Towed Arrays for starships.

[phavoc]

I dunno, a patrolling ship would be under thrust most of the time. A towed array would only be used for passive scanning. And, granted, a ship that is drifting would have a smaller active signature. But if you are just drifting you can't cover as much ground.

Generally speaking a ship on a regular patrol wouldn't be going silent a lot if there was no active or perceived threat. You do it when you have a suspicion, or sometimes just for training.

Now a ship specifically lpoking for intruders or is actively monitoring a location, they would be prime candidates for this.

If you want to keep the cable concept, I suggest adding in a little future tech. Make the cable some sort of carbon polymer or whatever that when an electric charge is added it 'locks' it as a solid, which at least for towing would solve a lot of your cable problems. When you want to reel it I you just remove the charge. It would work easily enough for towing it (or pushing it), but lateral deployments might be too much, especially if you are wanting this thing kilometers from your ship.

Still a fan of dtones to do this task though.

 

[wbnc]

I dunno, a patrolling ship would be under thrust most of the time. A towed array would only be used for passive scanning. And, granted, a ship that is drifting would have a smaller active signature. But if you are just drifting you can't cover as much ground.

Generally speaking a ship on a regular patrol wouldn't be going silent a lot if there was no active or perceived threat. You do it when you have a suspicion, or sometimes just for training.

Now a ship specifically lpoking for intruders or is actively monitoring a location, they would be prime candidates for this.

If you want to keep the cable concept, I suggest adding in a little future tech. Make the cable some sort of carbon polymer or whatever that when an electric charge is added it 'locks' it as a solid, which at least for towing would solve a lot of your cable problems. When you want to reel it I you just remove the charge. It would work easily enough for towing it (or pushing it), but lateral deployments might be too much, especially if you are wanting this thing kilometers from your ship.

Still a fan of dtones to do this task though.

Just because you aren't actively maneuvering doesn't mean your standing still. a starship can drift a 100,000kph all day

I would imagine the tethered arrays would be something a patrol boat/scout babysitting a fuel source, or lurking in the deep system monitoring traffic or communications would be more prone to using. if a perimeter picket ship was on a steady course it might roll out the array to gain a few light seconds earlier warning of an uninvited guest.

I like the idea of the smart cables...that's the sort of thing I was hoping someone would think of

And I wont be trading in my drones anytime soon either. for more general purpose work they would still have a major edge.

 

[phavoc]

Just because you aren't actively maneuvering doesn't mean your standing still. a starship can drift a 100,000kph all day

I would imagine the tethered arrays would be something a patrol boat/scout babysitting a fuel source, or lurking in the deep system monitoring traffic or communications would be more prone to using. if a perimeter picket ship was on a steady course it might roll out the array to gain a few light seconds earlier warning of an uninvited guest.

I like the idea of the smart cables...that's the sort of thing I was hoping someone would think of

And I wont be trading in my drones anytime soon either. for more general purpose work they would still have a major edge.

Sure, you can stooge around and coast, but a star system is B-I-G. Not being underpower is close to being at a standstill. The ability to continually thrust means you can get some fantastic speeds going. And it's not like you will see that many patrol ships in a region of space where there is nothing there. It's simply too big. You might encounter someone in transit between two points, and I would suspect those paths, or near them, would be where you would be seeing ships, or hoping to find them. Remember that a ship under continuos power is going to fly by most ships that are just coasting. And unless you have a pretty high G rating, you'll never be able to catch up to them (standard combat aside, since it assumes all ships start at the same initial velocity).

I'm still not totally sold on the need for a towed array. It assumes that the ship itself is going to cause a lot of interference to sensors that are incredibly delicate. If you have a stealthy ship to begin with, one would naturally assume it would have minimal emissions to interfere with sensors. And the other big question would be, what exactly are you trying to detect that needing a towed sensor platform becomes a necessity?

