NationStates Jolt Archive

CC: Adm. Grav, CinCFLEET

While tests of the Russian designed Shkval Supercavitating Torpedo have been highly successful, this has prompted worries among surface fleet commanders. "Imagine, " Vice Admiral Nicos stated to the DARPA Chiefs, "What one of these could do with a nuclear warhead. It could be ten miles away and vaporize an entire CVBG. Or, it could fling to the surface and hit a coastal city. Even on conventional torpedos, this would greatly limit our options, and is a terrifying prospect. We cannot dodge them without breaking our lines, and ADCAP is likely to fail. We need to break these torpedos invulnerability, and that is why you are here."

Multiple concepts are being tested, with the "HydroShock" being the most promising thus far.

-RADM, Upper, Johanson NAPD

"Okay people, what do we know?" Captain Dixby asked the gathered engineers and NRO Agents around the table.

"Well," stated one of the NRO people, "from R&D and from what we've seen from the original Shkval, it's fired from a tube at about fifty knots, and then the rocket propulsion triggers, kicking it up to two hundred knots. In this mode, it cannot maneuver. After closing, it decelerates and maneuvers to impact with an autopilot head."

Dixby nodded, "But how does it cavitate?"

An engineer scratched his head and spoke, "When the suction on the low-pressure side of the propeller blade dips below ambient pressure - atmospheric plus hydrostatic head - the propeller blade cavitates, and a vacuum cavity forms. There is water vapor in the cavity, and the pressure is not a true vacuum, but equal to the vapor pressure of the water. High-speed propellers are often designed to operate in a fully-cavitating - supercavitating - mode. A high speed supercavitating projectile, while moving in the forward direction, rotates inside the cavity. This rotation leads to a series of impacts between the projectile tail and the cavity wall. The impacts affect the trajectory as well as the stability of motion of the projectile. The present paper discusses the in-flight dynamics of such a projectile. Despite the impacts with the cavity wall, the projectile nearly follows a straight line path. The frequency of the impacts between the projectile tail and cavity boundary increases initially, reaches a maximum, and then decreases gradually. The frequency of impacts decreases with the projectile's moment of inertia."

There was a moment of blank stares from the NRO people as they sorted out the technospeak. One of the Agents asked, "So basically, it's leeking bubbles that make like ball bearings for it to slide on?"

"Well, sort of, but you get the idea. The bubbles reduce the friction and allow it to attain the speeds we see."

"Could we knock the bubbles out?" another engineer asked. "Knock them away, and the tumbling torpedo will be shredded by deceleration!"

Dixby grinned. "Okay, boys and girls. How can we do this?"

Seven hours later, the discussion was still raging. "...you can't just hit a torpedo with a torpedo!" raged Dr. Benedict, one of the chief engineers, "We don't have the reaction time to deploy torpedos to knock out this Shkval, not to mention the hitting a bullet with a bullet problem!"

NRO Operative Henson retorted, "Well, if we just detonate from the ship, it will declare our position for all to see!"

Someone asked, "Well, what if we fired multiple interdiction devices?"

"What do you mean?"

Peters nervously shrugged, pulling up a piece of paper that he had doodled on. "Well, what if we saturated the water with mini-depthcharges?" he pointed to his drawing of a rotary launcher. "I'm thinking, maybe a bunch of small, timed explosive charges in a launcher ontop the sub. You point it, flood it, and eight mini-charges go flinging out, exploding in the water. The shockwave should knock away the bubbles and shred the Shkval."

There was a moment of silence. Dixby pointed, "Genius, boy, genius. Now, how can we make it work?"

OOC: Can we post IC in this? If so... My nation would be interested in development with you.

OOC: Can we post IC in this? If so... My nation would be interested in development with you.
Go ahead.

One of the scientists from Exonerate spoke up, voicing his opinion.
"I think we're going about this the wrong way. For us to disrupt the torpedo's bubbles, we'd have to be in close proximity to it."

