mason, USS Reuben James, USS Satterlee, USS Jacob Jones, USS Hammann, USS O'Brien, USS Porter, USS Henley, USS Buck, USS Bristol, USS Leary, USS Leopold, USS Fechteler, USS Fiske, USS Eisele, USS Shelton, USS Eversole, USS Frederick C. Davis, and many other types of surface ships. US battleships were damaged by submarine attacks and taken out of action for long periods of time as well. In the case of the 35,000 ton battleship USS North Carolina, one of the most powerful and up-to-date ships of her time, and far more advanced than the ships destroyed at Pearl Harbor, she was taken out of action for two months by a single torpedo fired by the Imperial Japanese Navy’s submarine I-19. The carrier USS Saratoga, which was “the largest warship in the world” when she was launched, “was torpedoed on two separate occasions early in the war and was out of service for months.” In one battle, a single torpedo from a Japanese submarine left the 33,000 ton carrier “dead in the water” for several hours and she had to be taken under tow by a cruiser. In addition, the Imperial Japanese Navy’s 71,890 ton supercarrier Shinano was also sunk by a diesel submarine, as was the 36,000 ton fast battleship Kongo. Submarines also claimed five of the largest British carriers.
Secondly, consider that even though carriers and surface ships are more advanced today, and are still much faster than conventional submarines, that does not give them any additional life insurance because in a war the enemy diesel submarine will know a) where the US Navy ships are coming from and b) where they are likely headed. They do not have to catch up to a carrier battle group making more than 30 knots; they can just wait for it, and no one can predict exactly where en route they are waiting. The only protection the US Navy will have is solid Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) skills, and as we will see in this paper, the assumption that the US Navy has such skills is not well-founded. Today's diesel submarines are far better than those of the past, and with the US Navy now concentrating more on the dangerous, noisy and shallow waters of the littorals, if anything, the potential threat from quiet conventional submarines is greater now than it was in World War II.
One more thing about exercises. I have noted over the years that our US Navy colleagues expect to always win, by virtue of possessing what they earnestly believe is superior technology (on which some say the US Navy has grown overly-dependent, and consequently, rather sloppy) and/or superior training. They simply cannot fathom the results when things do not go their way all the time. When a real crackerjack US Navy F-18 squadron beats a foreign squadron in a dogfight, for example, the US Navy’s supporters do not ask questions about exercise parameters. They just assume that American technology and training were better, so case closed. However, when a US Navy ship or squadron loses in a competitive free-play or unscripted exercise, the response is rarely "Well, you can't win them all," or "You win some, you lose some." Sadly, the more typical response is to call a foul at the very concept of being beaten. Were the conditions unfavorable to the US Navy? Did the US Navy fighters lose because they had to carry more fuel tanks and were therefore less agile, or had fewer landing bases available, than their land-based opponents? Was the exercise unfair to US forces? (As if war could ever be “fair.”) Remember former Vice President Bush, a Navy veteran, who said the following after a US ship shot down an Iranian airliner: “I will never apologize for the United States of America. I don't care what the facts are." I find this quote very much in keeping with the nihil ad rem culture of evasion, excuse-making, obfuscation, blame-shifting, buck-passing, and denial in the US Navy, and I urge you to keep this in mind as you read this paper. Denial, in the words of military commentator Stan Goff, is indeed “the grandest of American appetites.”
