USS Virginia Update
The New London Day has a decent article giving an update on USS Virginia (SSN
Hurt, the leading petty officer in the torpedo room, was confident in the crew's abilities to take on the Hartford.I like to see confidence among young submariners -- I'm sure the crew of the Hartford is looking forward to schooling the crew of the Virginia as well. While the newer boat should have the advantage, I would caution them that there are three submarines out there that are just as quiet, and a lot faster. Quiet is good in submarine combat, but speed is life.
“The only enemy a submarine has is another submarine,” he said. “We know each other's practices, so it's who's got the upper hand, who's faster at the draw, like a showdown at the O.K. Corral. We're going to win.”
There is no comparison acoustically between a Virginia-class submarine like the Virginia and a Los-Angeles-class submarine like the Hartford, Hurt said. He refers to other classes as “Brand X.”
“In the submarine world, if you're the quiet guy you'll come out on top all the time,” he said. “Acoustically we'll tear them up.”
Edited 2156 03 March to correct a typo.
posted by Bubblehead at 5:54 AM
22 Comments:
And yet, I've seen a "Brand X" sub school one of those three you like to brag on ;-)
3/03/2008 7:44 AM
774, not 773
3/03/2008 9:36 AM
Yeah a Seawolf class ship has more speed and stealth but who cares since they all will spend most of their time tied up to the pier on shorepower.
3/03/2008 9:52 AM
don't want to violate opsec or anything, but is the Seawolf that much faster than the Virginia?
3/03/2008 10:04 AM
Used to love being on a 637 with a steel sonar dome and get the occasion "win" against a 688. It was rare as we were louder, slower, and deafer, but it happened sometimes.
3/03/2008 11:59 AM
Granted a SEAWOLF is many db quieter than a 637, but the 637 source levels are already so low that, with the typical propagation loss curve, the difference in db doesn't translate into much difference in detection range against each other.
3/03/2008 1:22 PM
"Yeah a Seawolf class ship has more speed and stealth but who cares since they all will spend most of their time tied up to the pier on shorepower"
Wow, I wish I knew that during those three deployments I went on.
3/03/2008 7:42 PM
"Wow, I wish I knew that during those three deployments I went on."
Dude, shut your freakin pie hole...a damn dependents cruise does not count as a deployment. Talk to me when you have 187 days EMCON and the only reason you surface is to bring on food and candles. Then you turn around and go find the Alpha that you broke with to get the food...all the time nobody onboard complains. You SEAWOLF fags are a bunch a whiney ass bitches! Get PWND by real submariners!
3/03/2008 8:59 PM
i'll just say that ALL those 637's are pretty quiet now :)
3/03/2008 10:39 PM
I have it on good authority, that an Ohio "PWND" the Providence.
3/04/2008 8:35 AM
"2nd Anonymous... Dude, shut your freakin pie hole"
If you are going to flame someone like that at least have the courtesy to post a name or alias, not just do it with "anonymous". I am sure that if there were still Alphas to chase the the Seawolf class could give a good acount of themselves.
That is not to take anything away from what your crew did, either, but I just can't believe that his three deployments were milk runs as you imply.
Chief Torpedoman
3/04/2008 12:03 PM
PWND....ummm... people with neurological disorders?
3/04/2008 1:46 PM
"...all the time nobody onboard complains"
Ok, you had my until there. Unless you were crewed by lifelike animatronic robots, SOMEONE was bitching. NAV ET? Sonar girls? SNOB? Come on, someone's panties were in a sharp twist...
3/04/2008 1:47 PM
Those who say don't know, and those who know don't say.
Look, even an old obsolete donk in shallow waters can ruin your whole day under the right - or rather the wrong - circumstances.
Even if it's only by laying a few smart influence mines in the channel leading to your homeport.
3/04/2008 9:25 PM
While I appreciate the newer platforms are much better from a technological standpoint, I would rather have a good crew on an older 688 than a lousy crew on anything else. Not that the newer crews are bad....but the crew is the difference. We train so hard and so long that realistically, it often boils down to a mistake made on one boat before the other.
3/05/2008 4:19 AM
"While I appreciate the newer platforms are much better from a technological standpoint, I would rather have a good crew on an older 688 than a lousy crew on anything else."
Well said!
3/05/2008 6:44 AM
Some barely literate 12 year old misspelled "owned" as "pwned" playing a FPS, and now we're stuck with it. If anyone "pwned" anyone else, it was Navy pwning you the second you raised your paw at MEPS and said "I do". The Navy LITERALLY owns your dumb ass, kind of like owning a slave, only without the moral obligation to treat you humainly in the hopes you live long enough to get some work out of you.
And don't toss puppies off a cliff because you're bored. Or, if you do, don't post videos of it on YouTube... TSSBP!
3/05/2008 7:12 AM
This harkens a little back to a post Joel made about the training awhile back, but I think theirs a big difference between what we see in the artificial world of exercises when everyone's got their game face on for a couple hours, and what the likely scenario would be in a conflict. In the exercises the quite guy usually wins.
In a real conflict, where we might be looking for the guy for days, I would take the most disciplined sonar shack (if such a think exists) and/or the fastest FTs over the quietest boat.
3/05/2008 8:31 PM
i don't know. MY seawolf was noisy, slow, and temperamental. and she could stay out and submerged continuously for enough days with 30 spooks on board to get a NUC for setting the underwater endurance record.
yup, give me a shit hot crew anytime over a shit hot boat.
there's a reason they named a new class of boats after the old seadog.
3/05/2008 11:27 PM
Yes there were disciplined sonar divisions! I was in one on a Boomer. In an exercise, we "pwned" one of the newest 637's which were the best at the time.
3/06/2008 3:17 PM
"The only enemy a submarine has is another submarine" ?? That might be true in a one-on-one, but surface ships have the ability to use helicopters with sonar buoys and to gang up on submarines. Submarines are the snipers of the naval forces, and they were prosecuted harshly during WW2 after getting some tonage. That's probably why most submariners never came home.
3/09/2008 8:13 PM
Drill, drill, drill. That's the way to win. If you run endless fakes on the boat, the real ones will fall into place. Plus, i don't know any bubblehead who is a "pussy" or doesn't know his station, or isn't serious when serious is important, so whoever said those things is either bitter, or uninformed. If someone is a FU he will get 86ed pretty quick. Boomer, or Attack, US boats are way better crewed, drilled and trained than any other country's boats. Period! The only enemy a submarine has is an insufficiently trained and drilled crew.
5/10/2008 3:44 PM
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