The Defense Industry Daily describes the Navy’s struggle to meet two challenges: enemy diesel electric submarines in littoral waters which can best be found by active sonar and environmental restrictions. Recently the Navy won a Supreme Court case 6-3 to train without reducing the power of its sonar.
This case stems from the legality of warfare training exercises conducted by the U.S. Navy off the coast of Southern California. The Navy trains in Southern California because its coastal bathymetry provides unique training opportunities, and because the area has the necessary bases to train integrated forces. The exercises, known as “SOCAL exercises,” test the Navy’s ability to conduct anti-submarine warfare (ASW) through the use of mid-frequency active sonar (MFA sonar). Active sonar, which allows a vessel to detect submarines in the vicinity, involves the transmission of a loud noise underwater from a sonar source, which then monitors whether the noise returns. If it does, it may indicate that the sound has bounced off a nearby submarine. The Navy prefers MFA sonar to other forms of sonar because it allows better detection of quiet diesel electric submarines.
The arguments before the USSC were of course legal in character. No one, not even Souter or Ginsburg, who voted against the Navy, seemed to dispute the utility of sonar in detecting enemy subs. But the questions was whether the Navy had made some procedural omission when it applied to train or whether by letting the Navy receive an exemption based on national security the Supreme Court would abet a violation of the separation of powers. The SCOTUS blog gives a flavor of the complex legal wrangling.
It’s interesting to consider what effect contingent events have on the formulation of public policy. There’s no way of knowing whether the United States will ever go to war against a naval enemy and what effect, if any, the absence or realistic antisubmarine training would have. It would be reasonable to think the absence of anti-submarine training might lead to disastrous results, but of course there’s no way of knowing it with certitude. Public policy is the art of balancing risks while a veil is drawn across the face of the future.
But suppose we could tell through some kind of time machine what the future held? If the Supreme Court Justices knew for a fact a lack of training would definitely cause the loss of say, an aircraft carrier, instead of simply imagining that it could, what effect would that have on the beliefs of Ginsberg and Souter? And if the crystal ball showed that the USN would never need the active sonar, how far would it invalidate Robert’s arguments?
Who knows? But at any rate, very few of the policy makers will be on the relevant ships or when the contingency occurs.
Ginsburg, not Ginsberg.
fixed
What was that aircraft carrier doing there in the first place?
“Suppose we could tell through some kind of time machine what the future held?”
Actually, a time machine does exist (or at least half a machine). Had the decision gone against the Navy an adversary would (in fact is)build(ing) the cheaper deisel-electric boats specifically to exploit the tactical gap. This is a certain enough outcome to make alternative scenarios nothing more than cocktail party conversation.
China, having begun building thier own boats, is investing in vessels designed to contest the Taiwan Straights. They do so with the understanding that our Navy is addressing the problem…requiring they move with caution. Remove some of their caution and at least one world flash point heats up. And, we have not begun to talk about all the other narrow, shallow, littoral straights about the planet.
The question then becomes, what are the Supreme’s foreign policy and military readiness chops?
#3-Aircraft carrier, not…VLCC yes. (Very Large Crude Carrier).
For every weapon system that buttresses America’s defenses (except, perhaps, for defensive missile systems) there is a corresponding legalistic front devoted to retarding that system.
Land mines, advanced sonar, muscular, unilateral preemptive action (ie. the Bush Doctrine), wiretapping campaigns in terrorists’ havens, etc…I could go on and on – each one faces a raft of political, media and legal restraints.
Why should our enemies ever go to battle against American weapons systems when, for a couple hundred million dollars they can buy a television “news” company, a “law” firm, and a couple of congressmen and then disable the system while it’s still in its crib?
The short answer is, they’d be fools not to do their utmost to assist in crib-death. And, as an added plus, it is darkly efficient to hijack a nation’s military preparedness from within, as the tactic co-opts the nation’s own liberal, permissive society and uses its own organs to thwart the republic’s interests.
Sound familiar? This is a page taken right out of “Rules for Radicals.”
“What was that aircraft carrier doing there in the first place?”
