We are already used to the fact that thanks to tough guys like The National Interest, Purple & Heart and others, everything made and invented in the USA has two categories: good and very good.
No, there are, of course, F-22s, but this is an evolutionary process, so anything can happen.
It and we all usually have NIAM ("Having No Equivalents in the World"), and everything is simply excellent. So it's okay to praise your own and criticize others. It's not normal to scold / criticize your own, you need to have steel in your pants and a conscience in your head. And with this today, strain everywhere, both in the Old World and in the New.
But in NI, an article flashed by the already familiar David Ax, who is already like a dear to us precisely because his bell, if not a bell, rattles there. Steel. And David is sometimes very interesting to read, because he chooses expressions, but he knows how to convey the essence.
The article flashed (article), but we saw it. And it became interesting, and what this time did not like old David?
And he decided to walk on the submarines.
It turns out that the newest submarine of the US Navy, that is, "Virginia" of the new generation, which in the future is a shield to deter us (no one knows where, but not important, in general), could be much larger and more perfect.
In 2013, the Navy considered as many as five projects of nuclear weapons carriers. And the smallest and (naturally) cheapest option was chosen.
This is what causes David Ax's righteous anger. Quite logical and reasonable, by the way.
The fact is that the new Virginia is not at all what American missiles are now dragging across the seas. This is a completely different ship, despite the fact that the name is the same.
So, the fleet has reviewed five boat designs. And they are increasingly larger than the existing Virginia, which is 115 meters long. The shortest of the new ones is 137 meters, and the longest is 146.
But it's not the length. The point is in the so-called "block" system of new submarines. Each boat included in the contract, and there are nine of them, is really modular. And the main highlight is the so-called "payload module", which is a block of four vertical tubes that can be used in different ways.
The module is located behind the block with the reactor, it has access from the inside of the boat, the pipes open into the water both from above and from below. This module should not be confused with standard launchers (revolving type on boats of the third series), from the launcher you can launch Tomahawks, and from the tubes of the payload module, in addition to Tomahawks, you can launch divers, guided vehicles and robots.
Even if you simply load these tubes with Tomahawks, the launch kit for the new Virginia will grow to 40 missiles. Which is already a very weighty argument in confrontations with a potential adversary (read: with Russia).
So, the US Navy really wants the boats of the new generation, the so-called Block V, to replace the boats of the first iteration, Block I (Virginia, Texas, North Carolina, Hawaii), since the latter more than 20 years old are outdated. And in 2025-2030 they will all be recycled.
Meanwhile, these four submarines carry a total of almost two hundred Axes, and the United States cannot afford to weaken its fleet so much. Nine Block V Virginias could fill almost half of the missile deficit, and the next series, Block VI and Block VII, could compensate for the incapacitation of Block II and Block III boats.
However, even in the United States, things are not as simple as we would like. It turns out that even there are problems … with money!
During the Barack Obama administration, money became not that bad, but … I would interpret this word as "tense." And so in 2013, what David Ex says happened: the Navy chose the least expensive boat configuration. The budget has been saved, but is it that good?
On the one hand, maintaining the initial number of boats under construction and the fact that the budget has not suffered is good for the Americans. The bad thing is that, according to Ax, for the sake of saving money, the cheapest option for equipping the boats was chosen, which cannot but affect the combat qualities of the nuclear submarine.
The savings affected the hull materials, which made the boats noisier and, accordingly, easier to detect by search means.
The fleet management rejected the longest hull options (for the same financial reasons), because of which the space of some compartments had to be greatly reduced in order to accommodate access mechanisms to the pipes of the multifunctional module of the boat without increasing the diameter of the boat.
In general, it is very logical. To keep the Block V boat's value as close to the $ 2.5 billion target price as possible, the Navy opted for a less expensive option. An external protrusion was simply added to the body, in which the mechanisms for accessing the pipes of the module were placed.
And then, during the tests, the problems began. This "turtle shell" began to create hydrodynamic and acoustic problems, especially at high speeds. Critical articles began to appear first in the official magazine of the US Navy's submarine forces, and then other publications took up the baton.
According to critics (such as retired captains Karl Haslinger and John Pavlos), the cost savings meant that the naval command made it easier for potential adversary (us) to sonar and sonically search for the latest submarines. Especially sonar.
It is clear that it is difficult to achieve an ideal shape (that is, drops) for a submarine. But everything that protrudes from the body involuntarily creates turbulence and noise. The Americans were very fond of our 667 series submarines of all modifications for their massive wheelhouses, which made such a noise that these boats were quite easy to find and track down.
Yes, modern boats have a small wheelhouse and already aerodynamically improved. This also applies to Block V boats. The issue concerns not only the "clean" aerodynamic forms, but also the coating, which reduces the turbulence of the water.
Is it worth saving on this? Many analysts in the United States believe that it cannot. That it makes no sense at all to develop new, very low-noise submarines if there is no money to build them.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Yes, the Americans in the near future, apparently, will have to face the fact that we have already passed in the 90s …