As for methodology, the first section relies on qualitative rather than quantitative data. The reason for this is simple. As Captain Dean Knuth, US Naval Reserve (Retired), will attest later, the US Navy keeps a tight lock on its exercise evaluation data, especially on the ones that include potentially embarrassing failures. These exercise reports, note well, are not available to the general public, and attempts to make them public have been suppressed by the Navy. Under these conditions, a statistical analysis is not likely. In fact, after conducting a thorough search of the available unclassified materials, I could not locate even one such study, and one can be sure that is just what the US Navy wants. This is a discussion paper, and thus my purpose is merely to ask questions and raise issues, rather than to comprehensively answer all of them. My task here is to try to put the pieces together, and see if any conclusions can be supported or extrapolated. Although helpful, one does not always need reams of statistical data and tables to recognize a plain fact especially when history, common sense, and credible authorities support the conclusion. We do not require a statistical analysis to understand universal truths. I always liked the way Bruce Russett lucubrated his methodology, so I shall indicate my concurrence by quoting him directly: “My intention is to be provocative... The argument is not one subject to the principles of measurement and the strict canons of hypothesis-testing – the mode of inquiry with which I feel most comfortable. Nevertheless the subject is too important to leave untouched simply because the whole battery of modern social science cannot be brought to bear on it.” Like Fallows, my mission here is to be “suggestive, rather than encyclopedic or definitive…” and as was the case with Fallows’ 1981 magnum opus National Defense, “Much of the story is told through anecdotage and case history, but these particulars are meant to suggest certain casts of mind, certain rules of organizational life…”
I would also add that it does not require a leap of faith to know that there is no such thing as an unsinkable ship, no matter how big it is, how many water-tight compartments it has, or how much armor plating it has. Nor does it require much imagination to comprehend that a nearly silent diesel submarine can most definitely stalk and sink even the largest surface warships (or, these days, noisy nuclear submarines) with relative ease. Diesel submarines were and are not necessarily restricted to home or coastal waters, either, contrary to what many nuclear submarine advocates emphasize. In fact, many diesel submarines have been “forward deployed” thousands of miles from their home bases, and operated against the enemy on the other side of the ocean. Such things happened in both World Wars, and during the Falkland Islands War of 1982, and they can happen today. Even Compton-Hall, whose writings avouch a pro-nuclear submarine slant, once cautioned: “It is a great mistake to denigrate SSKs: they will continue to be a menace for the foreseeable future and the Soviet Navy knows it.” Those who deny these facts are in fact denying reality. As Aldous Huxley once said, “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
David vs. Goliath: Do Diesel Subs Feast on the US Fleet?
“Even in the open ocean NATO fleet exercises demonstrate, time and again, that a proportion of SSKS (diesel subs) will get through the screen.” - Commander Richard Compton-Hall, Royal Navy (Retired)
“U.S. Navy exercises with diesel submarines since the mid-1990s have often proved humbling.” – John Benedict, National Security Analysis Dept., Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, 2005. In 1952, the first major NATO naval exercise, Operation Mainbrace, was conducted in the North Atlantic. Involving 85 warships from the US and the UK, the exercise was the brainchild of none other than General Dwight Eisenhower, who wanted to demonstrate to the satisfaction of Norway and Denmark that NATO could indeed protect them in the event of a Soviet attack. Three US Navy carriers participated (the USS Midway, the USS Wasp, and USS Franklyn D. Roosevelt,) and the captain of the Roosevelt encouraged his crew to be vigilant in the face of a significant diesel submarine threat. Said Commander George W. Anderson, US Navy, “Any man who spots a periscope before it attacks gets special liberty to London.” Anderson’s crew soon got their chance to deal with a sneaky diesel submarine, HMS Taciturn, when the boat reportedly “got through the destroyer screen and promptly claimed hits” on all three US carriers, and other ships, with conventional torpedoes (curiously, although nuclear weapons were available at the time, simulation of their use was not included in the exercise scenario). The exercise umpires, however, all on the surface ships, did not concur, and they initially ruled that the submarine herself had been sunk. The matter as to “who got whom first” was supposedly subjected to a post-exercise review, but the definitive answer was, to my knowledge, never made public. Although in this case it was never proven that the submarine had been successful, at least not publicly, it is not at all far-fetched for a single diesel submarine to successfully attack three major surface ships. That very thing happened in World War I, as Richard Compton-Hall once described, when a “pathetic” German submarine, the U-9, took on and destroyed three British cruisers in one day. It is also not at all far-fetched that US Navy officers might overlook, elide, or fail to intromit successful attacks against the aircraft carriers that have formed the very basis for US naval power projection over the past 60 years.
There have been many other exercises in the years since, but only a handful of these have become public knowledge, usually in the pages of a few periodicals and base newspapers. Another such exercise that drew public attention was in 1973. The exercise was code-named Uptide, and according to Thomas B. Allen, during this exercise the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga (which has since been retired and the name now inherited by a cruiser) was sunk twice by enemy submarines and taken “out of action”. This defeat, however, remained officially unreported and strictly “off the record.” Later, in 1981, the NATO exercise Ocean Venture ended much the same way for the US Navy, with submarines destroying US Navy carriers, but this time, something very different and controversial happened -- an exercise analyst had the audacity to try to report the truth, and he paid for it later.
