Attack Submarine Research Articles

Summaries

Summaries

Then What? Assessing the Military Implications of Chinese Control of Taiwan

Abstract The military implications of Chinese control of Taiwan are understudied. Chinese control of Taiwan would likely improve the military balance in China's favor because of reunification's positive impact on Chinese submarine warfare and ocean surveillance capabilities. Basing Chinese submarine warfare assets on Taiwan would increase the vulnerability of U.S. surface forces to attack during a crisis, reduce the attrition rate of Chinese submarines during a war, and likely increase the number of submarine attack opportunities against U.S. surface combatants. Furthermore, placing hydrophone arrays off Taiwan's coasts for ocean surveillance would forge a critical missing link in China's kill chain for long-range attacks. This outcome could push the United States toward anti-satellite warfare that it might otherwise avoid, or it could force the U.S. Navy into narrower parts of the Philippine Sea. Finally, over the long term, if China were to develop a large fleet of truly quiet nuclear attack submarines and ballistic missile submarines, basing them on Taiwan would provide it with additional advantages. Specifically, such basing would enable China to both threaten Northeast Asian sea lanes of communication and strengthen its sea-based nuclear deterrent in ways that it is otherwise unlikely to be able to do. These findings have important implications for U.S. operational planning, policy, and grand strategy.

Emergency Deep: Cold War Missions of a Submarine Commander

Emergency Deep: Cold War Missions of a Submarine Commander

Edith Blake’s War: The Only Australian Nurse Killed in Action During the First World War by Krista Vane-Tempest

Reviewed by: Edith Blake’s War: The Only Australian Nurse Killed in Action During the First World War by Krista Vane-Tempest Kirsty Harris (bio) Krista Vane-Tempest, Edith Blake’s War: The Only Australian Nurse Killed in Action During the First World War (Sydney: New South Publishing, 2021). ISBN: 978-1-7422-37398 (PB). B&W illustrations. xii + 353 pp. Reading a biography written by the subject’s family member can sometimes be an arduous duty with scant regard for fact or writing skills. Krista Vane-Tempest’s book about her great aunt is a welcome contrast. It is a pleasure to read, with careful contextualisation that will appeal to those interested in medical, nursing, and military history. Edith Blake was born in Sydney in 1885, and trained at the Coast Hospital in Little Bay, New South Wales, graduating in 1912. She enlisted with the British Army in April 1915 because 128 nurses who had applied to join the Australian Army Nursing Service were transferred by the Australian government to serve with the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve (QAIMNSR). Thus, this story has a level of importance above many histories written about Australian First World War nurses as Edith Blake was not a member of the Australian Imperial Force but one of more than 260 Australian nurses serving with the British. Blake, via Vane-Tempest, provides a curious window into a different world. The book contains delightful vignettes as Blake was an observer of people as well as activities while she nursed both on land and at sea. The excerpts from her diaries and letters are full of descriptions of Australian soldiers and nurses, reflecting a keen sense of her own nationality in a working world full of British people and systems. It reveals the strong camaraderie between nurses and doctors at their training hospital and is, in part, a history of the Coast Hospital nurses at this time; Blake’s sister Queen began training at the Coast Hospital while Blake was at war. [End Page 199] As well as recording her tourist activities and contact with family in England, Blake was a great recorder of ‘awful tragedies’ and often commented in her letters about ships being sunk or torpedoed, perhaps prescient of her later fate. As her writing sheds light on life and loss at sea, it situates the medical war at sea in the British historical narrative. She amply describes life aboard ship and brings voyages to life, in some instances providing great detail such as when describing hospital ship policies and how to deal with submarine attacks. There is valuable material in Blake’s 1915 diary and her 136 surviving letters, which build on existing knowledge and fill gaps for researchers. Life as a QA nurse, as QAIMNSR nurses were often called, differed in many aspects to that of a nurse serving with the Australian Army Nursing Service. Importantly, Australian QA nurses were in demand as they would work ‘hands-on’ at patients’ bedsides and in theatre, whereas QA nurses from many other countries supervised, spending their time at the ward desk. Blake’s service ended abruptly in February 1918 when the hospital ship on which she served, Glenart Castle, was torpedoed by a German submarine and sank, leading to her death by drowning. Herein lies the premise of the book: that Blake was the only Australian First World War nurse to die on ‘active service’. This assertion is questionable. It is known that Winifred Starling from Sydney, who trained at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and was also a member of the QAIMNSR, died by drowning while nursing on the SS Leinster which was torpedoed in the Irish Sea in 1918. Likewise, Welsh born Margaret Dorothy Roberts went to the war from Australia to serve with the QAIMNSR. She drowned when the ship Osmanieh was sunk by mines in the Mediterranean Sea near Alexandria, Egypt in 1917. There may well be others. A feature of the book is its Australian-centric nature. For example, Blake was employed in Egypt in a British hospital in support of British troops that were fighting on the Gallipoli Peninsula. The book does not concern itself with...

