[107626] in Cypherpunks
Re: [Fwd: C-Subs, a very scary thought]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steve Schear)
Tue Jan 19 20:41:21 1999
In-Reply-To: <36A4CE98.27CD2544@brainlink.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1999 17:26:29 -0800
To: Sunder <sunder@brainlink.com>
From: Steve Schear <schear@lvcm.com>
Cc: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Reply-To: Steve Schear <schear@lvcm.com>
>> ***********************************
>>
>> Russian submarine designers are building military submarines out of
>> concrete. They say the new designs will save money and solve several
>> problems with conventional steel-hulled subs.
Concrete hulls are a well established technology. Their first mass use was
during WWII in Liberty ships. Material and construction improvements have
been steady. Although inexpensive such vessles tend, not surprisingly, to
be very heavy for their volume. Cement boats are also much more fragile to
impact and abrasion than metal making them risky for many mission profiles.
I wouldn't want to serve in such a submarine.
>> Concrete would not show up on sonar displays (it looks just like sand
>>or rocks), so the passing ships would not see the sub lurking below.
As long as the sub is in the bottom this may be true. However, if their
mission profile requires they acquire any reasonable speed, the miniscule
surface wake they create can be detected from Synthetic Aperature Radar
aboard a constellation of orbiting satellites U.S. satellites. The DoD
inadvertently discovered this a few years back after they launched such
satellites for dual-use and were forced to quickly cancel civilian data
access once our own subs were revealed in the data.
Many ferro-cement recreational crusing boats are launched each year, but
they are disdained by most sailors and have very low resale value.
--Steve
