{"id":36594,"date":"2017-12-27T06:00:23","date_gmt":"2017-12-26T19:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=36594"},"modified":"2017-12-23T12:04:23","modified_gmt":"2017-12-23T01:04:23","slug":"editors-picks-2017-strategic-role-submarines-21st-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/editors-picks-2017-strategic-role-submarines-21st-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Editors\u2019 picks for 2017: \u2018The strategic role of submarines in the 21st century\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/figure>\n

Originally published 26 October 2017.<\/em><\/p>\n

This post is adapted from a presentation to the Australian Naval Institute\u2019s 2017 Goldrick seminar.<\/em><\/p>\n

Let me start with something nice and uncontroversial. Submarines might be obsolete by the middle of the century. It\u2019s possible that advances in artificial intelligence (AI), detection systems and signal processing, combined with swarming autonomous unmanned systems, could make it effectively impossible for submarines to maintain their stealth. To give just one example, quantum detection systems capable of picking up extremely subtle magnetic signals could be deployed on a large number of unmanned surface vessels, all networked together to provide an essential real-time map of the magnetic field over an extended area. (And, shameless plug time, my ASPI paper on quantum technologies should be out in the next week or two.)<\/p>\n

But don\u2019t worry\u2014I\u2019m not about to declare the submarine obsolete and then sit down. While others\u2014such as the ANU\u2019s Roger Bradbury<\/a>\u2014think the ocean might \u2018become transparent\u2019, I don\u2019t think it will happen suddenly, or even soon. There\u2019s a possibility that we\u2019ll have to have a long, hard look at our investment long before the 12th future submarine is delivered in around 2050. But I think that it\u2019ll be a matter of the characteristics of the submarine. In fact, I think that submarines will prove to have greater longevity than almost any other military platform. For example, I\u2019d put money on the future submarine program outlasting the future frigate program. Being hard to detect is always<\/em> going to be preferable to being easy to detect. And air will always be more transparent than seawater. The surface vessel menagerie will go the way of the battleship before the submarine does.<\/p>\n

That means there\u2019ll be a period when the submarine becomes more, rather than less, important in the navy\u2019s order of battle. If power projection and sea denial can\u2019t be done from the surface, then it will have to be done from space, from the air, or from below the surface. Note that I\u2019m not writing surface vessels off completely. There\u2019ll be many tasks short of high-end war for which their visibility and persistence are a positive. (Though I don\u2019t think we\u2019d want to be spending billions of dollars per hull for those characteristics, and corvettes will be better value than destroyers, but that\u2019s a talk for another day.)<\/p>\n

For now, let\u2019s just work with the observation that superior\u2014even if increasingly precarious\u2014stealth is likely to keep the submarine in our inventory for some time to come. And note that my arguments work the other way for submarines; they aren\u2019t terribly useful for operations short of war and there\u2019s little point in having submarines with less than high-end warfighting capability.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s worth bearing in mind that even if technology trends don\u2019t completely best submarines, they\u2019ll at the very least change the way that subs operate. Submarines of the future will probably have to operate their own swarm of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), which collect data, deliver payloads and act as decoys, generating magnetic and acoustic signatures that clutter the environment and complicate the lives of anti-submarine warfare (ASW) practitioners. The UUV will be the platform of choice for operations in areas of significant risk, such as in littoral waters or choke points, where the adversary can focus its resources. Risks to submarines will outweigh any benefit they might be able to derive from going into those places.<\/p>\n

You might ask, \u2018Why not cut out the middle man? If UUVs are shouldering the burden of working in dangerous places, why not build a fleet of UUVs and skip the submarines altogether?\u2019 If my list of technological advances comes to pass, that will be possible. An AI-enabled autonomous vessel could be given its mission brief before setting off for distant waters. But I\u2019m not sure that you\u2019d gain much by doing that. Long range and high endurance with useful speeds require size for fuel, so we\u2019re talking about large UUVs just on those grounds alone. And if you want them to be able to deliver payloads when they get there, the required size just increased again.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re used to thinking about UUVs as relatively small machines, but they\u2019ll start edging towards submarine size if we expect them to do a wide range of sophisticated tasks. While it\u2019s a long way from being equivalent to an unmanned submarine in terms of the effects it could deliver, Boeing\u2019s Echo Voyager UUV<\/a> is over 15 metres long and weighs 50 tons.<\/p>\n

If our main reason for keeping away from littorals and choke points is the risk to the platform from improved ASW technologies, we mightn\u2019t want to put large, sophisticated\u2014and thus expensive\u2014platforms in harm\u2019s way just because they don\u2019t have a human crew. The best chance of mission success would probably come from being able to saturate detectors and defences in the area with a bunch of low-cost and essentially expendable platforms. They\u2019d get the job done through numbers and having just enough capability.<\/p>\n

Small UUVs could do that. Their small size would help avoid detection, but it would also limit the distances from which they could be deployed. They\u2019d need a \u2018mother ship\u2019 platform that is large enough to get there from here, carries a useful payload, and is stealthy enough to avoid detection in less hostile places. That\u2019s why I think the large submarine still has a future. Of course, the mother ship might one day be a large unmanned submarine. In short, it\u2019s entirely possible that the 12th future submarine will bear little resemblance to the first one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published 26 October 2017. This post is adapted from a presentation to the Australian Naval Institute\u2019s 2017 Goldrick seminar. Let me start with something nice and uncontroversial. Submarines might be obsolete by the middle …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":36595,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editors-picks-2017"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEditors\u2019 picks for 2017: \u2018The strategic role of submarines in the 21st century\u2019 | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/editors-picks-2017-strategic-role-submarines-21st-century\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Editors\u2019 picks for 2017: \u2018The strategic role of submarines in the 21st century\u2019 | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Originally published 26 October 2017. 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