 

[Anonymous]

Passive arrays need to be large to get their resolution. Imagine you are trying to triangulate the position of a ship by looking for the glow from a thruster. In this case the distance between your sensors matters.

Remember that "patrol" is a euphamism for "seek and destroy". The military calls it patrolling to keep the politicans happy. You probably don't want to actively advertise the position of your "patrol".

 

[Condottiere]

It's a small unmotivated pod, that's why it's on a leash.

 

[phavoc]

Passive arrays need to be large to get their resolution. Imagine you are trying to triangulate the position of a ship by looking for the glow from a thruster. In this case the distance between your sensors matters.

Remember that "patrol" is a euphamism for "seek and destroy". The military calls it patrolling to keep the politicans happy. You probably don't want to actively advertise the position of your "patrol".

That's highly dependent upon what your intended outcome is. Some patrols are "showing the flag",and they are quite obvious because they WANT to be seen. Knowing that a fleet cruiser is somewhere in the system because it's done a few very public ports of call and let people see it on well-travelled ship lanes is a great deterrent towards all sorts of people and things.

When you are actively hunting an enemy you don't want to reveal your location. Or if you are looking to sneak up on someone, you don't want to reveal your location.

Referencing your example, you could do the same by deploying an attached array to your own ship to get the scan resolution you needed. Placing multiple groups of sensors would allow you 360 resolution, like a towed array. The only scanning portion that I think would be needed away from your ship is a neutrino sensor. Your onboard power plant could possibly give you false readings, and taking your powerplant offline to do a sensor scan isn't the smartest of things to do. But lidar, radar, thermal and even passive ems could be done from the ship itself. Unless your towed array is hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away from your own ship, it's going to potentially interfere with very sensitive sensors. You would be better off dropping off a passive sensor array and letting it transmit its data to you (securely and secretly via a laser/maser would work over great distances). Or putting all this on a drone and letting it seek out and find new targets, to boldly go where your ship should never go!

 

[Anonymous]

Referencing your example, you could do the same by deploying an attached array to your own ship to get the scan resolution you needed.

I don't get the difference between an "attached array" and a "towed array". It seems to be purely based on the flexibility of the attachments, which is just TL-dependent and related to the length of the struts. For me, the system is re-classified when it no longer has a physical connection to the deploying unit at which point it becomes drones (even if unpowered). (EDIT: not trying to be that ridiculous: I assume long struts otherwise you just have a regular sensor)

I think drones are the future but I thought the point of the thread was to propose some pseudo-scientific nonsense that gives dragging flexible cables a purpose.

That's highly dependent upon what your intended outcome is. Some patrols are "showing the flag",and they are quite obvious because they WANT to be seen.

I wonder if you may have been sweet-talked by the diplomatic corps. Think deeply about why you send a warship anywhere. If you just wanted to wave a flag, you'd send a diplomat with a flag and save a billion dollars.

In peacetime the 'destroy' part of seek and destroy is limited to maybe pinging people with sensors to let them know the game is up, or ramming them (EDIT: Sorry I mean "encouraging them to leave by gently bumping them out of the way") - but they're there to find things that you don't want to be there and REMOVE THEM somehow. Otherwise, really, just send a guy with a flag in a motorboat (and hope the other navy patrol doesn't remove him).

Whether or not you choose to reveal yourself doing this is up to you, but a ship's going to be much easier to detect if it's on active thrust or using active sensors.

 

[phavoc]

Look back at history. The Great White Fleet was sent on an around the world cruise to show the flag and might of the USN. Today you see the same thing with the USN sending battle squadrons through the Taiwan straight or near those new Chinese built islands.

Showing that you CAN do something can be a powerful deterrent, and that's the entire point. If you can accomplish your goal without firing a shot then you've still won.