Not our littoral; some other littoral like, say, the Straits of Taiwan or the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea.
For those who think Amerikkkan imperialism is all that stands in the path of the world John Lennon imagined; it is their duty as citizens of the world to impede our readiness.
How does the US Navy do active sonar? Are they doing it with sonar buoys and helicopters or are the ships directly pinging for the submarines? It was my understanding that active sonar was like a flashing neon sign saying “Here I am, please destroy me!”
Eggplant.
Active sonar is done by all of the above. Yes, active pinging is a like a giant search light, leading back to the sender, however, using MFA sound source and some nifty signal enhancing technologies, you can a) See the target while still out of reach of his weapons b) pin him to the coast or other shallow structure and put your own weapon on target.
Finally, fire control solutions almost always need an active ping or two. Purely passive solutions, unless aided by acoustic homing (very hard in shallow water) are not precise enough.
It is still very cat and mouse, right out of the movies…many cases will boil down to which crew IS BETTER TRAINED.
Michael Hoskins,
Thank you for your answer. It’s my understanding that modern diesel-electric submarines (particularly the German ones) are very difficult to detect because they’re so quiet. Supposably nuclear submarines always produce a certain amount of noise in order to keep their reactor cores cool. I understand the importance of nuclear power for a blue water navy that can respond to crisis anywhere in the world and for submarines to be able to remain submerged indefinitely. However it seems that most near term future crisis will be regional, e.g. Persian Gulf, where diesel-electric submarines might be a better technology. However the United States Navy seems committed to remaining exclusively nuclear with its submaries. What do Belmont Club members think about this?
Also, when active sonar is used, is it possible to present the data as an actual clear image, i.e. the sonar presents a 3-D image of the ocean bottom and tucked away in some under water canyon is a hiding enemy submarine? When one see’s Hollywood movies of antisubmarine warfare, the sonar data is usually portrayed as very abstract, e.g. some guy is listening to pings on a set of headphones or the data is presented as a single trace on an oscilliscope.
Now in the old days(’70′s), active sonar was rarely used. Normally only in testing, to see if it worked (sea trials). Diesel Electric was around (Brits used it, and “others”-ChiCom and Isreali among a few) but their sound suppression was flawed so it wasn’t as big a threat as it seems to be now… Not to say that it wasn’t a pain, but there were other factors such as sea water pumps for cooling, etc. that were like marbles in a can.
But now the secrets are out on our sound-suppression systems so that makes diesel-electric an issue. Thanks to all of the traitors that made some folding money for this “little issue”.
This Wall St. Journal piece is the clearest explanation I’ve seen yet of the deflationary vs inflationary forces at work in context of the historical lessons provided by the great depression and the japanese housing bust.
caveat: I don’t buy his conclusions. But his explanation of the current environment seems to be about right.
Diesel-electric subs are only quiet while on battery – when they run the diesels to recharge, either on the surface or via snorkel, they are very noisy and easy to detect. One way for them to mask themselves is to hide amongst fishing vessels. A nice trick, provided there’s a fishing fleet handy. And provided you can avoid fouling their gear.
As for SSNs, USN boats have what is termed a “tactical speed,” which is the fastest they can go using natural circulation to cool the reactor, before having to run their circulation pumps. This speed is naturally classified, but one criterion the Seawolf (SSN-21) class was designed to was a tactical speed three times that of the Los Angeles (SSN-688) class.
By far, the preferred method for a surface ship to engage a submarine is with a standoff weapon such as ASROC. Best of all is for the ship to vector in an aerial platform for the attack, such as a helo or fixed wing aircraft. Modern bow mounted sonars are multi frequency units that sound more like a squeaky barn door than the classic single frequency ping so familiar from WWII movies. They put a lot of sound into the water, which can be detected by subs, but also can provide useful data for other vessels operating in passive mode. But other posters are correct – you almost always need to go active to determine a final firing solution.
Diesel-electrics are more quiet when on batteries than nukes but they are of limited range and endurance. The latter issues are of lesser concerns when fighting near one’s own shore. Fighting in shallow coastal waters is more of a focus than during the Cold War so the theatre has changed but we still need a blue water dominance.
