The Furture of Naval Warfare... Supercavitation

[Peacemaker]

A new age is dawning on us.The age of superfast underwater warfare more akin to dogfights in the sky. http://www.deepangel.com/html/supercavitation.html Dont be fooled because this is stated by a game web site. The fact is that super cavitation is very real, and its very do able. The russains have working Supercav torpedos IN SERVICE. A small explination.

Cavitation is when an object moving in water moves so fast that it vaporises the water around it. That means bubbles. The bubbles arnt stable at all and implode, creating lots of noise. Subs dont like cavitation.

Supercavitation on the other hand uses the same principle. Get the sub moving through the water fastenough (180 kmh, 110mph, 100kts) and with a proper nose, the ship will supercavitate. A bubble will envelop the entire ship. Now traveling through air which produces nearly 1000 times less drag, the ships will "fly" underwater.

The russains have already done this with a torpedo called shkval. This IS a dawn of a new era of submarine warfare. Control of the seas will be in the hands of whoever takes the greatest advantage of this technology. The US Navy IS obsolete.

Discuss.

[EarlyDawn]

That's crazy. Reminds me of the submarines in X-Com 2... would fly until the UFO submerged, then go under.

Nice link.

[Ir0nRaven]

Wow that's really interesting. I've never heard of that concept, but I've heard of a similar one for planes. The plane would expell a lot of hydrogen, which like somehow causes all the air to move away from the plane, thereby causing it to be in a vaccum. I don't remember how it worked, but it did. Anyway, this would cause the plane to be able to fly infinitly fast, since a vaccum has no resistance at all.

Yeah. But that's really interesting. Now I want to be in the navy :) J/k

I guess it really opens up the possiblity for actual underwater fighters, and the such. Just like on... dangit what was that show? Where they had the big huge submarine? Bahh i forgot what it was called.

[Peacemaker]

Seaquest DSV? That show was good it was like underwater startrek

[Firefly]

Almost everything the Russians build, whether it's a good idea or not, whether it works or not, is a piece of crap. If it doesn't fall apart in mid-function, or it doesn't explode on start-up, if it doesn't kill seventy people around it, then it will do the complete opposite of what it's supposed to do.

"Rumor has it" that a Chinese naval officer was on the Kursk to view the test firing of this so-called supercavitating torpedo. Rumor has it that this super-cavitating torpedo was the only functional, quality one in existence, and its explosion was the cause of the Kursk going down like a cheap whore in a crowd of horny oil barons.

When you compound Russia's crap-tastic production line with the fact that they're now selling planes and tanks to the civilian populace for what the military considers rock-bottom rates, and then you add in the equation that their soldiers now have to wrap rags around their feet before they put their boots on because they can't afford socks... when you also factor in they are selling trips to the moon to idiot dillholes like the guy from N'Suck... I'm sure you can see for yourself that *NO* the US Navy is not obsolete because the Russians don't have the capability to even consider making more or upkeeping what they may or may not have.

[simba]

ok
I watched discovery where they say trains could reach 4500 mph....

[simba]

they make games too

[Lexington_Steele]

Way interesting. That is pretty sweet.

[TekDragon]

If the Russian military ever does anything other than suck, i'll be impressed.

[Lexington_Steele]

If the Russian military ever does anything other than suck, i'll be impressed.
May I direct your attention to the Sukhoi aircraft.

[Sputty]

Hmmm, if it is majorly adopted then it's still a good 20+ years from entering full service. Navies on a whole are becoming less useful, and are more or less become partrol vessels or carriers.

[TheAngelOfWar]

a torpedo and a submarine are two very different things. assuming the technology used in this torpedo works as stated, it still has to be modified for the size of a submarine, and tested to make sure its safe to use on a vehicle carrying people. once that research is done, there is production. trust me, submarine production is a SLOOOW process. our navy is far from obsolete by these standards.

[xuur]

facinating article. thanks.

sort of akin to subspace theory in many respects. creating a self generated/self contained environment of less drag/resistance than the surrounding actual environment would normally allow.

brilliant. simply brilliant.

Imagine. Underwater commercial travel being as fast or faster than commercial air travel....or at least comparable. safer as well I would imagine. airplane stops....gravity takes over. crash. no realistic hope for survival.

cavitation travel. craft stops...emergency buoyancy deployed or natural buoyancy takes over....bloop. right to the surface. await rescue.

oh, the possibilities.

gracias. I'll have to look into this a bit.

[ZionsFire]

But you know...what if you hit a rock..accidentaly?