As far as the towed vs. Deployed arrays, it's more effort to deploy something to be towed than switch a button and have the arrays deploy from your hull. Today a towed array is deployed only to get away from the noise of the ship deploying it. Interference with detecting sound waves, and for warships a towed array let's them penetration thermoclines which can also hide a sub. Only the interference is applicable in space, and even then it would really be limited to your fusion reactor setting off your sensor with your own neutrinos.

 

[Condottiere]

Personally, I like the Bear to demonstrate presence, though the Stratofortress works almost as well.

Occasionally, the Americans surfaced their attack submarines to remind interested parties just what they have lurking nearby.

The Littoral Combat Ship is supposed to do that on the cheap.

But to be really effective, you need large numbers of big hulls, asserting their rights of passage.

 

[phavoc]

Personally, I like the Bear to demonstrate presence, though the Stratofortress works almost as well.

Occasionally, the Americans surfaced their attack submarines to remind interested parties just what they have lurking nearby.

The Littoral Combat Ship is supposed to do that on the cheap.

But to be really effective, you need large numbers of big hulls, asserting their rights of passage.

In this day and age, a 'task group' is, at most, half a dozen ships. Aircraft doing these sorts of things fly in single or pairs.

The LCS is, in my opinion, a piece of crap (both versions). The modularization idea aren't working out. Now they are talking about equipping them with SM-6 missiles. But it doesn't have a good set of radars to pair with it. The USN is just screwing themselves out of a navy. Pretty soon we'll be down to one submarine, one carrier, one cruiser, and one destroyer. Their retirement of the OHP FFg class means they dont't really have any hulls to put for escorts and patrols without bringing along the CV battle "groups". Space and the ocean are vast, and you need more hulls than what the USN has to actually have a presence.

 

[Anonymous]

LCS seems to be strongly inspired by British gunboat diplomacy tactics and the French Lafayette class.

At the height of their empire the Brits would send one gunboat up a river to keep the natives in line. They knew it would be hopelessly outmatched, but no-one would touch it for fear of what would come after they sank it. French do it in Africa with their Lafayette: It was purpose built as multirole and being able to operate commandos in case they needed to 'vanish' Algerian dissidents or evacuate their tourists and business people. It's a really great idea for the French since no-one in their old colonies has any ability to fight off a lone frigate, but it's not going to work for the USA against Iran.

It's interesting you mention the South China Sea. The US and the Chinese are busy trying to ram each other in some stupid macho display. The Chinese are getting pissed off with it and building giant cutters which aren't afraid of being rammed by US warships. http://thediplomat.com/2016/01/beijing-builds-monster-ship-for-patrolling-the-south-china-sea/.

I remember Russia or China (don't remember which) surfacing a submarine inside a US carrier group and I think someone got sacked. Amusing really at the "games" they play with each other out on patrol.

 

[Condottiere]

Gunboats tended to have a technological edge in gunnery and engineering.

The sudden submarine syndrome leaves a number of questions open. Did the Americans know where it was, and just didn't want the Chinese to know they know? And if the Chinese did have the capability to sneak up on a carrier task group, why reveal it?

I'd send some coast guard cutters in there with a strengthened bow and a water cannon, though it seems the Chinese Navy is less inclined to play chicken than their air force, the real problems will be the Chinese equivalent of coast guard cutters, or something more closely related to frigates, and fishing trawlers.

Our equivalent of water cannons may be sandcasters.

I'm not sure we can go around bumping each other.

 

[wbnc]

NOTICE: based on second hand information so take it with a grain of salt....

A friend of mine was a weapons officer on a Hunter killer. They would occasionally engage in mock attack runs on Russian subs. he claims that on several occasions the Russian boomer would cruse along fat dumb and happy for several repeated runs, then begin to maneuver to avoid the Hunter Killer.According to him they would break off the second the Russian began to maneuver to keep the Russians from panicking and thinking it was an actual attack.

He also told me that ANY time they spotted a Russian sub in attack position, or potential attack position, they would maneuver as if it were an actual attack....just in case it was..this was back in the bad old days when no one was sure they weren't about to get fired on.

