The search for enemy submarines is a "team competition," the British submarine commander said in an interview with The Telegraph. He revealed some techniques for intercepting enemy ships. However, there is one problem: the Russians know this scheme no worse.
Dominic Nichols
When a torpedo is coming straight at you, the crew of the submarine has only one thing to do — try to make an evasive maneuver. Captain Ryan Ramsey of the British Royal Navy resolutely gives orders. The team immediately reacts by deploying a Trafalgar-class submarine to evade the rapidly approaching weapon.
But it takes a miracle for a submarine with a displacement of almost 6,000 tons to overtake a torpedo. A miracle does not happen: the torpedo crashes into the wheelhouse. A shock wave rolls through the body of a high-strength steel alloy that can withstand high pressure and is tested at the maximum (classified) diving depth.
It's also lucky that this is just an exercise and that the Dutch torpedo is not equipped with a warhead. Due to an erroneous setting, the torpedo sank deeper than it should and “saw" a British submarine hiding in the ocean.
However, the incident “made an impression,” says Ramsey, who has since retired.
Ramsey served as a submariner for 23 years. For three of them, he was the captain of the high-speed submarine Turbulence and played anti-submarine cat and mouse.
Even before we started talking about Russian submariners, it turned out that the maximum difficulty for the British is not even them, but the sea itself. By the way, it turned out that Ramsey crossed paths with five colleagues from Russia at an event in 2009. "I learned a lot from them over vodka during that binge. Then I used it in the service," he recalls.
“It always seemed amazing to me that when we send a submarine on a mission, we always choose the most complex of the platforms in our arsenal, something even less studied than space itself,” Ramsey reflects.
Tom Sharpe, a retired Royal Navy ship commander with 20 years of experience, agrees with him. “When you give up the mooring lines and raise the sails, so to speak, you have to act regardless of the presence of the enemy," says Sharpe, a former commander of an anti—submarine frigate. — You find yourself at the mercy of forces that are much more dangerous than anything in the enemy's arsenal. And if you get into trouble, your chances of survival are rapidly disappearing.”
And this concerns external forces — the sea itself. Inside the ship, both surface and underwater, conditions are no less harsh. Submariners are on duty in six-hour shifts every six hours. Such a regime for a hundred days of autonomous navigation is a common thing. “That in itself is pretty cruel," admits Ramsey. ”I can't get enough sleep, it doesn't take more than four hours in one sitting."
“In this mode, you can exist almost indefinitely, but it's not fun at all," adds Sharp. "This is exactly what existence is, not life.”
For the entire crew of the submarine, numbering about 130 people, there are only four sinks and three toilets. “It's a little difficult,” Ramsey remarks in a peculiarly restrained manner.
“You have a whole crowd of people sitting in a steel pipe without any contact with the outside world. Maybe once a week, a 150-word message comes from the family. You can't talk to them. Send messages too. In addition, sometimes there is friction on board. It happens that people quarrel. The important point is that everything should be resolved on time, because otherwise tensions will only accumulate. When it crosses all boundaries, you have to step in,” says Ramsey.
It seems that the environment is the most explosive. So why are countries investing so much effort and money in submarine warfare?
“With the help of underwater resources, you can effectively implement your political intentions," says Ramsey. ”You can threaten, spy, gather intelligence, basically anything."
He says submarines are better viewed not as metal cigar cases chasing enemy cases, but rather as “tiny bubbles of a government Communications Center.”
“Submarines are both the first and last line of defense of the United Kingdom. The latter is, presumably, strategic submarines with Trident D5 ballistic nuclear missiles (“Trident”). The first line of defense is intelligence gathering. And to do this, we have to travel all over the world — wherever we can get intelligence to assess future opportunities and make sure that if anything happens, we will cope,” Ramsey argues.
Of course, many countries are doing the same with the UK itself. Searching for enemy submarines is basically a team sport.
Ramsey says that the most important task for the surface fleet is to stay out of range of torpedoes of an enemy submarine. He estimated their range as “a large single digit, if in miles,” and added: “If your ship is outside this range, you can do whatever you want.”