Investigating the Role of Weapon Effects and Flooding on the Loss of H. L. Hunley

The submarine H. L. Hunley conducted the first successful submarine attack on an enemy vessel, USS Housatonic, during the American Civil War but was lost with all hands because of unknown circumstances. The submarine has been recovered, and recent archeological findings have uncovered that a spar torpedo was used as opposed to a standoff torpedo that was commonly assumed to have been used. As a result, the submarine would have been in close proximity to the weapon when it exploded than previously thought. A multipart investigation has been conducted with the goal of determining if this reduced standoff distance could explain the mysterious loss of the vessel in the minutes or hours after the attack. Here, the results of a bottom-up naval architectural and weapons-effects analysis are reported. Together, the experimental, computational, and analytical results provide new insight to the vessel’s stability characteristics, propulsion, and dynamic loading environment during the attack. In addition, a discussion of possible loss scenarios, informed by both calculation results and inspections of vessel’s hull, is presented. Although the story of what happened to H. L. Hunley that night remains shrouded in mystery after this work, several important new research questions emerge.

Deployment Options for the Future Royal Navy’s Long-Range Land-Attack Fires

Land-attack cruise missiles (LACMs) will be a pivotal component of the Royal Navy’s likely expeditionary posture in the future strategic environment. Currently, the service has only one mode of delivery for LACMs – its attack submarine fleet. And even when the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers fully come onboard, they lack a true standoff capability. At the moment, the navy’s surface force does not possess an LACM capability, and there is debate over whether LACMs should arm the new Type 26 frigate. Ben Wan Beng Ho assesses these three platforms for LACM deployment and shows that there are inherent shortcomings in the carrier aircraft and submarine options, notably in the combat power they can project.◼

Japanese Treatment of Allied Prisoners During the Second World War: Evaluating the Death Toll

The high death rate of Allied prisoners of war in the Pacific compared with those in Europe is commonly used to signify the barbarous way in which the Japanese fought the Second World War. This study examines the extent to which ‘friendly fire’ inflated the death rate of Allied prisoners under the Japanese, and evaluates more broadly the perceived disparity between Japanese and German treatment of Allied prisoners of war (POWs). Four broad conclusions are drawn. First, that while Allied submarine and air attacks elevated the deaths rate of Allied prisoners held by the Japanese, even if these are excluded the POW death rate remains significantly higher than for those held by Germany. Second, in some respects, POW death rates under the Japanese can be more productively and favourably compared to Germany's treatment of Soviet prisoners on the Eastern front than its treatment of Western captives. Third, the death rates mask the diversity of prisoners’ experience under the Japanese. Finally, it is suggested that perhaps the single most important difference between German and Japanese treatment of Allied prisoners was the latter's failure to adequately distribute Red Cross supplies.

Exploration in an Extreme Underwater Environment

“Exploration of Extreme Underwater Environments” briefly recounts the highlights of the author’s experiences during the exploration of an extreme underwater environment: As commander of the nuclear attack submarine, USS Queenfish (SSN 651) during the historic first survey of 5,200 km of the entire uncharted, sea-ice covered, Siberian Continental Shelf during the summer of 1970.

Mitigating the Threat of Nuclear-Weapon Proliferation via Nuclear-Submarine Programs

ABSTRACT Brazil is building a nuclear-powered attack submarine, South Korea has in the past asserted its need for nuclear-powered attack submarines to deal with the threat of North Korean nuclear-armed submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and Iran has asserted more vaguely its need for naval nuclear propulsion. All three countries are non-weapon-state parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Their interest in naval reactors brings with it two challenges to the NPT: (1) The safeguards “loophole” under which a country can withdraw nuclear materials from IAEA safeguards indefinitely for allowed “non-peaceful activities”; and (2) A justification for the acquisition of national uranium-enrichment facilities because the international suppliers of enrichment services have peaceful-use requirements. In fact, Brazil’s acquisition of enrichment was driven by its navy. It is argued, however, that nuclear-powered attack submarines have advantages over modern conventional attack submarines primarily in their ability to transit great distances at high speed whereas only a few countries have foreign military commitments requiring such capabilities. For defense of nearby waters against foreign navies, attack submarines are merely one component of a complex system of anti-submarine aircraft and surface vessels and underwater sensor networks. Conventional attack submarines are no less effective and much less costly than nuclear-powered attack submarines in this role.

