The battered Seawolf class submarine that hit a seamount will not be repaired till sometime in 2026 at the earliest. //

The Navy has posted new pictures of its Seawolf class nuclear fast attack submarine USS Connecticut (SSN-22), which was badly damaged when it struck a seamount while on patrol in the South China Sea on October 2nd, 2021. The Connecticut is currently in Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington, undergoing a long series of repairs that will last until 2026, at the soonest.

In December 2021, the prized submarine limped back to its home port in Washington State, completing an arduous voyage across the Pacific while surfaced after a long emergency stop in Guam and another stop in San Diego.

US Navy Nuclear Propulsion Plant Operator explains when a submarine reactor can be run at higher than 100% (and why the 105% on the reactor ordered in The Hunt for Red October movie would not be worth any risk to the ship and crew) //

Parameters for authorizing operating a US Navy submarine reactor plant above practicable design limits is well defined by NAVSEA 08 (which is the Naval branch of the Department of Energy).

The Navy Isn’t Prepared To Face The Growing Diesel Submarine Threat

A veteran submarine hunter explains how the proliferation of ever more capable diesel-electric submarines is a major problem for the U.S. Navy.

Brian F. Wruble, W3BW

w3bw@arrl.net

Two hams were among the small crew of a super-secret Cold War era submarine.

Situational awareness before GPS and computers was a serious challenge.

Shkval, on the other hand, uses a rocket engine. That alone is enough to make it fast, but traveling through water creates major drag problems. The solution: get the water out of the path of the torpedo. But how, exactly does one get water of the path of an object in the middle of an ocean?

The solution: vaporize liquid water into a gas.

Shkval solves this problem by diverting hot rocket exhaust out of its nose, which turns the water in front of it into steam. As the torpedo moves forward, it continues vaporizing the water in front of it, creating a thin bubble of gas. Traveling through gas the torpedo encounters much less drag, allowing it to move at speeds of up 200 knots. This process is known as supercavitation.

The trick with maintaining supercavitation is keeping the torpedo enclosed in the gas bubble. This makes turning maneuvers tricky, as a change of heading will force a portion of the torpedo outside the bubble, causing sudden drag at 230 miles an hour. Early versions of Shkval apparently had a very primitive guidance system, and attacks would have been fairly straight torpedo runs. //

the gas bubble and the rocket engine are very noisy. Any submarine that launches a supercavitating torpedo will instantly give away its approximate position. //

Another drawback to a supercavitating torpedo is the inability to use traditional guidance systems. The gas bubble and rocket engine produce enough noise to deafen the torpedo’s built-in active and passive sonar guidance systems. Early versions of the Shkval were apparently unguided, trading guidance for speed. A newer version of the torpedo employs a compromise method, using supercavitation to sprint to the target area, then slowing down to search for its target..