From those stories I am assuming that any military ship that detects an unknown, or potential hostile in their defense zone would react to it's presence as if it were a threat.( with standing orders not to fire, or threaten to fire unless ordered to do so, or fired on) Unless they had orders not to react as part of a disinformation program.

So I imagine that unless the commander of that group had been directly ordered not to respond he would have reacted to any submarine in his area as a serious potential threat.

Another friend was crew on a destroyer that got nudged, the commander took it damn seriously...and as a rather low brow bit of diplomacy at least one crewman took it as a chance to "show the flag" by mooning the other crew.


I think they call sending a ship into international waters very close to national waters are called Freedom of Navigation exercises... I could definitely see an Imperium warship cruising through systems very close to the opposing systems or in a system that's on the fringe of another system just to exercise the right to transit ..and remind the other guy that there are a lot of very heavily armed vessels nearby.

 

[Rick]

Freedom of Navigation exercises

That would be a euphemism for 'Gunboat Diplomacy', or the modern equivalent - 'Carrier Group Diplomacy'. It only works if the other side doesn't much of a Navy - if it does, then the Commander of the Carrier Group will be made aware that, while his opponents are within a 100 miles or so of their home ports, he is several thousand miles away from his! It's the Naval equivalent of not over-extending your supply lines.

 

[Anonymous]

Freedom of Navigation exercises

That would be a euphemism for 'Gunboat Diplomacy', or the modern equivalent - 'Carrier Group Diplomacy'. It only works if the other side doesn't much of a Navy - if it does, then the Commander of the Carrier Group will be made aware that, while his opponents are within a 100 miles or so of their home ports, he is several thousand miles away from his! It's the Naval equivalent of not over-extending your supply lines.

Last month the US Navy managed to lose 2 boats to the Iranians. The crews were returned but I don't know what happened to the boats. If the crews did their jobs right, they'd have burned/sunk right after they were taken off.

 

[phavoc]

I think they call sending a ship into international waters very close to national waters are called Freedom of Navigation exercises... I could definitely see an Imperium warship cruising through systems very close to the opposing systems or in a system that's on the fringe of another system just to exercise the right to transit ..and remind the other guy that there are a lot of very heavily armed vessels nearby.

Yup, that's the term. And when it's done in the air as well. You are starting to see more of that today. In Europe and the US its the Russians who are starting to do more maneuvers and teasing the US and NATO. In the Baltic they did a practice cruise missile attack run on some NATO ships, and the Black Sea/Turkey area is a very hot issue. Both sides are doing "freedom" maneuvers. A Russian ship transiting through the Strait of Bosporus was "aggressively brandishing" crew-held AA weapons, which incensed Turkey. But closing the strait to Russian warships would be a very provocative move they aren't willing to do yet.

In Asia you see China pushing against most of it's neighbors with all kinds of actions - drilling off the Vietnamese coast, building their islands, sending aircraft through Japanese air defense zones, trying to block Phillipines resupply vessels from delivering new crew and supplies to their LST-on-a-reef outpost. Now the Phillipines is looking to ask the US back to Subic Bay and Clark AFB to offset increasing Chinese aggression. And the US does it back with their cruises and overflights of the islands. Let's hope all this machismo doesn't get to the point where people do stupid things and start firing at each other.

Last month the US Navy managed to lose 2 boats to the Iranians. The crews were returned but I don't know what happened to the boats. If the crews did their jobs right, they'd have burned/sunk right after they were taken off.

They were riverine boats, not exactly ships. Technically being in Iranian waters legally allowed Tehran to do that. I still haven't heard why their navigation systems led them there, though it's sounding like they drifted after one of them broke down. According to what I heard they were supposed to have been refueled by a destroyer or something and they missed their rendezvous. I wonder how much they depend on GPS for tracking rather than old-school charts?