[Peacemaker]

On the kursk sinking. That was how long ago? 2000s? 1990s? The Supercav torp was developed and produced during 1977. A period of time in which Russia was a prominant military force on this planet. The weapon exists. They have sold it to other countrys (FRANCE FOR RUNNING AWAY REALLY FAST) and they have developed a second generation modle. This new one can go 60 miles and has some guidence features. Ur views on the Russain Millitary machine are biased. It can still hand some ass out on a silver plater. You my friends have been owned. Also about the kursk. Look into the sinking. It was a faulty torpedo design. Something in the fuel causes the inside of the case of the torpedo to become presurised until the point that it explodes (this is if the fuel touches metal). This was all done on discovery chan.

Also for those of you who think that the US Navy isnt obsolete. By ship standards its not. But what if one of those things COULD track like the second generation model suposidly can and what if it could carry a nuclear payload. The answer to that is no more CAG. It would be simple for a russain sub to take out an american task force. The fact is that the Russain military is low on funds but that does not mean they are not a threat. Do some research b4 you shoot down Ideas.

Oh yea about making ships able to supercav. It will take a long time but the fact is it wouldnt be very hard.

I like the idea about undersea travel xuur.

[Infernus]

hmmm... Russia dont have really good track record... a survey that the russian military took had more then half of their nuclear weapons falling back down onto russian launch silos. They sell low quality tanks to armies that dont know how to use them for about 8x what it costs to build one, they're nuclear containment on subs and power plants blows (even after the 1986 incident outside of the Ukrainian town of Chernobyl, which might I add will come back to haunt Europe, seeing as Russia does not wish to put more money towards a new containment shell. A collapse of the quickly corroding current shell around reactor 4 will result in another release of the ever present radioactive cloud formed by the still warm reactor.), and they refuse to upgrade an obsolete ground force increasing their reliance on nuclear weapons. When it comes to under water weapons they are royally screwed; they still haven't been able to fix a glitch in their torpedo tracking system which caused the projectiles to target their launch sub.

They are killing us all with their post-socialist feeble attempt at democracy (the russian socialist party is most prominant in the government), and are only good for cheap whores and good vodka...

[Peacemaker]

Where did u get info that the projectiles target their own ships? I think someone missunderstood the Hunt for Red October.

[Infernus]

hmmm.. nm appearently that was the problem that they did fix, but still the fact remains...

[Ait'al]

thats awesome. But then they should modify it to have pop out wings to transfer to air travel and landing. We could have a new form of all purpose travel. And if it works underwater at that speed you could also conveivably have space travel. 8) They can always make better heat things for rentry or just make a material(metal) that can endlessly take reentry and dipping into the ocean for cool down before flying ot your land home or just down to your underwater home. :brow: Not that you cant live in space and be on vacation.

[Peacemaker]

.... u do know what heating something up and then super quickly cooling it off would do right?


*sigh* no one has taken chem at PSU high.

[Infernus]

nope sorry... what happens tho... does it go b00m?! I'm only interested in things that go b00m!

[TekDragon]

Infernus, the molecules would go from a hyper-active state to a still state too quickly for it to remain stable. The gaps between molecules would be so high that the object would shatter.

[Infernus]

so not a real b00m but more of a cr4ck...

[Ait'al]

In normal metals, but theyve been designing metals for decades that are molecularly shaped to take it and actually act normally in hte situation. Theyed just have to design a better metal for it. One example i think is the X-33 heat sheild. It might jsut be titanium or something though. (if its not the x-33 i mean the new shuttle)

New scifi metals for new scifi tech! 8)

And you can always have heat censors and cool off a certain amount in the air and then cool in the water at safe tempuratures, whatever that is, based on the technology at the time.

[Ir0nRaven]

I think that this should not so much be an argument of the power of russia, but more of what this technology could mean. Someone comented that it could be safer... however, if the cavitating bubble were to fail, the craft would slam into a wall of water at 600ish mph. That would instantly destroy it. So, I don't think that it's really much safer.

Also, consider this. What if it could go super sonic? Right now, the major dissadvantage to this tech is that it's VERY loud. But, imagine a torpedo comming at you at supersonic speeds. You would have *NO* way of detecting it, because our only form of underwater 'radar' is sonar, which relies on sound. A supersonic torpedo's sound would not reach the ship until after the torpedo had... thereby making it even more stealthier than today's subs. Scary, huh?

[Mr1337Duck]

Peacemaker, are you Russian? If so, you clearly have the wrong idea on how good your military is. Shit, plenty of your bases don't even have power because it costs so much, your nuke places are guarded by a squad of rent-a-cops. You leave your bio-weapons in some fricken fridge somewhere with NO guards, face it, you're poor.