Deployment of the DosiKit System Under Operational Conditions: Experience From a French Defense National Nuclear Exercise.

Estimation of the dose received by accidentally irradiated victims is based on a tripod: clinical, biological, and physical dosimetry. The DosiKit system is an operational and mobile biodosimetry device allowing the measurement of external irradiation directly on the site of a radiological accident. This tool is based on capillary blood sample and hair follicle collection. The aim is to obtain a whole-body and local-surface dose assessment. This paper is about the technical evaluation of the DosiKit; the analytical process and scientific validation are briefly described. The Toulon exercise scenario was based on a major accident involving the reactor of a nuclear attack submarine. The design of the scenario made it impossible for several players (firefighters, medical team) to leave the area for a long time, and they were potentially exposed to high dose rates. The DosiKit system was fully integrated into a deployable radiological emergency laboratory, and the response to operational needs was very satisfactory.

WORLD WAR I AND THE PARADOX OF WILSONIANISM

One hundred years ago, on April 6, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson led the United States into the First World War. Four days earlier, in his war message to Congress, he gave his rationale for declaring war against Imperial Germany and for creating a new world order. He now viewed German submarine attacks against neutral as well as belligerent shipping as a threat to the whole world, not just the United States. “The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind,” he claimed. “It is a war against all nations.” He now believed that Germany had violated the moral standards that “citizens of civilized states” should uphold. The president explained: “We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states.” He focused on protecting democracy against the German regime of Kaiser Wilhelm II. “A steadfast concert for peace,” he said, “can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants.” Wilson called on Congress to vote for war not just because Imperial Germany had sunk three American ships, but for the larger purpose of a new world order. He affirmed: “We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundation of political liberty.”

Japan’s Perceptions of and Interests in the South China Sea

China's assertive and high-handed activities in Asian waters-especially in the East and South China Seas-are generating serious security concerns within the international community. In particular, China's unique, unilateral positions on maritime issues, which it claims are supported by its wider, and sometimes self-centered, interpretation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and other established international rules, have puzzled regional states and stakeholders such as the United States. At the same time, disputes in the South China Sea risk escalating into military clashes between the United States and China.Thus, for Japan, the South China Sea does not simply involve territorial disputes among coastal nations but rather raises a grand issue that could cause a direct military collision, undermining existing stability and potentially leading the region and the world into an unprecedented chaotic situation. This essay examines Japan's perceptions of and interests in the South China Sea. Japan's primary concerns in the region are twofold: First, China's reclamation activities and military buildup could eventually give it strategic control of the sea lines of communication. Second, the potential escalation of tensions between China and the United States, Japan's key ally, poses a threat to regional stability. The essay then examines Japanese security policy and assesses what actions Japan could take to help stabilize the situation.An Overview of Japan's Key ConcernsChina's reclamation and island-building activities. Stretching approximately 1,750 miles from the Bashi Channel/Luzon Strait to Singapore and 1,250 miles from Hong Kong to Brunei, the South China Sea is roughly 9.5 times as large as Japan and includes around two hundred islands, rocks, shoals, and reefs. There are several prominent archipelagos, such as the Paracel Islands and the Spratly Islands, and each has its own strategic significance.Since 2013, China has started reclamation at seven lagoons and engaged in the construction of artificial islands. Fiery Cross Reef seems to be a core spot that includes full military facilities, most notably a runway and a deep port. Subi and Mischief Reefs, which are about 125 miles apart, are the other artificial islands with runways and port facilities. Japan fears that four other artificial islands with various support facilities could function as outer guard posts for the three main islands with airfields and air-surveillance sites that could enable a potential Chinese air defense identification zone in the South China Sea. These man-made islands, when fully completed, would provide China with strong footholds in the Spratly Islands for controlling most of the sea lines of communication and for monitoring foreign naval and air activities. Moreover, if China in the future ever successfully builds an artificial island at the Scarborough Shoal, there would be a strategic triangle connecting Woody Island, the Spratlys, and Scarborough Shoal that would cover most of the South China Sea. The impact of this strategic triangle would be tremendous for the United States' and Japan's strategic planning and could be a game changer in regional power relations.As a major global power, China has a national objective to be a nuclear power comparable with the United States. However, China lacks longrange bombers and, as a result, naturally depends on its strategic missile forces, including its maritime strategic nuclear capabilities, as a major element. In this context, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy must maintain a robust nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) force and protect this force against the antisubmarine warfare capabilities of potential adversaries-especially the U.S. Navy's nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN) force. The PLA Navy has completed a new naval base at Sanya on Hainan Island, which is ideal for deploying its SSBN force to patrol in the Indian and the Pacific Oceans. …