Nukes make noise from their reactor coolant pumps and main turbine/generator and from the boiling that occurs in the steam generators that drives the main turbine. One could add batteries to reduce the noise but I don’t know if that is practical or being considered. One of the colleagues in my office was a USN diesel boat officer so I wouldn’t say that the USN is dead set against diesel boats.
The German designs have something like fuel cells so they have extended quiet range.
Of course, as DanM notes, certain secrets are out – remember the Toshiba propeller scandal?
If they don’t make noise, than active sonar is required.
Maybe the easy answer is that California should have the old “national waters” three mile limit. If the Navy has to defend that nest of goofballs they should be free to at least practice. It would also neatly solve that off-shore oil drilling issue.
As long as we are the only world naval power we will need nuke subs. The powers building diesels are looking at operating near their bases and for limited periods of time. They usually have a specific local issue they want resolved and the desiels are a relatively inexpensive way to acheive that result. Plus look at the Russians, they keep demonstrating what happens when you try to build/run nuke subs in a half-hearted manner.
You hit the nail on the head Steveaz, why should an enemy struggle to develop a better weapon system to match one of ours when all he has to do is find some fellow-traveller to file a law-suit Then the case goes in front of some judge who has no knowlege of warfare, or science, and quite probably agrees that the poor little whales ears shouldn’t be assaulted by that terrible bunch of war-mongering military types. More cost effective and, if you are lucky, the bone-headed legal types will get discovery in court that shows exactly how the radar system works.
Steve Skubinna said:
“This speed is naturally classified, but one criterion the Seawolf (SSN-21) class was designed to was a tactical speed three times that of the Los Angeles (SSN-688) class.”
It’s my understanding that Los Angeles class subs were ridiculously fast. If the Seawolf is three times as fast then it must be beyond ridiculous. How do they keep the water flowing past the sub from cavitating? There must be an amazing amount of “devil in the detail” behind the Seawolf.
I’m reminded of another random question about submarines. A million years ago I was touring the U.S.S Patrick Henry SSBN-599. It was at Mare Island and just about to be decomissioned. While I was outside the Patrick Henry, I noticed an unusual submarine docked nearby that I recognized as the much older USS Seawolf (SSN-575). I asked an ensign standing next to me if that was the Seawolf and he said it was. Then he mentioned something that was quite strange. He said the Seawolf was the “most classified submarine in the US Navy”. Now even back then the Seawolf was a very old submarine. It had an experimental liquid sodium reactor that apparently was not a successful concept. Maybe the ensign was having some fun with me. Has anyone heard of why the old Seawolf was so classified?
Charles,
That Wall Street Journal article was interesting and informative. Where do you think the market is going? When do you think it’ll hit bottom?
Wouldn’t there be a technological means to get out of this bottleneck? One would think there could be means other than sonar to detect diesel submarines. Perhaps there could be a naval version of a fish’s lateral line that could do the same trick as sonar without busting whale eardrums.
Where possible, we ought to have redundant sensory capacity so it would be difficult to blind our ships. As it is, I wonder if an overreliance upon sonar could make our navy vulnerable to an enemy fleet that uses a naval version of Stealth to nullify the effects of sonar.
Modern non nuclear submarines do not have diesel engines. They use Stirling engines or another type of drive whose name I forget. They are not as big as our 688 boats and are harder targets to find. A few years ago in an exercise off the Australian coast a new Aussie boat got fire control solutions on several or our 688s while being undetected by our boats. The US sub navy was stunned.
Eggplant
Not three times top speed, three times tactical speed, i.e. the speed at which it is super quiet and does not cavitate. WWII diesels, for example, were 15 knots surfaced, 3-9 knots submerged. While modern boats are very fast even submerged, at top speed noise is as distinctive as active pinging.
Secondly, in littoral waters a larger portion of the ASW effort will be surface and even land based. Subs rely on passive noise spokes to a large degree. Surface ships, with sound reducing technology borrowed from the submariners, can hide in the same fishing fleet as the subs (goose-gander thingy).