You hear about that oil company that got shut down the other day? Think it was for fraud? Look deeper, the owner has a whole bunch of money, he is a capitalist conservative. He poses a threat to the Russian Commie/Socialist party. They shut him down for that.

[AztecWarrior]

Russia is not as strong as it looks. It is also not as weak as it looks.

[Peacemaker]

Aztec got it perfect. I am not russain. Do some fucking research. Russia is still a major power in this world. No wheres near the power of the US but still they pose a threat. And in a sneaky backstabish way they COULD do some MAJOR damage.

Back to the discussion. If a sub breaks the soundbarrier underwater the sonic boom compression wave would be strong enough to crush bones. No more Biologics :(

[ZionsFire]

Soooo what if you hit a rock at that speed?

[Peacemaker]

In infernus1080's terms b00m

[AztecWarrior]

Aztec got it perfect. I am not russain. Do some fucking research. Russia is still a major power in this world. No wheres near the power of the US but still they pose a threat. And in a sneaky backstabish way they COULD do some MAJOR damage.

Back to the discussion. If a sub breaks the soundbarrier underwater the sonic boom compression wave would be strong enough to crush bones. No more Biologics :(

Otto von Bismarck. Not me.

[Infernus]

hmm... I do not under estimate the Motherland, jsut saying that they haven't the most perfect record. And while this may be a threat it is most likely not... whats the word... financially feasable for the Russian Military to build many of these skval torpedoes. I do however agree that many parts of our navy, no naval warfare altoghter are obsolete, Navy's now are more for launching missles and airplanes when a silo or airfield is not available then they are for fighting battles. While they can still fight, the use of submarine fleets, ats bombing runs, and reduced manuverability limits them. The game Ace Combat: Shattered Skys, while still a game against AI enemies does prove the usefulness of ace pilots against larger cruisers, many times it takes a fighter to take down fighter/bomber do to the limited range on ship mounted cannons and the ability to fly in to attack below deck level.

[Ait'al]

Ir0nRaven:
I think that this should not so much be an argument of the power of russia, but more of what this technology could mean. Someone comented that it could be safer... however, if the cavitating bubble were to fail, the craft would slam into a wall of water at 600ish mph. That would instantly destroy it. So, I don't think that it's really much safer.

Also, consider this. What if it could go super sonic? Right now, the major dissadvantage to this tech is that it's VERY loud. But, imagine a torpedo comming at you at supersonic speeds. You would have *NO* way of detecting it, because our only form of underwater 'radar' is sonar, which relies on sound. A supersonic torpedo's sound would not reach the ship until after the torpedo had... thereby making it even more stealthier than today's subs. Scary, huh?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------


The torpedos wouldnt be able to use radar on the bubble i dont think(well probly could). And for safety you could just make them structually strong enough to take it. You would want to make them, technically, to go to the ocean floor. Meaning very thick hulls(for this argument). Which may or may not reduce the heat problem(if theyre several, many, feet thick). With endless fuel who cares about weight, And if there small couple people ones.... And the thick hulls would naturally help against the blast, maybe to the point of taking a nuke at the rate i just mentioned. So theyd do almost no damage or would have to design radical ways of making the force direct at the ship. At which point you might as well go with lasers and microwave weapons. But they would stil be cool to have if you can make them that good.

And at this rate we could protect the cockpit form gforce. Were already working on it. Anything that cuts it a percentage would be damn affective.

Who knows maybe something that hold the cockpits lets it move slightly and absorb the movement completly. The more you can let it move and completly stop it, with something else helping, i dont know what, you can slwo down gforce. Mayby it just has to counter the movement in the direction ship is moving some way, or make counter vibration in a way that cuts it down. or even introduce some sort of pressure waves (maybe through sonic energy),possibly softely but forcfully pushing into the cockpit to destabalize the gforce.

Maybe thats stupid so maybe positive anti gforce through creating positive gforce against the oncoming cancelling it like sound damper technology on hellicopters. If you cant create it artifically you can redirect it from the outside front of hte ship somehow and use it against it if you can do that like how you make sound bounce off a wall just right and reverberate constantly. Or like air through a straw.

[NightWalker XI]

The future of aval warfare is catamaran boasts, now ya know it!

[NightWalker XI]

Seriously now though, that seems really interesting...

[Ir0nRaven]

The torpedoes *would* be able to use sonar. All they'd have to do is have a small sonar pod on the end of the stabilizer wing which sticks out of the bubble into the water.

[Rbstr]

but that would get riped of in a second, huge amount of fraction in water at that speed