Before I get to the ugly details of the matter in hand, here is a little background information from the Exercise Senior Analyst, Lieutenant Commander Dean Knuth, US Navy: “In September 1981, the largest exercise in Atlantic Fleet history reached a peak after a two-carrier battle group completed a transit across the Atlantic. The ships entered the Norwegian Sea and their planes struck simulated enemy positions in waves of coordinated air attacks. The NATO exercise was Ocean Venture/Magic Sword North, and it was the first time that-the Commander in Chief Atlantic Fleet had amassed two American aircraft carriers, the British through-deck cruiser Invincible, and a large supporting force which included Royal Navy, Canadian Navy, and U.S. Coast Guard ships — all for the purpose of demonstrating the ability of the free world ‘to control the Norwegian Sea and contain Soviet sea power.’” During the exercise, a Canadian submarine slipped quietly through a US Navy aircraft carrier destroyer screen, and conducted a devastating simulated torpedo attack on the carrier. The submarine was never detected. A second carrier was also reportedly destroyed by another enemy submarine during this exercise.
Later, Knuth tried to use material from his official report in a magazine article, but when Navy officials read a draft of it, his work was promptly censored to minimize the potential fallout. Some might argue that the Navy had good reason to do this because it was ostensibly a matter of “national security,” but I find that claim a bit of reach because everyone knows that diesel submarines sank big aircraft carriers and other major combatant ships in World War II, as I mentioned at the beginning, and there have no great breakthroughs in surface ship survivability since then. The article was never published. Said Knuth in a subsequent newspaper interview, “The fact is our aircraft carriers were successfully attacked by torpedoes or missiles from submarines in our major exercises.”
In 2005, Captain Knuth, US Naval Reserve (Retired) told me that “We were interfered with by upper echelons of the Navy who wanted us to delete all references to sub attacks against carriers.” According to Knuth, Navy Secretary Lehman was trying to convince Congress to fund two new additional aircraft carriers and his case could have been seriously undermined if Knuth’s original manuscript came into the public eye. In Ocean Venture 81, “90 percent of the first strikes were by submarines against the carriers,” and this fact did not sit well with many naval aviators, or Lehman. In fact, Lehman resorted to Ad Hominem Circumstantial attacks and cheap shots against Knuth in the media, dismissing him as merely a “retired Lieutenant Commander” -- even though Knuth was still serving on active duty. As we all know, such tactics are commonly used when someone does not like hearing the truth, and thus they simply bypass the opposing argument altogether and just attack the person making it. At that point, Knuth said he got “fed up with the politics” of the Regular Navy, and transferred to the Naval Reserve, where he was eventually promoted all the way to Captain and became the Commodore of Naval Coastal Warfare Group Two (Atlantic). Had he stayed in the Regular Navy, Knuth doubts that he would ever have gotten another promotion, let alone two. He became Persona Non Grata in the regular Navy.
Although the Navy tried to hush the matter up, and ordered Knuth to destroy his original manuscript, he kept a copy of the censored version, and even in its expurgated form, it is interesting and titillating reading. In the censored version, titled “Lessons of Ocean Venture 81,” Knuth expatiates that the carriers Eisenhower and Forrestal “would never have made it to Norway in a wartime situation” because of the submarine threat. He continued: “The first major event of the exercise was strictly a World War II leftover not likely to take place in the future: carrier against carrier. The Forrestal's battle group steamed in total emission control and sneaked toward the Eisenhower group which was on track for the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gaps. This event was parochialism personified. In Battle of Midway style, the aviator admiral relied on long-range tactical air strikes against the Forrestal, with little or no fighter air support. The surface admiral dispersed all of his surface combatants away from his carrier and sent them quite effectively on an anti-surface mission against the Eisenhower. Unfortunately, in doing so, he unrealistically left his own carrier open for submarine and air attack.” He also noted “The most exciting part of the exercise was the transit of the Iceland-United Kingdom gap. In the previous five autumn NATO exercises, the carriers have always been attacked going through the gaps.” It is often said that in war the first casualty is truth, but in this case I would say the first naval casualty in a general war with the Soviet Union would have been the lie that US Navy aircraft carriers are invulnerable. Fallows made the same argument in 1981, saying those big ships will be the first to go down when things get nasty.