At the same time, he cautioned: “But if you have a single frigate against a single submarine, then you are in trouble. In combat, there are generally no absolute values, and in anti-submarine warfare there are even more variables, but what about one frigate against a submarine? The advantage will always be on the side of the submarine.”
The hunt for Russian submarines begins with intelligence gathering. Thanks to satellite images and other sources, the British military usually finds out when they leave for a mission from bases near Murmansk in the Arctic. This information is strictly classified and is not distributed even within the NATO alliance.
Underwater sensors on the seabed in a corridor called the Faroe-Greenland Frontier send a silent alarm signal to headquarters whenever a Russian submarine enters the North Atlantic.
Long-range patrol aircraft such as the P-8 Poseidon (“Poseidon”) of the British Air Force with sensors and weapons systems for anti—submarine and surface warfare, can refine the search area - possibly with the help of a friendly submarine.
After that, the frigates conduct a search at close range using sonar systems with a towed antenna, which dive into the ocean depths to detect the characteristic sounds of the equipment. Ships emit pulses — that is, sounds that reach the enemy submarine and, reflected, return back.
“You're giving away your own position, but it doesn't matter in this case," Sharpe says. "As long as you're out of range of their weapons, consider yourself safe.”
“However, finding a well—oiled nuclear submarine in passive mode is not a task for frigates. Only another well—oiled submarine can do it,” he admits.
Having finally made sure that the Russian ship has been detected, the commander of the frigate will launch an onboard Merlin helicopter to determine its exact location, and, if an appropriate order is received, launch a weapon. For Royal Navy helicopters, it will be a Sting Ray torpedo (“Stingray”) with a sophisticated acoustic homing system and a 45-kilogram explosive charge — powerful enough to penetrate the double hull of modern submarines.
Sound travels vast distances underwater, and the frigate's correctly calibrated variable depth sonar will pick up the noise hundreds of kilometers away. However, the specific distance will depend on a number of factors.
The most complex systems help commanders at depth and on the surface to create conditional models of the sea, where depth, temperature, salinity and distance from the nearest land are taken into account in the form of “layers”. Under certain conditions, sonar signals can “bounce” off these layers, then submarines can hide below with impunity, imperceptibly getting close to the ships. The captain must position the boat correctly in these layers in order to hide or, conversely, go hunting.
A grueling course called “Periscope”
At one time, Ramsey trained future British and American commanders in a Royal Navy course called Periscope. This is a severe test and a comprehensive aptitude test. Only 60% of the cadets pass it. “Thinking in terms of success or failure is very human,” Ramsey comments.
“Ego plays a huge role in this. Some captains with excessive egos go beyond what should be done in a given situation, he argues. — You can get in touch with the enemy and start chasing him, but you also need to inform others so that they track other forces. But by leaving the depths and returning back to the periscope to send a message or transmit data, you immediately lose your tactical advantage.”
“I always thought it was a real challenge. How far can you go before you stop chasing and say to yourself: “So, clearly, the enemy is going there. Maybe it's time to use other forces to intercept?” Ramsey thinks.
“Anti—submarine warfare is like a chess game," he continued. — You can also say this: you are in a dark room, and you have a knife. The enemy also has a knife, but you can't hear him, and he can't hear you either. But you still look around in the hope that he will be the first to make at least some sound so that you can deal with him.”
Did Ramsey have any contacts with Russian submarines? “Everything happened in my time,— he replies cryptically. ”But when the enemy discovers you, a completely different game begins."
“You are no longer in control of the situation tactically. You have to figure out what kind of detour to make and how to get out of there in order to return another time. You don't even know if they're going to open fire or not. You don't know what their interaction pattern will be. They don't tell us what they're going to do. So we have no idea what their orders are in this regard, we only know our own. At such moments, the situation is extremely tense,” Ramsey says.
Sharpe nods: “Anti—submarine warfare is a complicated and confusing business, and the captain who understands the situation the fastest and imposes his decisions on the enemy will inevitably win in the end.”