Everybody's head turned around to look at the person who had been silent for most of the meeting.
"There are several disadvantages at moving at high speeds - Firstly, they cannot maneuver. Secondly, the incoming torpedo will be very detectable, with its caviation noise. Thirdly, the torpedo's sonar systems will be rendered useless while it moves at those speeds. We should work this into our advantage somehow."

"The newer variations of the torpedo speed up, then deaccelerate to acquire their target, then speed up again for the kill. If we could somehow fool the torpedo into acquiring a decoy..."

"We already have capabilities to distract it and decoy it, but we need a counter for the kill-run. What we're hoping to do is blow the bubbles away, and let the water shred it. In slower phases, we can hit it with an ADCAP, or use sounding beacons and destructive interference."

"You might be on to something," A military engineer from Coreworlds said to his counterpart from Exonerate. "But how are we going to...wait a minute. What if we could make a decoy that sounds just like a sub?"

The man by the door with the turban, who had said nothing but just ate the Keebler's Rainbow cookie, said "Like take the propulsion systems off a small sub and put a warhead on it? Or some sort of recording device?"

"What I mean is that if we could make a decoy, that sounds like the target that it acquires, like say a reactor plant, then the torp aims for it instead of the real sub. It'll probably have to be released as soon as the sonar detects the torp. What do you guys think?"

The sonar engineer from the Burnsian Pirate Sub Fleet said, "We have machines that we use for decoys on Virginia class subs... they actually mimic exacly the vibrations of a sound. With a tiny hammer and bell. Serious. Do you have another M&M cookie?"

"For the kill run, you have an incoming torpedo weighing nearly 3 tons and almost half the speed of sound. As somebody said before, hitting it with another torpedo at that kind of speeds is nearly impossible."

The scientist turned around to face the delegation from Coreworlds.
"Even if sounds the same, we still have to worry about active sonar. For that, we'll need something that can fake it out."

"If you really insist on Peter's idea, we can take it further. A directional underwater blast to meet the incoming torpedo should strip its coating off. What is the probability that it will actually shred itself? What if it just slows down for a moment, then regains its speed?"

"Or possibly, like we have on the Anit-Missile, Bomber, and Spacecraft Defence Shield (AMBSDS), lasers."

The engineer shook his head. "Lasers don't work as well. Even our turbolasers have trouble going very far underwater, despite being highly focused."

"I was thinking more along the lines of a low-frequency, widespread beam. We don't have to be accurate here. Plus we might get some fish sticks for the crew."

OOC: Near-future tech only. No shields or plasma, please. :wink:

IC: "Well, the problem lies in the vengeance shot. We can feed their sonar in opposite wavelengths to disrupt locks, but once it's streaking, crews are hopeless. We hoped to blast it with a shockwave of some sort, because the Super-Cav causes it to tumble inside of the bubbles. It would affect it like a plane striking water, and that could immolate the mechanisms. Our best plan so far is to saturate the water with charges on the approach vector, and just shake the bubbles away. Any better way?"

The Exoneratian engineer scoffed at the comment of the delegate from Burnsian Desert - Not only because his nation had started an unjustified war months ago, but also because of the stupidity of his remark.

"Firstly, as the CoreWorlds engineer already pointed out, lasers do not work underwater. They refract too much. A beam of coherent light enough to burn through a torpedo is impossible - unless you're a few inches away from it."

The engineer continued haughtily, "As if that wasn't enough of a problem, our genius friend here wants to make the beam widespread, thus reducing the effectiveness of the beam even more. I think it is obvious he is not an engineer - the term he is searching for is wavelength."

"As for Kaukolastan's suggestion, there's a minor problem. The depth charges would have to be placed in advance. Secondly, they work both ways. Our torpedos would be impended by them too."

"Agreed. The point of this system would be to fire a spread of charges into the path of the Shkval, to batter it with the shocks. Any torpedo firing within that time would be dangerous, maybe even suicidal."

"So short of implementing some sort of shield technology that many of us haven't even discovered yet or some other ubertech stuff, we're screwed." The engineer complained. "They made these things too damned good."

