Now that China seems to be ramping up nuclear submarine production to sausage levels, while Russia works to maintain and modernize their nuclear submarine fleet, would it be meaningful for the US to build a cheap minimalist ASW ship class that lacks expensive air defenses? Essentially a cheap sonar platform with basic ASW armament that can refuel and rearm ASW helicopters, alternatively is provided with a hangar and an organic ASW helicopter. Would it make sense to build corvettes for near-home use like China does, or would it only make sense to build ocean escorts like the US did during the Cold War, or neither?
Ideally, Chinese subs would be caught in the island chains, however the US can't count on catching them all there, or that every sub would be inside the chains at the outbreak of conflict. Neither can the US count on none of Indonesia, Taiwan or the Phillipines flipping to China's side, nor that China won't forward base subs at Rybachiy or Guadalcanal in the future.
No
>its another implessive concerntroll
Do you think anyone is suggesting that a fleet of ASW corvettes would be beyond the capability of American budget or industry? There has to be some kind of calculation that the American navy makes that is different from China's calculus and the Cold War American navy's calculus. It's not a lack of money or industrial capability that constraints them
>Do you think anyone is suggesting
no, i think you're an absolute fucking retard because that's the fucking point of the constellation class. having specialized ships is a thing of the past, you either go multirole or go home. lets not pretend like you actually wanted to start a real discussion when you post this inane bullshit
Constellation ships are certainly a lot more expensive than an American 056A or a modern Knox equivalent would be. They're not comparable at all.
Further considering the example of China, they have many tiers of surface warships with ASW capability: 055, 052D, 054A (now B), 056A. The 054A and especially the 056A have cheap air defenses. Why does it not make sense for the US have a tier below Constellation, which is essentially an intermediary between China's 052D and 054A/B?
The US has no use for corvettes. Those would be for the USCG
Can you elaborate on why the US navy doesn't have any use for corvettes, specifically, ASW corvettes?
USCG ships don't have TAS or VDS or ASROC or torpedoes or LAMPS III, nor are they built for quietness, as far as I know. So it doesn't seem like the same thing
>the constellation class
How the fuck are they so cheap, the ordered 6 of them at like a billion a pop.
Built by Italians, but before the euros get uppity. The Constellations may as well be a totally new design compared to the FREMM.
These posts are written by AI
>Rybachiy
Dude what
The Russian naval base on Kamchatka near Petropavlovsk
No I know what you're talking about but lmao at the chinks basing subs there
>Indonesia, Philippines or Taiwan flipping to China.
What the fuck is this cope. The Philippines currently has the friendliest leader to China its had in forever and the chinks still fucked it up. None of those countries are willing to flip. Even Singapore and Thailand are starting to have enough of china's bullshit.
What makes you say that Marcos is pro-China? His political movement is highly dependent on American-controlled social media such as Facebook. Duterte was far friendlier, in the sense that he was playing both China and America against each other in order to extract maximum concessions. Marcos just rolls over for America.
You can't take the political slogans of today at face value and then assume they will be maintained forever. Marcos' faction likely isn't going to be in power forever. Taiwan's economy depends on an electronics industry that likely won't survive the upcoming US-China chip subsidy war into the 2030s, and that change in economic incentives for Taiwan will likely rewrite the Taiwanese political landscape. Indonesia is pretty neutral already.
You can't conjure a fleet of ASW corvettes overnight. The US navy needs to be ready for the eventuality that it does happen. Indeed, such a readiness gives First Island Chain countries and potential Chinese forward base hosting countries like the Solomon Islands less negotiating leverage to extract concessions from the US. ASW corvettes would be a hedge of quite modest cost.
The USN doesn't rely on ships for ASW. They used fixed wing aircraft or helicopters, both of which have essentially unlimited range due to refueling aircraft.
Are sonobouys and dipping sonars really a substitute for ship-towed sonars? Isn't the former what you use to more precisely locate a sub for engagement after the latter has given you an indication that there is a sub in the area?
US CSGs usually have a nuclear sub following them that does exactly that but more effectively since it can sit at an optimal depth and listen.
A nuclear submarine is extremely expensive. It might be a justified cost for guarding a CSG, however what about everything else?
A variable depth sonar towed by a surface ship can be adjusted to be towed at optimal depth
Which is exactly what constellations have at 1/3rd the cost of a Burke.
How much do you think a ship would cost that had a fraction of the Constellation's displacement and dispensed with the SPY-6 and 32 VLS and perhaps also the CODLAG?