The USS Eisenhower was successfully attacked by a surface ship, said Knuth, but official reports by the commanders on scene seem to have overlooked this success: “An Orange missile ship sneaked to within weapon-firing range during the night and maintained station on the Eisenhower. At sunrise, the ship simulated emptying her missile load into "Ike" without herself being engaged until after signaling that she was engaging the carrier. The surprise attack was well described in traffic among warfare commanders on the satellite circuit, but when the carrier striking force summary report was received by the fleet commander, it stated that the Orange ship had been tracked and that a Blue ship, stationed between the carrier and the Orange ships, had been watching his actions. The report described a far different action than the confusion that had existed at the time of the engagement.” There was also an apparent “friendly fire” incident in which “a guided missile destroyer in Ocean Venture mistakenly harpooned the Eisenhower, mistaking a carrier for an Orange surface combatant. The composite warfare commander was so furious that he threatened to excommunicate the ship from the battle group.”
Knuth was remarkably sedulous in offering thorough criticism of US Navy battle group tactics, organization, intra-navy parochialism (aviators versus surface warfare and submarine rivalries) but spoke very highly of the British contingent: “The British force employment, asset management, commands and action reports were superlative and a model for our battle group to emulate.” He also conceded that British officers and men “are better trained than our best and their battle group commanders and staffs are highly proficient in tactics. My professional note in the December 1981 Naval Institute Proceedings explains in depth why this is the case.” Finally, Knuth admonished that “Our battle groups continually prostrate themselves before the hard-to-find enemy because of our perception of our own invulnerability… The enemy can locate battle groups easily, and with a large fleet of submarines, set up for a pre-planned attack. Our policy is normally to head straight for danger and not shoot until shot at first. When the Orange force makes a preemptive attack, it is usually of such a magnitude that the battle group is overwhelmed and lost.”
Despite the Navy’s censorship of the Ocean Venture ’81 article, and the fact that the redacted version was never published, the story became public knowledge in Canada. An anonymous Canadian submariner leaked the story to a Halifax newspaper, and indicated that this successful Canadian attack on an American carrier was by no means an isolated incident. It was a simple ambush in the North Atlantic, and it worked perfectly. Indeed, the article concluded that the Americans never knew what hit them, that they were embarrassed by this failure, and that they wanted to bury the matter then and there. The Canadian submarine did not fire the customary green flare to indicate a hit, for reasons unknown to anyone except for the skipper of the submarine, but instead simply took periscope photos of the carrier to prove its point. In doing so, the diesel submarine ambushed a surface ship in the same way that Germany’s U-boats had done it decades before. This news and Knuth’s original uncensored report, which ended up in the hands of Senator Gary Hart, caused quite a stir in Congress, and the US Navy had a lot of explaining to do. Why had not one but two American carriers been sunk, and why were the submarines responsible not detected? Why indeed had a small, 1960s-vintage diesel submarine of the under-funded and multi-dimensionally “bantam” Canadian Navy been able to defeat one of America’s most powerful and expensive warships, and with such apparent ease?
Conjointly, why were the Canadians able to do essentially the same thing to the US Navy in subsequent exercises in the spring of 1983? The Winnipeg Free Press reported that the submarine HMCS Okanagan “snuck to within a kilometer of the USS John F Kennedy, went through preparations to fire a salvo of torpedoes and slipped away unnoticed by the carrier or the destroyers…” The submarine got close enough “to score a lethal hit, Defence Minister Jean Jacques Blais said…” Blais went on to say, “This is a matter of some pride for submariners and shows the strength of our underwater boats at a time when satellite detection can identify surface ships more readily.”
There are several possible explanations. Firstly, the Canadian submariners have a long-standing reputation for being well trained and professional. Supporting this argument is Compton-Hall, one of the world’s leading authorities on submarines, who evaluated the Canadian submariners as “first class, aggressive and innovative.” Secondly, the Oberon-class submarines used by the Canadian, Australian, British, and other navies, built in the UK, but based on a German design from World War II, were probably the quietest in the world at that time. Of course, adverse acoustical conditions produced by temperature variations (thermal layers) and other factors may temporarily cloak even the noisiest submarines, but the nearly silent Oberon-class diesel boats running on batteries were still harder to find in such conditions than many nuclear boats. And in any case, Knuth described the acoustical conditions as being “excellent” for detecting submarines, so the answer probably lies elsewhere. A third possible reason is perhaps that the powerhouse US Navy just is not very good at hunting submarines, especially the ultra-quiet diesel boats available today. It is the last explanation that intrigues me, and it is the one on which I shall focus much of this article.
