Springroll said:
I would think that an AIP would provide us with the ability to be able to stay submerged for a considerable amount of time longer then what we are currently capable of doing. Would that not be a benefit??
Sorta. AIP is a trickle-charger for the battery. It allows the battery to be very slowly charged, or more usually allows operations without draining the battery too much, and without snorting.
AIP was brought out to prevent something called "hold-down" where a large number of aircraft and skimmers converge on the area of a suspected submarine and try to keep it from snorting in order to wear down the battery and cause it to surface. In practice, a snort mast is a small enough target that a prohibitively large number of aircraft need to be used to prevent a boat from catching enough of a snort that "hold-down" is achieved. Operationally, it's not required unless you're planning to take on multi-carrier task forces and even then the boat is restricted to speeds slow enough that they can't catch a carrier even if they tried. On top of that, the domestics still have to be done every few days unless people are going to stop eating etc, so having the ability to stay submerged for 5 days isn't all that helpful.
CDN Aviator said:
AIP matters because it provides the ability to operate submerged for long periods of time without having to stick up a pipe and snort.
Snorting is rarely a problem with a good control room crew and an ESM system.
CDN Aviator said:
Now as far as your argument or deployment speed goes....well who says we have to deploy one from Halifax all the time. Why not have a sub on rotation deployed up north at regular intervals throughout the year. If the sub is already north ( i'm sure theres a port it can operate from) then what does it matter how far it can go from halifax ?
That's not terribly practical for a lot of reasons, most of which involve submariners and their families not wanting to go on 6 month patrols or live in the Arctic. It would also cost hundreds of millions if not billions to set up a submarine capable port in the Arctic, and would require a lot of highly skilled people and their families to live in the Arctic. Thats really not likely to happen. You could probably get around these issues a bit by having a depot ship, but thats still going to cost almost as much and has a far larger personnel problem.
CDN Aviator said:
Having hunted AIP submarines, i'm willing to say that they offer greater capabilities that a straight SSK. We know that an SSN would be political suicide in this country and that the cost is beyond our reach. A forward deployed AIP is the best solution IMHO.
They're more valuable in an exercise. In the real world, not so much.
At this point new SSK's are political suicide, let alone SSI or SSN.
Dolphin_Hunter said:
If you are indeed a submariner, even a drunk one knows the importance of AIP. I certainly hope the last post was not the first time you were given any information regarding AIP.
I'm qualified. If you have any doubts, I'll PM you my name and you can ask around the MOG.
More importantly, I've actually sailed in unscripted operations. How many times has airborne radar actually stopped you from snorting when you wanted to?
Dolphin_Hunter said:
My one concern with operating an AIP submarine up north is that it should have the ability to come up through the ice, the last thing you would want to happen is a fire or something and not be able to get to the roof.
Which is why the boats would never do more than peck the edges of the ice, only going far enough in to allow getting out on the battery. SSK's have been shown to be too small to effectively surface through the ice.
