Posted: 4/26/2004 6:26:48 PM EDT
| Which is the better boat; the 688 or the Seawolf? |
| I am a plank owner on the USS Connecticut SSN22, before I helped build her I was on the USS Albuquerque SSN706. The Seawolf class is not just better than the 688 and 688I it is in a whole new league, obviously I can't go into details but for what its worth the seawolf is WAY more quiet and faster, with a torpedo/tomahawk capacity almost twice as large as the 688 and 688I. When I was still in the going joke was that the seawolf was more quiet running at 24 knots than a 688 was tied to a pier shut down, that analogy actually isn't too far off. |
| I have to agree with you that it is rather expensive, at 6 billion a pop they cost as much as 1.5 carriers. But remember at the time they where first designed and thought up though the cold war was still going very strong. The Russians had the Akula at the time, which is a very scary boat to go up against with a 688, it's a better overall boat than the 688 of the time, if not for our massive advantage in crew quality there wouldn't have been any contest. I look at it this way, we only built three of them and those three boats can sink over a quarter of the modern warships on the planet all by themselves (including our own) with one torpedo/tomahawk loadout, and there is almost nothing anyone could do to stop them, is a weapon system that can do that worth 6 billion each? In my view most definitely. |
| The Russian Akula threat is no more. Hell, the entire Russian navy is vertually "no more". I don't really agree they were a serious match for our 688's. I just do not agree that we need 6 billion dollar submarines with the threats the U.S. faces or will face for the next 40-50 years. |
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Though the Soviet Navy may be no more, I think the future threat of the oceans will be the Chinese Navy. I'm sure that with enough technology transfer from around the world they will be both a "blue water" and littoral threat. I definately smell the salt of the sea on this thread, as a Marine officer I appreciate the protection that a 688 or a Seawolf provides for the amphibs. So how serious of a threat are the Akula class, are they anywhere near as quiet? Is it true they have an outrageous speed advantage? |
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They are actually still funding the Akula, mainly since it was the best sub they had left, last I heard there where at least 2 still in service. Having been on a 688 that played with an Akula for a while I can say that they where definitely a threat to the average 688, it was part of the job of the better crewed 688s to make sure the other units weren't where the Akula was heading. I do agree though, for todays naval threat the seawolf is pretty much overkill, but it can be looked at in several ways really. We scaled back sub production to almost nothing, in the time it took to build the three of the class EB (Electric Boat) only had a couple 688Is and I think one Ohio left to build (not entirely sure on these figures since i wasnt even in when the Seawolf was laid down) we needed to keep EB in the submarine business pretty badly, studies were done that showed if we let the US sub building program stop it would cost over 300 billion dollars to set it up again when we decided we needed more submarines, because of the loss of knowledge of the actual yard dogs building them and how much time and effort it would take to create a whole new workforce from nothing. So congress approved the third in the class supposedly to keep EB running long enough to design the new Centurion class (not sure what its called now) wich is MUCH cheaper to build and actually a pretty good design as well, just not with all the bells a whistles the Seawolf has. Sorry if I seem to be rambling, and really I'm not arguing with you either, I agree with most of your points :) Lee, I agree that the Chinese are probably the next big threat to our Navy, they have been getting their hand on our tech for years, I wouldn't be suprised to see them suprise us with a damn fine sub design in the not to distant future. As for the Akula now adays, it really isn't as big a threat as it once was, most of our boats are 688Is (since we are decomming most all of the non I "Improved" boats) which are more than a match for it. The speed demon you're talking about is actually the Alpha, it did well over 40 knots which for the time (early 70s) was very frightening because our torpedos didn't even go that fast. We sped up development of the Mk48 ADCAP which when it finally got out to the fleet pretty much neutralized the Alpha since the ONLY thing good about it was it's speed, it was about a quiet as an avalanche. If i'm wrong on any of this let me know, I got out in 98 and I'm afraid I did a bit of an intentional data dump after I got out, had an ssbi/TSSCI, I didn't want to remember any of THAT shit. |
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Im waiting to see about the new Virginia class subs (USS Virginia and USS Texas are to be commissioned next year I think)......are they supposed to out perform the hell out of the Seawolf or is it just minor changes? I was also reading about those old boomer they're revamping to hold guided missles....something like 130 vertical tubes? |
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if you can say, whats an ssbi/TSSCI, i gather its some sort of security clearance, just wondering if you could elaborate. btw, thank you to all the members of the Silent Service, my Great Uncle was a submariner on the Greyback in WWII, he's still on patrol. I've talked to several people who served on sister boats, and i can only imagine how nerve racking it is to be in a steel tube underwater. I'm going infantry, i love the water, but not that much. |
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Both China and India are getting a couple of Akula II's, and Iran will probably get one too. The newer diesel/electric boats are very very quiet. Sssshhh: Russia says new sub is world's quietest A Russian nuclear submarine that claims to be the world's quietest has put to sea 10 years after her keel was laid in a Soviet naval shipyard. The Gepard, the newest vessel in Russia's Northern Fleet and means "cheetah" in Russian, slipped from its berth in the Sevmash shipyard near Archangel to begin sea trials in the Barents Sea. Designers of the 350-foot boat, an Akula II-class submarine, claim that she cannot be detected from more than 7 miles away, even with the U.S. Navy's most sophisticated listening devices. This would make her quieter than her U.S. counterpart, the Los Angeles-class submarine, which it also beats for speed, firepower and maximum diving depth. The Gepard is considered to be a triumph of espionage rather than engineering. It uses technology stolen by KGB moles in the U.S. Navy during the 1980s and propellers made with steel-milling technology sold illegally to the Soviet Union by Japan's Toshiba giant.
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TSSCI is top secret secured compartmented information, it's what you see the media and hollywood call code word clearance because each compartment you have access to is known by its code word, and even that word itself is classified. As for nerve racking, not really, in a SHTF WW3 scenario a submarine is the only place to be, the life expectancy for the whole surface fleet in a worst case WW3 scenario was a little over a week, it was 3 months for submarines :), well fast attacks at least not boomers, they where supposed to be gone in the first day because of the Russians conterbattery nukes waiting for sea launched ICBMs, there is no safer place in the world than a US fast attack sub :)
To this day I won't touch anything made by Toshiba or any of it's subsidiaries. All of the comparisons they make in that article though are to the 688I though not the Seawolf, heck the Seawolf doesn't even have a screw (propellers go on airplanes) let alone use the old screw technology that was sold to the Russians. |