{"id":36776,"date":"2020-04-13T09:00:18","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T09:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2020\/04\/13\/us-navy-should-turn-to-unmanned-systems-to-track-and-destroy-submarines\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T22:56:46","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T22:56:46","slug":"us-navy-should-turn-to-unmanned-systems-to-track-and-destroy-submarines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/commentary\/2020\/04\/13\/us-navy-should-turn-to-unmanned-systems-to-track-and-destroy-submarines\/","title":{"rendered":"US Navy should turn to unmanned systems to track and destroy submarines"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Anti-submarine warfare, or ASW, is one of a navy\u2019s most difficult missions. Sonars detect submarines with only a fraction of the range and precision possible using radars or visual sensors against ships above the water. Submarines can carry missiles able to hit targets hundreds of miles away, requiring searches to cover potentially vast areas. And the torpedoes that aircraft and surface ships use to sink submarines need to be dropped right on the submarine to have any chance of sinking it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These challenges led the Cold War-era U.S. Navy to rely on a sequential approach<\/a> for tracking enemy submarines. Electronic or visual intelligence sources would report when an opposing sub was leaving port, and it would hopefully get picked up by sound surveillance, or SOSUS \u2014 sonar arrays on the sea floor \u2014 as it entered chokepoints, like that between Iceland and the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patrol aircraft would then attempt to track the submarine<\/a> using sonar-equipped buoys, or sonobuoys, and eventually turn it over to a U.S. nuclear attack submarine<\/a>, or SSN, for long-term trail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. ASW model broke down<\/a>, however, in the decades following the Cold War as U.S. submarine and patrol aircraft fleets shrank, the Chinese submarine fleet grew, and Russian submarines became quieter. Today, the U.S. Navy devotes enormous effort<\/a> to tracking each modern Russian submarine in the western Atlantic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the 2000s, the strategy of full-spectrum ASW<\/a> started an essential shift in goals, from being able to sink submarines when needed to being able to defeat submarines by preventing them from accomplishing their mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Full-spectrum ASW and other current concepts, however, still rely on aircraft, ships and submarines for sensing, tracking and attacking enemy submarines to bottle them up near their own coasts or sink them in the open ocean. Although SOSUS has improved since the Cold War and is joined by a family of new deployable seabed arrays<\/a>, the next link in the U.S. ASW chain is still a P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, or a U.S. SSN. These platforms are in short supply<\/a> around the world, cost<\/a> hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to buy and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a day to operate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Workers prepare the launching ceremony of the Russian diesel-electric attack submarine Stary Oskol on Admiralty Shipyard in Saint Petersburg on August 28, 2014. Submarine “Stary Oskol” Project 636 is the third in the series, built to deliver the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Stary Oskol belongs to the Improved Kilo by NATO classification. AFP PHPOTO \/ OLGA MALTSEVA \/ AFP \/ OLGA MALTSEVA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

With defense budgets<\/a> flattening and likely to decrease in a post-COVID-19<\/a> environment, the U.S. Navy cannot afford to continue playing \u201clittle kid soccer\u201d in ASW, with multiple aircraft or ships converging to track and destroy submarines before they can get within missile range of targets like aircraft carriers or bases ashore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Navy should instead increase the use of unmanned systems<\/a> in ASW across the board, which cost a fraction to buy and operate compared<\/a> to their manned counterparts. Unmanned aircraft could deploy sonobuoys or stationary sonar arrays, and unmanned undersea or surface vehicles could tow passive sonar arrays. Unmanned surface vehicles could also deploy low-frequency active sonars like those carried by U.S. undersea surveillance ships that can detect or drive off submarines from dozens of miles away.<\/p>\n\n\n\t