While Canadian submarines have routinely taken on American carriers, other small navies have enjoyed similar victories. The Royal Netherlands Navy, with its small force of extremely quiet diesel submarines, has made the US Navy eat the proverbial slice of humble pie on more than one occasion. In 1989, naval analyst Norman Polmar wrote in Naval Forces that during NATO’s exercise Northern Star, “…the Dutch submarine “Zwaardvis” was the only orange (enemy) submarine to successfully stalk and sink a blue (allied) aircraft carrier…” The carrier in question might have been the USS America, as it was a participant in this exercise. Ten years later there were reports that the Dutch submarine Walrus had been even more successful in the exercise JTFEX/TMDI99. “During this exercise the Walrus penetrates the US screen and ‘sinks’ many ships, including the U.S. aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt CVN-71. The submarine launches two attacks and manages to sneak away. To celebrate the sinking the crew designed a special T-shirt.” Fittingly, the T-shirt depicted the USS Theodore Roosevelt impaled on the tusks of a walrus. It was also reported that the Walrus sank many of the Roosevelt’s escorts, including the nuclear submarine USS Boise, a cruiser, several destroyers and frigates, plus the command ship USS Mount Whitney. The Walrus herself survived the exercise with no damage. Talented and wily enemies, of course, usually do not play by the rules, and they do not stick to a script.
Truthfully, it should come as no great eye-opener that Dutch submarines would do well against the US Navy. The Dutch submarine service has an enviable reputation, and has been praised by people such as the Late Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood, Jr., US Navy, who was Commander, Submarines Pacific during World War II. Lockwood said in 1945 that Dutch submarines in the Pacific were “thoroughly effective. They handled their boats with great skill and do not need to take off their hats to anyone…” The admiral also mentioned his “high regard for their ruggedness and fighting skills.” Nowadays, many navies, including the US Navy, send their submarine officers to the Netherlands to undergo the legendary Netherlands Submarine Command Course. In November 2002, the Royal Australian Navy’s official newspaper described the Dutch course for prospective diesel submarine commanders as arguably “the best submarine training in the world.” US Navy students who have taken the course have also found it extremely challenging (in 2002, naval officers from the US, Australia, Canada, Israel and the Netherlands took the course, but unfortunately, the American officer failed due to a safety violation. The US Navy officer was the only one to fail that year, but in fairness, he was a nuclear submariner, naturally, and ergo was much less familiar with the workings of a diesel submarine and its battery operations.)
Reassuringly, Lieutenant Commander Todd Cloutier, US Navy, did graduate from the Dutch course in 2003, and he too elucidated the program’s “legendary reputation” and described it as “perhaps some of some of the toughest training a submariner can get.” Although this course is for experienced officers who wish to command a diesel submarine, he was also very impressed by the overall training received by Dutch junior officers. “A Dutch Junior Officer (JO) with three years at sea is quite proficient with the periscope. During my familiarization ride on Bruinvis, I saw a non-qualified JO take the conn and conduct a task-group penetration against a multinational task force. It wasn’t perfect, but quite impressive for a JO with less than two years on board.” This suggests that a US Navy officer of comparable rank would have been less capable.
The preceding section concerned aircraft carriers and surface ships only, but the US Navy has long maintained that its nuclear submarines are clearly and unambiguously superior to any and all diesel submarines. This dogma has been perpetuated for decades, said Rear Admiral C. Mendenhall, US Navy (Retired) in 1995, because the nuclear submarine force leadership “has been brainwashed by the Rickover nuclear-only philosophy.” Nuclear submarines are so superior, allegedly, that some US submariners have long said that they need not even worry about conventional submarines. In a 1998 report by Ivan Eland, he cited an article in which “One U.S. submarine commander reported that he would not even bother to destroy a diesel because he could detect the boat before it detected him; he said that he would simply avoid it.” Although this oblivious and antinomian thinking has finally begun to change, there is still much that needs to be done. What follows is intended to challenge that old establishment nonsense, and hopefully in a small way, contribute to its reform.
