This is a discussion on P-8A Poseidon and the Future of ASW within the Navy & Maritime forum, part of the Global Defense & Military category; Hey this is my first post on the forum here so please forgive me if I'm not that familiar with ...
Hey this is my first post on the forum here so please forgive me if I'm not that familiar with all the norms, I will try to get better. An area of concern for me seems to be the degradation of USN ASW capabilities in the years since the Cold War ended. This seems to be evidenced by the recent retirement of the S-3B without replacement and the fact that a French SSN and leased Swedish diesel-electric bout managed to "sink" US CVNs in exercises. The fact that a Chinese SSN managed to surface within several thousand yards of a strike group some years back without being decected before surfacing is also reason for alarm especially considering the increased emphasis the US is putting of confronting China.
One of the biggest problems I see, however, is that the P-8A Poseidon, the future replacement for the P-3 Orion will not be equiped with a magnetic annomely detector (MAD) in order to save weight and will instead be equipped with a new system designed to detect fumes from diesel-electric subs (doesn't seem like that could detect SSNs or even diesel boats when running on batteries). Granted my knowledge of these systems is limited but I would like to hear what someone who is more informed on the issue has to say. Will the fume detector and sonabouies be sufficient to conduct ASW?
Thank you for your input.
Sorry i meant to write P-8A not A-8A (typo)
Mod edit: Merged posts and title correction
-Preceptor
Last edited by Preceptor; November 11th, 2011 at 10:45 PM.
Reason: Mod edit: Correction of thread title
Times have changed and many things have been reinvented smaller and better. Just because I don't see an old television antennae on your roof does not mean you don't have television. You could be wired with cable or have a satellite dish. Those of us who have new flat screen high definition televisions don't have a bloop tube either, many of us choosing the new LED LCDs...
The P-3 Orions were basically updated 1950s technology.... The sonar buoys have always been the key to finding submarines, not the very short range MAD... The MAD was like using a toy magnet to find a needle in a haystack...
Instead of losing ASW capabilities, the Poseidons increase ASW capabilities significantly....
One also has to factor in the effectiveness of the sub's degaussing tech.. perhaps MAD may still serve a purpose or maybe it isn't as effective as it used to be?
Can someone please confirm the range of the Poseidon aircraft? I've been reading it's 1200nm compared to 4800nm of the Orion's, seems like a massive reduction. Am I missing something?
Can someone please confirm the range of the Poseidon aircraft? I've been reading it's 1200nm compared to 4800nm of the Orion's, seems like a massive reduction. Am I missing something?
From Wiki: Poseidon Range: 1,200 nmi (2,222 km) 4 hours on station
From Wiki: Orion Range: 4,830 nmi ferry (8,944 km)
There is a big difference between ferry range and operational range with 4 hours on station.... I am certain the Orion's operational range with 4 hours on station isn't its ferry range...
The Boeing 737-700 family from Wiki have a range fully loaded: 3,050–5,510 nmi (5,650–10,200 km; 3,510–6,340 mi). The ER versions have much more range than the non ER versions. Of course the Poseidon isn't a ER version of the aircraft family...
So a fully loaded normal 737 probably has a ferry range of 3,050 nautical miles, if not more as a Poseidon isn't as heavy as a full load of paying passengers... Airlines are using Boeing 737s to fly from the west coast of the USA to the east coast in the vicinity of 3,000 miles fully loaded with passengers...
The US Navy website claims the Orion has a maximum mission radius: 2380 nautical miles, uncertain for how long on station... Probably not much considering the Orion's ferry range...
The P-8A can fly out 1200nm and patrol 4 hours and then fly back to base. The P-3's ferry range (one way) is 4800nm. The P-3 can fly for 12 hours. It's not clear exactly what the endurance of the P-8A will be but it's not going to be significantly less. The P-8A will often offer more time on station given it's cruise speed is about 50% better than the P-3.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rand0m
Can someone please confirm the range of the Poseidon aircraft? I've been reading it's 1200nm compared to 4800nm of the Orion's, seems like a massive reduction. Am I missing something?
One also has to factor in the effectiveness of the sub's degaussing tech.. perhaps MAD may still serve a purpose or maybe it isn't as effective as it used to be?
degaussing isn't going to do much to help....
bad assumption on the capability of MAD based tech...
________________ A corollary of Finagle's Law, similar to Occam's Razor, says:
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"
Sonar buoys/systems are primary search sensors amongst other things. MAD is an attack locating sensor therefor the two should not be compared on an either or basis.
I'm sure that technology has improved and more sophisticated sensors have been found since my time. Mad was always quite a crude sensor
I really wonder about future of ASW, or in fact the whole naval warfare,
During Cold War, P-3s were positioned all around the Northen Atlantic as well as Northern Pacific where a convoy war similar to 2nd World War was expected between NATO and Warsaw Pact,
Currently I can see Russian submarines be a target for P-8 patrols as well as Chinese and North Korean subs, but besides now I assume they would be in limited regions.
Will we see P-8s fly-off patrols from Canada, Iceland, Norway, UK, Azores, Japan, Phillipines and other foreign bases ( I try to list P-3 locations during cold-war from my memory)
or what would be their new arena for anti-sub patrols?
I find it interesting that someone mentioned the P-8 will be equipped with a device for detecting diesel fumes from a submarine. Ironically, the P-2 Neptune was equipped with a similar device called a "Sniffer". My understanding is that it wasn't very reliable or accurate, however, much of the problems with MAD was the training of the operators. Without proper training the ASQ-81 for example had almost a 65% false contact rate.
When I was in graduate school (early 1990s) one of my classmates was working on a neutron trail detector. This may be what is really be installed on the P-8.