Funny thing about some of these things is that the US isn't a signatory to all of the UN treaties that cover these incidents. Irony, eh?

There's not quite the same issue as far as the Imperial navy goes. They already, by default, own the spaceways within the Imperium. And there are very few non-aligned star systems along its borders where they would be showing how big their flag was compared to someone else. Internally no planetary navy can equal the might of the Imperial, and I doubt they could even afford it either. Since planets cannot be multi-system polities within the Imperium, it would take many, many, many planets banding together to pay for their own navies if they hoped to challenge the Imperium.

I do recall during the MT days they talked about the Dukes having their own fleets, but I understood most of those to be Imperial navy squadrons pledging their allegiance to the local duke, not that the fleets were being raised and paid for by the Dukes. That sort of feudal practice would make sense, but that's not how I understand the Imperium to operate militarily.

 

[wbnc]

I think it's all cyclical. This is just the silly season for several nations..unfortunately they have their bouts of ill advised actions with heavy weapons at hand....I do feel like I'm back in the glory days of the 80s though...ya know when there was still a USSR, and We had movies like Threads and the day after...and us ships and Russian ships playing bumper cars...

as for the Imperium I think their most common bouts of gunship diplomacy would come when there was unrest, or insurrection on a key planet. A squadron of ships passes through, lingers in teh system, and practices readiness exercises including mock landings of Marines etc... more to remind people tat the Imperium doesn't like it when you rock the boat too violently.

some dukes might have some surplus ships around for commerce protection, and piracy suppression duties..you know just a frigate or ten, and maybe an old cruiser refitted as a Diplomatic vessel. They really wouldn't need much to overpower any small scale problems...pirates, raiders, the occasional rebel/terror group with a couple of armed merchant vessels.

I think corporations would be more likely to use mercs, and merc ships for their problems and bringing pesky labor disputes to a fair and equitable conclusion on isolated world.

 

[Anonymous]

$100 says they got caught spying. Official docs say heading from Kuwait to Bahrain, so thats the other side of a 100 mile wide gulf.

ISTR a lot of systems inside imperial borders aren't actually members of the Imperium, and also there's pirates everywhere.

 

[phavoc]

$100 says they got caught spying. Official docs say heading from Kuwait to Bahrain, so thats the other side of a 100 mile wide gulf.

ISTR a lot of systems inside imperial borders aren't actually members of the Imperium, and also there's pirates everywhere.

Spying on... what exactly? They were riverine craft. If they wanted to spy on something they could have easily sent up a Rivet Joint or even an F-18 equipped with a recon pod. The only thing that being there locally would have told them was what was IN the water. Aerial recon would have proven far superior.

One of their problems is that Iran has an Island out there that they can claim territorial waters, and because of it's location and their planned course they got too close to Iranian territorial waters.

 

[Anonymous]

Spying on... what exactly? They were riverine craft. If they wanted to spy on something they could have easily sent up a Rivet Joint or even an F-18 equipped with a recon pod. The only thing that being there locally would have told them was what was IN the water. Aerial recon would have proven far superior.

One of their problems is that Iran has an Island out there that they can claim territorial waters, and because of it's location and their planned course they got too close to Iranian territorial waters.

Spying on the other guy's boats. Iran has a lot of armed speedboats, and they practise 'swarm' attacks against larger ships with them. Without sending someone out there, how do you tell the difference between a Revolutionary Guard speedboat, fishermen, and some Shiek's kids out for a joyride? So the US has to have armed speedboats too, and they all end up playing cat and mouse.

Which island do you mean? I see some but they're all on the opposite side of the pond. I'm reluctant to buy a better map of the region ...

edit: Found out the exact type of boat used. Despite 'river' in the name, they're designed as coastal patrol craft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CB90-class_fast_assault_craft

edit: It was Farsi island. I managed to find a map. It's right in the middle of a 100 mile wide channel. What's the territorial limit there? 3 or 12?