Like the Canadians and Dutch, the penumbral Australian submarine force has also scored many goals against US Navy carriers, and nuclear submarines as well. On September 24 2003, the Australian newspaper The Age reported that Australia’s Collins-class diesel submarines had taught the Americans a few lessons during multinational exercises. By the end of the exercises, Australian submarines had destroyed two US Navy nuclear attack submarines and an aircraft carrier. For the Australians, all three ships were easy targets. According to the article: “‘The Americans were wide-eyed,’ Commodore Deeks (Commander of the RAN Submarine Group) said. ‘They realized that another navy knows how to operate submarines… They went away very impressed.’” In another statement attributed to Deeks, it was expostulated that: "We surprise them and they learn a lot about different ways of operating submarines... The Americans pour billions into their subs but we are better at practical applications."
However, officially, the US Navy, a true military opsimath, soon went into damage control mode and oppugned that the Australians could beat an American nuclear boat in a fair fight. Said The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: “The United States is justly proud of its military prowess, but apparently a little defensive when anyone else shows a bit of talent. Defense Week's ‘Daily Update’ on October 1, 2003, reported that the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet was trying to downplay the fact that an Australian diesel-electric submarine had ‘sunk’ an American submarine during recent training exercises, and said the Australians were making too much of the simulated hit. Adm. Walter Doran said that the outcome ‘certainly does not mean that the Collins-class submarine in a one-on-one situation is going to defeat our Los Angeles-class or our nuclear submarines.’" But even if the American submarine was “supposed” to be sunk, or was using a noise augmenter to simulate a Soviet sub, or purposefully running with “degraded” Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) systems, (and there is no available evidence to support any of these excuses) then why did an experienced Australian submariner like Commodore Deeks, an officer in one of the most professional navies in the world, make such unsubstantiated, out-of-context, and unfair statements to the media? As Compton-Hall said, the Australian submarine service is “outstandingly efficient,” and has an excellent reputation. Because, I would wager, like the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, the Australians had actually caught the Americans off guard and unawares. As we will see later, Captain Richard Marcinko, US Navy, strayed from the rules during exercises in the 1980s, and he achieved incredible results. War, as they say, is not fair, and anyone familiar with polemology knows that pre-emptive or surprise attacks have often proven devastatingly effective, as the Israelis demonstrated in 1967.
In October 2002, the Australians also reported that their diesel submarine HMAS Sheehan had successfully “hunted down and killed” the nuclear submarine USS Olympia during exercises near Hawaii. The commander of the Sheehan observed that the larger American nuclear boat’s greater speed and accelerability were no advantage because “It just means you make more noise when you go faster.” In the previous year, during Operation Tandem Thrust, analyst Derek Woolner set forth that HMAS Waller sank “two American amphibious assault ships in waters of between 70-80 metres depth, barely more than the length of the submarine itself. The Collins-class was described by Vice-Admiral James Metzger, Commander, U.S. Seventh Fleet as 'a very capable and quiet submarine…” Although the Waller was herself sunk during the exercise, the loss of a single diesel submarine, in exchange for two massive amphibious assault ships, is quite a good bargain, and very cost effective.
Finally, during RIMPAC 2000 it was disclosed that HMAS Waller had sunk two American nuclear submarines and gotten dangerously close to the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. Even more ominous, asserted researcher Maryanne Kelton, is that: “Even though the exercises were planned and the US group knew that Waller was in the designated target area, they were still unable to locate it. New Minister for Defence, Robert Hill, recorded later that the ‘Americans are finding them exceptional boats…in exercises with the Americans they astound the Americans in terms of their capability, their speed, their agility, their loitering capacity, they can do all sorts of things that the American submarines can’t do as well.’” In 2003, Commander Peter Miller, US Navy, spoke about his experiences with the Australian diesel submarines, and he paid the greatest (politically correct) compliment that a nuclear submariner can make. He said that the Australian diesel submarine was “on a par” with US nuclear submarines, and that “The Collins are great submarines.”
The Collins-class submarines were designed in Sweden, and naturally, the Swedes themselves have been able to raise some eyebrows in the US Navy. In a 2004 presentation in Stockholm, Vice Admiral Kirkland H. Donald, US Navy, affirmed that “Today, Sweden manufactures some of the best built and equipped submarines and surface ships in the world. The GOTLAND class is not only quiet, but has a most impressive combat system. If I remember correctly, in the fall of 2000, there was a multi-lateral, blue-water ASW exercise where CDR. Gumar Wieslander and his crew in HSwMS HALLAND demonstrated remarkable prowess exercising against one of our finest ships USS ANNAPOLIS. That exercise, along with many others, reinforced the difficulties in prosecuting a well built, well maintained diesel submarine, with a well trained crew.” He did not say that the Swedish boat “sank” the Annapolis, but the subtle implication might be there if one reads carefully between the lines.