QUIT THE MASQUERADE AND HAVE MEETINGS THAT MATTER

Marquet explains how “groupthink,” fear, and stress in the workplace can conspire to keep people from saying things that need to be said, in meetings and otherwise. Drawing on research and on his previous career as the commander of the nuclear-powered fast attack submarine USS Santa Fe, he demonstrates that people must be free of artificial constraints, especially if leadership is to become a distributed attribute. It's better to have a well-prepared culture of empowerment. He writes, “We found that even in emergencies it was better not to have to tell people what to do. Telling people what to do means they can't figure out what to do on their own.”

Ghostly Remains and Converging Memories: Yūshūkan and the Australian War Memorial Exhibit the Pacific War

Focusing on the Yūshūkan museum in Tokyo, and the Australian War Memorial Museum in Canberra, this article engages how pain and sacrifice in the Pacific War are represented through the characters of kamikaze and prisoners of war respectively. Despite the inimical historical, political and moral orientations, these institutions’ presentations of memory of war display some interesting overlaps. After establishing that historical, cultural and political contexts are significant in assessing how and why pain and sacrifice in the war are engaged by each institution, I examine the Japanese midget submarine attack on Sydney in 1942, which effectively bridges both institutions. By assessing the emotive nature of the exhibitions it becomes apparent that while the framing of this single act of violence is culturally esoteric, themes of bravery, heroism, loyalty and sacrifice cross cultures.

Innovation decision making in high-risk organizations: A comparison of the US and Soviet attack submarine programs

Decision-making about innovative change in high-risk networks is exceptionally difficult because system failure may result in catastrophe. We adopt a historical method to compare the US and Soviet choices in their nuclear attack submarine programs between 1970 and 1996 and to surface their complex political, technological, and operational relations. One program achieved high reliability in the face of innovation while the other did not. Actor network theory (ANT) helps illuminate the interactions and resulting innovation paths and dependencies. We study how (i) open communication and power dispersion across high-risk networks influence system reliability, (ii) individuals spanning multiple groups within the network generate dominant coalitions, and (iii) strong safety advocates impact the network.

It is Not Just Hardware and Software, Anymore! Human Systems Integration in US Submarines

AbstractUntil recently, the Navy's approach to designing, engineering, and acquiring complex weapon systems did not routinely or completely include the human “warrior” as an integral part of the system. Rather, the Navy viewed systems as combinations of hardware and software. The results were often less‐than‐optimal capability and high life‐cycle cost—and, sometimes, even mission failure. Given the high rate of technological change and the need to rein in cost in the face of increasingly constrained budgets, the Navy and the other services have increasingly embraced the need to consider human‐performance capabilities and limitations up front and on an equal footing with hardware and software—as integral elements in both new‐acquisition and technology‐refresh programs. The US Submarine Force has championed human systems integration (HSI). HSI is a specialized engineering discipline that takes human limitations and capabilities fully into account to influence system design and engineering early in the research, development, and acquisition process, thereby helping to ensure the highest overall performance at the lowest total ownership cost. Implementation of HSI has involved new partnerships with unlikely partners such as the audio equipment company Bose, game‐makers, the visual‐reality industry, physiologists, and psychologists. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the Virginia (SSN‐774)‐Class Nuclear Attack Submarine Program.