Littoral waters also allow use of Mobile Inshore Undersea Warfare (MIUW)units; land based resources, including aircraft of various sorts.
Further, shallow water sonar has a whole different set of issues, for example, the layer depth may not be operable (a sub hiding place) and bottom strata plays a more important echo, bounce role.
As you can see it is complexity upon complexity.
Finally, no, there are no nifty pictures. It really is a series of rather confusing displays and sensors requiring training and practice to understand and interprete. So to restate, Training wins.
Jay said:
“A few years ago in an exercise off the Australian coast a new Aussie boat got fire control solutions on several or our 688s while being undetected by our boats. The US sub navy was stunned.”
I presume this Aussie boat was one of the Collins class submarines. Supposably these are amazing submarines (all non-nuclear). It worries me that by remaining focused on Cold War era nuclear technology that the United States might be missing out on a better bet like the Collins class submarines.
Charles,
That Wall Street Journal article was interesting and informative. Where do you think the market is going? When do you think it’ll hit bottom?
………
beats me.
The guy’s conclusion might be true. But it didn’t NECESSARILY follow from his premises. My problem was that the guy made a leap of faith from his premises gods ….to gold. (This goes to personality–ie philosophy–which is the end of philosophy.)
Ezra pound put it this way in Canto XVII:
Gods,
Hermes and Athene,
As shaft of compass,
Between them, tembled-
To the left is the place of fauns,
‘
sylva nympharum;
The low wood, poor-scrub,
the doe, the young spotted deer,
leap up through the broom-plants,
as dry leaf amid yellow.
And by one cut of the hills
the great alley of Memnons.
Beyond, sea, crests seen over dune
Night sea churning shingle,
To the left, the alley of cypress.
A boat came
Guiding her with oar caught over gunwale, saying:
There, in the forest of marble,
The stone trees–out of water-
the arbours of stone-
marble.l’eaf, over leaf,
silver, steel over steel,
silver beaks rising and crossing,
prow set against prow,
stone, ply over ply,
the gilt beams flare of an evening”
Borso, Carmagnola, the men of craft, ‘I vitrei,
Thither, at one time, time after time,
And the waters richer than glass,
Bronze gold, the blaze over the silver,
Dye-pots in the torch-light,
The flash of wave under prows,
And the silver beaks rising and
crossing.
Stone trees, white and rose-white in the darkness,
Cypress there by the towers,
Drift under hulls in the night.
‘!In the gloom the gold
Gathers the light about it.”
I was a Tin Can sailor so most of my experience was going up against subs but I have a few friends who are now Bubbleheads and I’ve read up quite a bit more since getting out.
As far as active sonar giving away your position, that’s not really a problem for surface ships since we make so damn much noise the subs know where we are anyhow (slight exaggeration, but not much). You can sometimes sneak by them in rough water with allot of thermal layers but you really cant count on it (during an exercise off the coast a Korea we had a LA surface about 80′ in front of us, good thing are bridge crew where on the ball). Most surface ships are just not made that quiet.
Best way to find a sub? Radio in a P-3. They can drop so many sonar buoys you could walk across the Pacific with out getting your feet wet. The LAMPS MK III we had on board were not quite as good but extended our range quite a bit.
Our Nuke subs are about as quite as a diesel boat, you find a Ohio by looking for the hole in the water (yes, water makes noise by its self). Diesel boat are really just a whole lot cheaper and can work well enough as long as you don’t need to take them too far or stay out too long. Japan’s diesel boats are pretty good and have good crews (I was in 7th Fleet so we trained with them quite a bit.
I’m not sure if the Seawolf used it, but there has been work with using some sort of liquid lubricant to reduce the friction between the hull and the surrounding water. This will help prevent cavitation and let you go faster with out making more noise. Its kind of the opposite of the super cavitations used by the Shkval supercavitating torpedo.
Alexis,
Trust me, there are people looking very hard to the silver underwater detection bullet. Water, however, is what it is.
Jay, the 688 boats were stunned due to overconfidence. On any given day a good crew can beat another crew. 688 boats do a lot more catching than being caught. A canned exercise puts everybody in the box to save time and money. One torpedo, anybody’s torpedo, changes things.