The Japanese have also proven to be formidable in their modern diesel submarines. Nuclear submariner Dr. Andy Karam noted in 2005 that: “During exercises with Japanese diesel submarines (I believe it was during the 1988 Team Spirit exercises), Plunger had some problems that led to our being beaten several times. We eventually learned how to fight against diesel boats, but by then, we probably would have been sunk. Part of the problem was the inherent quietness of diesel boats that made them very hard to detect on sonar. In addition, the Japanese crews were very disciplined - I got the impression that, if told to go to their bunks and stay there without moving, the crew would have done so indefinitely, without complaint and without breaking discipline.” The Japanese tradition of strict naval discipline goes back a long way. In the 1920s, “Foreign observers noted that even when Japanese ships were in dock, sailors not on duty were kept constantly busy with calisthenics. ‘We never dared to question orders, to doubt authority, to do anything but carry out all the demands of our superiors,’ recalled one former seaman.”
The Chileans deserve to be on the list too, as their diesel submarines have successfully attacked US Navy ships during exercises. In 2001, the unusually candid skipper of the nuclear submarine USS Montpelier (Commander Ron LaSilva, US Navy) recounted that a Chilean diesel submarine "Shot him twice during successive exercise runs.” As a result, LaSilva learned that “bigger and nuclear is not always better.” Commander LaSilva should be commended for his courage, for as we shall see later on, this kind of honesty is usually not the best policy for US Navy officers.
Interestingly, that same year, a Pakistani submarine also tried to approach an American carrier operating in the Arabian Sea. So many other minor naval powers have done it, as we have seen here, so why shouldn’t the Pakistanis take a crack at it? Fortunately, though, this time one of the carrier escorts, a Canadian frigate, detected the sub and escorted it from the area. This is a good thing of course, but it still raises a question for many American civilians; namely, what exactly was a Canadian ship doing in a US Navy Carrier Battle Group (CBG)? Surely, the world’s largest navy can fight its own battles, yes? Well, for years, Canadian ships have been integrated with US Navy CBGs, but the rationale for this arrangement is not purely political, as some might automatically suppose, nor is it tokenism. It has much more to do with the pronounced shortage of US surface combatant ships in the post-Cold War era (thanks, in no small way, to the US Navy’s dogmatic obsession with big-ticket supercarriers and huge nuclear submarines). This would tend to explain why, contrary to popular opinion stateside, the US Navy, at least numerically, did not play the truly dominant naval role in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm. Morin and Gimblett stated “These other (non-USN) naval forces have often been overlooked or dismissed as lesser participants because, when taken individually and then compared with the American naval deployment to the region, they looked insignificant. Even the British and French task groups were small. Taken collectively, however, the other forces totaled nearly fifty ships, approximating the American effort…” Indeed, “out of the total vessels dedicated to sanction enforcement, the Americans accounted for only one-third (15 out of 45), and even then the cruisers and destroyers were charged primarily with providing defence against air attack, effectively reducing their availability for other tasking.” They concluded “The relative balance of forces at sea between the USN and their allies meant that the Americans did not enjoy the same dominant position on the seas as they did on land…” Additionally, as we will see later, the fact is that Canadian ships are more capable in certain areas than are US ships.
Retuning to our friends from Chile, in 1998, U.S. News and World Report noted “In two recent exercises with Latin American navies, a Chilean sub managed to evade its U.S. counterparts and ‘sink’ a U.S. ship.” To be more specific, during RIMPAC 1996, the Chilean submarine Simpson was responsible for sinking the carrier USS Independence (this event was chronicled in the 1997 Discovery Channel TV documentary “Fleet Command.”) In a 1998 article, Robert Holzer, the Outreach Director at the Office of Force Transformation, provided more detail: “a Chilean diesel sub penetrated the perimeter of a U.S. Navy battle group and moved among its ships for several days. U.S. forces knew the sub, participating in an exercise with the Navy, would operate in an attack mode. Yet the Pacific Fleet could not find it. The Chilean sub demonstrated that it could have targeted and fired on U.S. Navy ships at any time. In exercises over several years, the U.S. Navy’s most advanced antisubmarine warfare (ASW) ships have been unable to detect the South African Navy’s Daphne (-class diesel-electric) subs, which were built 30 years ago.” To wit, in a 1995 articled cited by Benedict, “Two U.S. Navy ships reportedly exercising against a South African Daphne-class submarine were unable to detect it even at short ranges; a U.S. observer on the submarine commented to its crewmembers, ‘There is a $1B warship above you that doesn’t have a clue where you are.’”