Maximizing Platform Value: Increasing VIRGINIA Class Deployments

AbstractThe FY11 Report to Congress on Annual Long‐Range Plan for Construction of Naval Vessels (commonly known as the 30‐Year Shipbuilding Plan) forecasts that the Navy's Attack Submarine (SSN) force structure will fall below the requirement of 48 SSNs in 2024, and will remain below the requirement throughout at least 2040 (the limit of the current report). Operating the fleet with fewer ships than necessary to meet commitments around the globe makes it imperative to maximize the mission time provided by each platform. Accordingly, the VIRGINIA Class Submarine Program Office (PMS 450) has developed a plan to mitigate this shortfall in force structure by designing reductions in depot‐level maintenance, thereby improving operational availability and maximizing mission time. This plan is encompassed in the Program Office's Reduction of Total Ownership Cost (RTOC) goals. However, actions arising from pressure to reduce Total Ownership Cost (TOC) may have the potential to inadvertently limit available platform mission time if the full consequences, including indirect impacts, are not rigorously assessed and analyzed in advance. The VIRGINIA Class Submarine Program faced this challenge explicitly in implementing the RTOC program while simultaneously working through details of a class maintenance plan modification for later submarines that adds a deployment to the operating cycle. Reducing TOC, while making changes to both the maintenance plan and the platform design, requires an integrated analytic capability to assess the impact of potential changes to both cost and delivered mission time. Evaluating the impact of maintenance changes on mission time is complicated by interactions between multiple stakeholders involved in controlling and managing the lifecycle of the submarine—including those responsible for maintenance planning (and the ability of the maintenance facilities to execute the work), operations and training, and modernizations. An approach and analytic framework, which captures “TOC Effectiveness” (defined as Mission Time Delivered divided by Net Cost) is needed to balance divergent program and stakeholder goals. To capture TOC effectiveness, a time‐phased dynamic simulation of the lifecycle employment of VIRGINIA Class Submarines (including depot maintenance time) has been developed to determine the likely submarine employment consequences of the plans, policies, and constraints of the stakeholders involved, and to ensure that the lifecycle maintenance plan targets are achieved. The simulation was validated against historical performance of LOS ANGELES Class maintenance execution at public shipyards, explicitly adjusting for known differences in VIRGINIA Class work packages (the first VIRGINIA Class depot maintenance availability did not start until October 2010). Simulation analysis has identified likely results of alternative plans and/or policies and provided insight into where changes can be made across multiple stakeholders to efficiently and effectively achieve program goals for deployments. The simulation is integrated into the VIRGINIA Class RTOC program process to identify specific areas where changes have high leverage to increase mission time, evaluate specific changes proposed by the RTOC effort, and track progress toward achieving mission time goals.

David S. Patterson . The Search for Negotiated Peace: Women's Activism and Citizen Diplomacy in World War I . New York : Routledge . 2008 . Pp. xx, 443. $36.95.

On August 4, 1914, Woodrow Wilson offered his services as a mediator to the European powers who were going to war, and on December 18, 1916, he renewed that offer more forcefully. By then it was too late for Wilson to play a mediating role; Germany's leaders had already decided to resume the unrestricted submarine attacks that would lead the United States to declare war four months later. David S. Patterson's new book chronicles the efforts at mediation between Wilson's failed initiatives made by ordinary citizens, many of them women, rather than diplomats and statesmen. Despite the failure of such initiatives, Patterson argues that they had important consequences for the twentieth century. They lay the groundwork for the modern peace movement, they energized and expanded women's political activism, and they fostered a growing consensus for a reformulation of international relations. We learn how little was new in Wilson's Fourteen Points of January 1918. Most of the points had appeared repeatedly in peace activists' proposals for mediation in 1914 and thereafter, especially the call for a permanent international organization of arbitration.

We Cannot Go On: Disruptive Innovation and the First World War Royal Navy

Insights from Disruptive Innovation theory (DI) are often used in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of national security policy. DI explains why successful companies are sometimes defeated by new competitors with relatively unsophisticated products. Although DI is highly influential in the business literature, its applicability to military doctrine has not been persuasively shown. Proposed here is a more abstract and general version of DI, which improves its foundations, adapts it to militaries, and suggests a framework for the reliable identification of disruptive innovations. This new theory is tested by examining the Royal Navy before and during World War I and evaluating how well it explains the Royal Navy's success at developing Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) to protect the battlefleet from submarine attacks and the near failure at implementing convoy tactics to protect merchant shipping. This generalized version of DI successfully explains several key features of the case.

First in its class [engineering underwater

When HMS Astute begins sea trials later this year, its crew will get a taste of life in the biggest and most powerful attack submarine ever to be built for the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy's new submarines are the result of one of the country's biggest engineering projects.