My personal opinion is that inshore work will be better done from the top, leaving the deep diving fast runners in blue water guarding the carriers. But that’s just my bias. SWO.
There is another method for detecting subs; MAD – Magnetic Anomaly Detector. It isn’t as reliable and the range is much less, but pretty much all our ASW platforms use it as well.
BTW, weekend after next I’ll be in New London and I’ll finally stop by and tour the Nautilus, if open.
I’ve worked in the civilian nuclear power industry all my life and we’ve always had lots of former submariners as part of the staff.
I’ve always considered former submariners as people the government held underwater too long. (My family roots with the airdales and the SeaBees go way back.)
The attitude of the Supreme Court’s dissenters, and those critical of the Navy’s use of active sonar — is the attitude of people quite unable to imagine any set of circumstances under which America, or its courts, might not be Top Dog. The whole concept of being acted on, rather than being the actor — the posture of being given the law, rather than giving it — is quite beyond them. Cause and effect and consequences are completely disembodied and disconnected. Rather like the hordes of well-off voting for the more economically redistributionist of the political parties.
History is something that happens to other people.
vivictius.
MAD is long gone. P3 is being phased out. Better stuff out there.
Think orbiting sensors, sosus et al.
of course if the WSJ guy is right then sometime in the not too distant future — we should see gold trading in the opposite direction of oil and other commodities breaking out to all time highs.
Hmm there does seem to be some <a href=”http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2137596/posts”price movement there.
Will someone with a background in forensic psychology kindly do a comparative study of Connery Bond’s Goldfinger with Daniel Craig’s Bond Quantum of Solace. In the former a bond girl is killed with gold gild. In the latter a bond girl is killed by being soaked in oil.
That would double as a zeitgeist.
I’ve heard the P3 is being phased out and replace with the P-8 Poseidon (militarized 737). Not really a good move, it can’t go slow enough, more speed is not always better.
“I’ve always considered former submariners as people the government held underwater too long. – Whitehall
Exactly…. Fast boat people thought Blue and Gold people had a “regular” job. It’s all a function of perspective…
As far as detection in littoral waters, there are also nowadays undersea robots which can swarm out and search, then fire and destroy. Some are autonomous, some are remotely controlled. They are analogous to the UAVs used in the air.
Fuel Cell Systems are coming along and offer a far quieter power system without detectable waste products. The Germans and the Russians are both bringing these to production. The US has allowed the Nuclear power union to stop all possible competitive alternatives to current power technology. I like the benefits that nuclear propulsion brings but that is no reason to avoid developing good non-nuclear inshore submersible systems. The Israelis and the Taiwanese both want to buy such boats from the US.
“Jay, the 688 boats were stunned due to overconfidence.”
Could this have been a case of misinformation? Meaning, they let their allies see them so as not to give up their true capabilities? Or is that wishful thinking?
During war games, do we really show all our cards? Come on.
Someone asked:
“During war games, do we really show all our cards? Come on.”
With the Australians we do. Good sense in my humble opinion. If we can’t trust the Australians then we can’t trust anyone.
All this submarine stuff is below my pay grade. Way too deep for me.
If I say anything, eveybody will probably
know that I am all wet. So here I go down for the third time.
Advantages of nuclear propulsion are the ability to go submerged and stay that way for long periods of time. And to go real fast when submerged.
All the other systems require breathing atmosphere which necessitates a lot of surface time and which slows underwater speed to a crawl lest the batteries/cells run dry
way too soon.
“Shipstones” could cure all this but have not been invented yet.
So nukes should remain the primary, although perhaps not the sole, way of keeping us afloat.
Eggplant, your #36: Dinkum!
This may not seem germane to talking about submarines, but I think clubbers should be aware of the following story.
http://www.drudgereport.com/flashrur.htm
I think this Russian commentary is wishful thinking, along with an attempt to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are those, especially our enemies, who would seek to make Americans completely lose faith and hope in our system of government. They predict America’s collapse in the future because they want America to collapse in the future.