Look at the LCS boats
The USN is a blue water navy, we don't need corvettes, the current 30 year ship building plan calls for more destroyers in the $3-6B/each range, a ton of frigates at about $1-1.5B each, and then a bunch of small optionally manned boats in the $200-300m or less range.
>however what about everything else?
For everything else, there is SOSUS.
>The Philippines currently has the friendliest leader to China its had in forever and the chinks still fucked it up.
Duterte is gone bro, it's Marcos's kid in power now.
The U.S. has an entire network of passive sonar sensors to track subs that are near its coasts. The Navy also employs ASW planes. Dedicated ASW hulls are never going to fly, everything needs to be multirole.
What about protection of US forward bases in other countries?
Why is China making the decision to invest ASW corvettes, and not just in static sonars and ASW planes? Is it because of China has a lower relative cost of ships compared to aircraft, while the US has a stronger aviation industry and weaker shipbuilding industry?
american military supremacy depends on redundancy, a billion different systems can perform each other's jobs in a pinch so no loss can really incapacitate it. I'm sure no admiral would scoff at another node in the ASW network but corvettes don't have the endurance for long deployments across the ocean. Other systems already perform their job like said
No. Chinese subs are notoriously easy to track. One time a few years back a carrier strike group was able to detect a Chinese sub and they surrounded it. When the sun finally surfaced it was surprised to see that it was smack dab in the middle of a CSG formation. The chinks seethed hard about that one
An excellent point. I wonder how many can understand it.
Maybe? We mostly use aircraft submarines for our anti submarine warfare. If we really wanted to we could re equip all those extra LCS hulls into their submarine warfare package but since the navy is instead retiring them I'm assuming they don't consider it necessary. Keep in mind that american nuclear attack submarines were designed with the purpose of hunting other submarines and that CSGs usually have a submarine escort
*Aircraft and submarines
Mike Gilday said the LCS are as noisy as an aircraft carrier
Also, the LCS were not cheap to operate
When I say corvette I mean for the purposes of keeping the waters around home bases and forward bases clean, not for escorting CSGs
While on the subject of robotic vessels, a low-endurance ASW corvette seems like a good candidate for being designed for minimal manning or optional manning. It is only at sea for a brief while before returning to port, and it is built with a helipad, so you can send people to it directly from land in case something on it breaks down
>keeping the waters around home bases and forward bases clean
chinese subs are confined to the first island chain, the best defense against them are friendly SSNs hunting them down en route
> I mean for the purposes of keeping the waters around home bases and forward bases clean
We have those. In fact, we have an entire branch that does that. It’s called the US Coast Guard.
How well equipped are USCG ships in terms of ASW? Very poorly as far as I know
I believe the Legend-class (NSC) has an advanced sonar
> The NSC Anti-Terrorism/Force Protection suite will include underwater sonar that will allow the cutter to scan ports, approaches, facilities, and high-value assets for underwater, mine-like devices and detect swimmers.
Well that's something. Does it have SQS-53C style active/passive sonar, suitable for detecting submarines and for ASW weapons control? It seems no, there is no such bulge on the bow. Does it have TAS, VDS? Does it have ASROC and torpedoes? Wikipedia says no. Can it work with LAMPS? It really doesn't seem like an ASW ship.
I mean, it likely has that capability baked into the design but not installed, we know the legend-class has the power and space for VLS-cells but none installed because again, it's not a war ship. If all out war broke out, the US could probably get them upgraded with VLS-cells, towed sonar arrays, etc within a year or two.
As of right this moment? Not great. But that’s because their cutters are generally built with the ability to carry advanced sensors and weapons but aren’t actually built with them installed. Example: the newest class has provisions for Harpoon launchers. Plus, a lot of them have aviation facilities, so it’s not too terribly hard to replace the Dolphins with Seahawks.
Unmanned and optionally manned surface vessels and unmanned subsurface vessels are the key to future "cheap" distributed ASW/AShW.
>minimalist ASW ship class that lacks expensive air defenses?
Minimalist ASWs, sure, but not having strong air defenses defeats the purpose of building these things at all.
Why? Subs with AShMs have been a thing since the 1960s yet ASW ships with weak AD still remained a thing.
Why do several countries build ASW ships with far weaker AD than Constellation? Why do the Chinese build ASW corvettes with just a RAM equivalent?
Sure, but not for ASW alone. We don't need ASW that badly.
>while Russia works to maintain and modernize their nuclear submarine fleet
stopped reading here
I mean, they ARE working on it.
They’re not succeeding, but they are working.