"All technology can be beaten. All it takes is innovation."

"I fear that by the time the torpedo hits the charges, it will not deaccelerate in time, and will still hit our ships. Even if the warhead does not go off, the impact from the torpedo alone might be enough to damage some of our ships."

"We need something to meet this threat at long range. Or at least something at a range longer than your proposed solution. The best defense against nuclear weapons is to not be there when they go off. Perhaps we should adopt the same doctrine..."

"Furthermore, perhaps pursuing super-caviation technology is in order. If both sides involved possess the weapon, they neither side has the advantage."

"Ah, but the one who fires the first shot gets the first kill. And that is what we seek to eliminate, or at least reduce the chances of a hit."

"In war, getting the first shot is not your objective. Your objective is to destroy the enemy, while staying alive yourself. In that situation, neither side will win if both are destroyed."

"In the end, this might become a standoff type weapon. Like nuclear weapons... Or it might result in a shift from Naval to Aerial forces."

OOC: We are already in possession of an equivalent, and of decoys out the wa-zu. This is for the last ditch effort to give our crews an out. Now, when I say that losing the bubbles will decelerate it, the equivalent is a plane striking the water. The stresses of going THAT FAST without a cushion might shred the torpedo. The explosion would be deflected by the blasts, and although dangerous, would reduce the danger.

IC: "Against the nuclear variants, then vengeance is the answer, but there are conventional variants that we can defend against."

OOC: Gimme an equivalent, I want :P

IC: "It seems like our only option for now are decoys and evading detection. I have serious doubts if the depth charges can provide an adequate defense."

"If this technology could be applied to submarines, then perhaps we'd have something fast enough to escape, or at least reduce the chances of a hit..."

"Super cavitating subs? That's beyond us at the moment!" some of the engineers chuckled, hoping the NRO boys wouldn't get ambitious.

"The best evasion methods are simple. Run silent, run deep, and Destructive Interference can give you that edge you need. But, if you fire, and they spin and fire, you have to cut lines. The only way to prevent this is to fire supercav first... shoot and scoot."

OOC:
Just a wild idea and proabaly useless:
how about some sort of reactive armour plats or essentially mini claymore type thingies that give you the blast/shock wave type idea perhaps with some additional fun (actually on second thoughts this is liekly useless as bl;ast is the msot dnagerous thing udnerwater (most of the time)).

How about soem sort of buddle wall generator to disrupt the cavitation process?

as i said just wild ideas.

"Maybe," (munch, munch) said the "engineer" from TBD, "The bubbles could be disrupted with a large wave. Like with the wave machines at WetWorld, only there is no Ranchy the Dolphin and it is much more powerful. The wave would simply knock the torp off course."

"Well, reactive armor is a bit beyond us, but if it worked, it might save ships. We could detonate from the ship, which was one of the original proposals, but that would declare the ship's location for all to see, and might damage the launching ship, as well. As for the wave... well, how would you get one that big, and the force of impact would not be enough."

"Three words:" (munch) "Pimped out bubblejets."

"Don't you mean, pumped out bubblejets?" the engineer laughed.

"Yeah," the cookie guy smiled, "stupid cookie. The bubble jets will be aimed by the sonar computer. It will blast a highly concentrated blast of water at the Shkval. By the way, Shkval is Russian for squall."

"For once, Burnsian Desert's suggestion has some merit. However, the problem of how to generate such a wave still remains. Perhaps if we took a directional explosive..."

"Like that mine that your nation just announced? N2?" Emily Watson asked.

"Shaped charges?" Peter asked. "A formed copper charge would blast through anything, and the heat would steam the water like none other."

"Like that mine that your nation just announced? N2?" Emily Watson asked.
"It might work... But underwater, its not that efficient. There still remains the problem of range - are there any alternatives to generating a significant underwater shockwave?" inquired the engineer.

(munch) "Heavy metal. But that would register on sonar like a friggin bus on radar."