America’s political system and political culture was crafted to have self-correcting features that allow Americans to use the laws we have to eject tyrants or at least reduce their capacity to ruin our political system. While it may not be easy for some Americans to believe in the American political system when the wrong people run the show, we should be aware that our worst enemies want us to stop being loyal to our Constitution because they see our system of government as a threat to their tyranny.
This is why I am so utterly hostile to defeatist propaganda that instills hysteria and hopelessness under the pretext of moaning about government corruption. This is a classic fifth column tactic.
Igor Panarin’s wishful thinking suggests that Russia is prepared to repeat Catherine the Great’s diplomacy against Poland and Sweden, this time against the United States, where Russian subsidies to key political factions (particularly secessionist movements) are aimed at destabilizing the United States in order to prepare the way for a global resurgence of autocracy.
Alexis said:
“I think this Russian commentary is wishful thinking, along with an attempt to become a self-fulfilling prophecy”.
I suspect that Prof. Igor Panarin is trying to project his own country’s recent history onto the United States. Both the United States and the Soviet Union were superpowers. However there was this “minor” difference that the Soviet Union was a totalitarian state maintaining an empire of unwilling vassals versus the United States, a constitutional democracy that was part of an alliance comprised of willing members. However the future can never be predicted with perfect confidence. It’s always a bell curve of probable outcomes and out on the tails of that bell curve are some very nasty scenarios.
Obama really is different and changes most of the rules (for the worse, IMHO). Prediction is usually possible by molding historical experience to future scenarios. However the historical experience appropriate to Obama, e.g. Alcibiadies, Sulla, Cromwell, Huey Long, Ronald Reagan, etc., doesn’t really apply to early 21st century America. We really are on uncharted territory. So much depends upon how well the Democrat party elite constrains Obama as well as which way the economy unfolds, Iranian/Israeli behavior, etc. Very hard to predict. (Un)fortunately, we do live in “interesting” times.
Eggplant,
Subs generally already know the approximate location of the surface ships, although a ship using active sonar will give them more specific information.
The “seekee” can almost always detect use of sonar and radar by the “seeker” much farther away than the “seeker” can confidently identify the “seekee.”
Iran has a number of diesel subs too, and my understanding of the waters in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman is they make for a challenging ASW environment.
Actually the waters of the Persian Gulf make ASW there a joke. The dolphins there dont have to worry about sonar though, a helo just flys around and can see the sub below. The Gulf is so shallow and the water clear enough you can see the bottom most everywhere.
Vivictius said:
“The dolphins there dont have to worry about sonar though, a helo just flys around and can see the sub below. The Gulf is so shallow and the water clear enough you can see the bottom most everywhere.”
So does that mean you carry a couple depth charges in a helicopter and push them out the door when you’re directly over the bad guy’s submarine? Seems pretty grim for the guys in the submarine. At least they don’t have to worry about a slow death in the ocean’s abyss.
Egg,
Helos carry a couple of Mk48 torps.
If any part of ASW were easy, it would not be the Navy’s most difficult and expensive effort.
Subs are the original asymetric force.
But, to get closer to the topic…the court has no clue. Why are lawyers, at any level, involved at all, much less how did the issue get to SCOTUS ? How was a court, any court, able to stop training while the issue was adjudicated ?
We can begin with the Navy itself. Prior to about 1970 the navy had only a few attorneys, civilians, in DC dealing with maritime law events, i.e. when a US Navy ship was involved in a colision with merchant or similar event. Then, for reasons not well defined, a JAG Corps was imposed by the congress…the rest is history. Now all services have had their senior JAG raised to three stars.
So, without attys on staff urging excessive caution, what would of happened if Navy had said NO to the first court’s order on the grounds of that the courts had no standing?
Dunno.
Was (is) Congress guilty of a conflict of interest by inserting ever more lawyers into our lives,,,given that most of them are lawyers.
So is the real issue national defense (military) verses national defense (legal).
Eggplant
The Seawolf was so classified because it was both a test platform for sub technology and an intel platform during the Cold War. I believe it was one of the boats that tapped the Soviet’s underwater phone cables.