In short, the US Navy would have its hands full if it had to fight diesel submarines. U.S. News and World Report also quoted Rear Admiral W. J. Holland, US Navy (Retired) who maintained if the US Navy had to deal with a hostile diesel submarine today, “It would take a month to handle that problem, including two weeks of learning.” Strangely though, Admiral Holland remains completely opposed to any plan that would involve the US Navy acquiring its own diesel submarines! In any event, the moral of this naval story is that the American sea service really needs “a healthy dose of humility and caution in future operations.”
Not surprisingly, NATO and allied diesel submariners (and probably some others who are not so friendly) are extremely confident in their ability to sink American carriers. In his 1984 book The Threat: Inside the Soviet Military Machine, Andrew Cockburn wryly noted that European submariners on NATO exercises were far more concerned about colliding with noisy American nuclear submarines (running fast, and therefore, blind) than about being attacked by American ships. Despite the vast amount of propaganda put out by the US Navy, well-run diesel submarines running on batteries are quite capable of outfoxing nuclear submarines. As former Royal Navy submarine officer Ashley Bennington said in his 1999 response to an article on the Virginia-class submarines: “…You mention that the new Virginia class of nuclear submarines will easily detect diesel submarines, implying that diesels are noisy. As a general rule, however, diesel submarines, which use an electric motor that runs on batteries, are quieter than nuclear-powered subs, which constantly run coolant pumps.” One US nuclear submariner of my acquaintance had a slightly different take on this: “More specifically, nuke boats have the 60-cycle hum from an AC electrical system, the steam noise, main coolant pumps, and the turbines and reduction gears. Even when sound-mounted, these make noise a diesel boat lacks…” However, he disagreed with Bennington’s statement that coolant pumps must be kept running at all times. “The Ohio-class boats can run in natural circulation at low power; the LA class can do so only for emergency cooling only.” Former nuclear submarine officer Michael DiMercurio noted that both the Seawolf class and Ohio class boats can run in natural circulation, “below 35 percent power,” which certainly reduces tonal output and thus, makes the submarines more difficult to detect.
This applies only to low speeds, and when a nuclear submarine runs at higher speeds, as many probably would in order to stop a Chinese surprise invasion of Taiwan, for example, those noisy coolant pumps would need to run, and therein lies the problem. DiMercurio said that when a nuclear submarine runs at high speed, those coolant pumps are as “loud as freight trains,” which not only makes them much easier to detect and attack, it also makes it much more difficult for the speedy nuclear boat herself to hear possible adversaries, such as diesel submarines waiting to ambush. Compton-Hall once remarked that a nuclear submarine running at high speed is “deaf, dumb and blind,” and thus quite vulnerable. The nuclear submarine’s high speed advantage is indeed a double-edged sword, for it can cut both ways if not used with great discretion.
Bennington’s sentiments were echoed in late 2004 by Captain Viktor Tokya of the German Navy. Toyka said that conventional submarines, especially those with Air Independent Propulsion (AIP), are more difficult to detect than nuclear boats. Captain Li Chao-peng of the Taiwanese Navy also concurred that diesel submarines are more cost-effective and are still quieter than any nuclear submarines. His navy has Dutch Zwaardvis-class diesel submarines and in 2002 he told the Taipei Times: “The only advantage that a nuclear submarine has over a conventionally-powered one is its endurance under the sea… But a diesel-powered sub like ours is much quieter than a nuclear one." He added that the Taiwanese diesel subs can definitely “compete” with nuclear boats. To be fair, though, Captain John L. Byron, US Navy (Retired), who served in both diesel and nuclear submarines, states that right now, the main advantage a diesel boat has is her capt
![[037]](./images/smilies/037.gif)
Será que se fosse uma ação real teríamos um sub americano no fundo do Atlântico???
Modelo Naval do futuro submarino brasileiro com propulsão nuclear.