Vivictius,
Visibility in the Gulf waters is not that good, and even if it were, an aircraft would have to fly almost directly over a submerged submarine to be able to see it. That makes for a very tight search pattern, which means it is unlikely to be successful.
Michael Hoskins,
The Mk48 is carried by subs; helos carry the much smaller Mk50s or Mk46s.
Here is a three year chart of Gold SPDR’s.
The horror of reading Ezra pound is that his words have no invisible means of support. He wanted it that way. He believed that there are no ideas but in things.
ie there is no transcendent reality.
Per Mr. Eggplant:
“If we can’t trust the Australians then we can’t trust anyone.”
The correct answer is we can’t trust anyone. Imagine a Obama elected president there. They may be one of our MOST trusted allies, but complete trust is never wise.
As to the growth of JAG, I’ve heard that we have a whole division of lawyers in the Pentagon. Sounds like the wrong type of offensive weapon to me and a misappropriation of resources.
Eggplant may know more than I do. From my understanding though; you never trust any ‘ally’ 100%. Especially when it comes to subs.
Earlier I said:
“If we can’t trust the Australians then we can’t trust anyone.”
Patriarch responded:
“The correct answer is we can’t trust anyone. Imagine a Obama elected president there. They may be one of our MOST trusted allies, but complete trust is never wise.”
I strongly believe that we should have absolute trust in the Australians. However there is a historical example along the lines of Patriarch’s response where our trust was betrayed, i.e. New Zealand under David Lange.
David Lange became prime minister of New Zealand in 1984. He found it politically convenient to declare New Zealand a “nuclear free zone” during the height of the Cold War and effectively breached the ANZUS Treaty. Lange knew that New Zealand due to its geological isolation was under no threat from the Soviet Union. Inclusion of New Zealand within the ANZUS treaty had been more an act of courtesy to another Anglo-Saxon country than a strategic calculation. Lange’s action was intended mainly to boost his local political popularity by appealing to idiot/left-wing anti-Americanism (Lange was the closest thing New Zealand ever had to Obama). Lange’s action was very damaging to the United States because the Soviet Union used New Zealand as a propaganda example for promoting unilateral disarmament in areas where there was strategic significant, e.g. Western Europe.
The United States was stabbed in the back by people who we thought were our friends.
The United States was stabbed in the back by people who we thought were our friends.
…………
You want to be careful about overstating a case. Consider an earlier statement you made:
Inclusion of New Zealand within the ANZUS treaty had been more an act of courtesy to another Anglo-Saxon country than a strategic calculation.
…………..
If inclusion of New Zealand was an act of courtesy–and nothing strategic–then at most you can accuse New Zealand of being discourteous–by leaving. Their departure from ANZUS was in no way a strategic problem for the US. (Now consider, a knife in the back– is at the very least injurious– but it can be fatal.)
Hyperwar website has this fascinating report of US submarine damages.
Espically moving is the story of USS TANG which was hit by one of its own malfunctioning torpedos.
AD
hmmm… I don’t know how to link the Hyperwar page so it appears here. So if someone would be so kind as to post instructions it would be most helpful.
In the meantime, the sub report is accessed at Hyperwar/What’s New/ scroll down to the report.
AD
Charles said:
“If inclusion of New Zealand was an act of courtesy–and nothing strategic–then at most you can accuse New Zealand of being discourteous–by leaving. Their departure from ANZUS was in no way a strategic problem for the US. (Now consider, a knife in the back– is at the very least injurious– but it can be fatal.)”
Charles is quite correct. New Zealand’s action was discourtesy and nothing more. Due to New Zealand’s geographical location and having mostly disarmed, New Zealand had almost no strategic importance. The United States blundered in trusting New Zealand since David Lange had very little downside risk in engaging in anti-American populism. However the “nuclear free zone” nonsense and withdrawal from ANZUS did represent significant propaganda damage during a time when we faced thermonuclear annihilation by the Soviet Union. That was our reward for showing courtesy to New Zealand.
If this works out it is a game changer:
Easy Low Cost No Radiation Fusion
A US Navy program. DC output – all electrical drive.