What's the best way for a submarine to fight off a frigate?

[DJE]

Collide with her towed array sonar?

 

[mjcoon]

When I worked on a Navy project and heard that phrase I could not help picturing a line-up of toads going "rabbit, rabbit"...

 

[ctva]

2020, that took a while to report?

 

[Daydream believer]

You would have thought the frigate would have attached a hook & a worm.?
They could have had great fun reeling it in, trying to gaff it & load it on board whilst it was flapping about. Bash the captain on the head & stick it in the freezer?
Or better still - the "Greenpeace option"-get it in close, sticking a tracker in its fin & releasing it into the wild again to see where it went.?

 

[DJE]

2020, that took a while to report?

Only reported when it was about to be on the TV.

 

[Giblets]

I see the BEEB have corrected their article on line and now include the word 'sonar' whereas the original article left it out and said that the sub hit a RN warship.

 

[jamie N]

I love the jingoism: "Russian sub hits RN ship". One can imagine the 'Colonel Blimp's' of the Home Counties, trying to dip the toastie soldiers in a boiled egg, whilst reading of this outrage against the Empire in the Daily Mail.
What are the colregs for this? Commercially, towing an array has to be conducted only after issuing a warning to keep clear of the area by quite a distance.........

 

[LONG_KEELER]

I love the jingoism: "Russian sub hits RN ship". One can imagine the 'Colonel Blimp's' of the Home Counties, trying to dip the toastie soldiers in a boiled egg, whilst reading of this outrage against the Empire in the Daily Mail.
What are the colregs for this? Commercially, towing an array has to be conducted only after issuing a warning to keep clear of the area by quite a distance.........

Would be interesting to know.
I expect they still tow Walker Logs anyway as a backup.

 

[Daydream believer]

Does one not think that if the sonar actually worked, they would have known the sub was so close, so they would have reeled it in a few feet. Or does it work by seeing if they can donk into something & tell by the type of "bonk" what it is/was.
A squishy noise followed by something biting the rudder off= Pod of Orcas
Bonk followed by a denial of all responsibility = Iranian
Bonk followed by threat of war for invading Chinese waters ( wherever that may be)= Chinese
Bonk followed by Putin doing a version of road rage= Russian
Bonk followed by 3 cruise missiles fired at random= American
Bonk Followed by white flag on the periscope= I leave you to work that one out
Bonk followed by court martial= one of ours
No bonk at all, Cheapo Norwegian, non nuclear one,, showing how it should be done

 

[dunedin]

I love the jingoism: "Russian sub hits RN ship". One can imagine the 'Colonel Blimp's' of the Home Counties, trying to dip the toastie soldiers in a boiled egg, whilst reading of this outrage against the Empire in the Daily Mail.
What are the colregs for this? Commercially, towing an array has to be conducted only after issuing a warning to keep clear of the area by quite a distance.........

So do naval warships show official ColRegs lights & shapes for towing ? Not much use to a submerged submarine perhaps, but should be visible from periscope, and useful for other traffic.
Would be terrible if caused loss of life by damaging a submarine in peacetime.

 

[Sandy]

Clearly somebody was sleeping on duty.

 

[Slowboat35]

I see the BEEB have corrected their article on line and now include the word 'sonar' whereas the original article left it out and said that the sub hit a RN warship.

Which is precisely what I reckon did happen. How could a sub collide with an object several hundred metres deep and a mile or more behind the ship yet suddenly surface right next to it?
Hit the sonar did it?
The hell it did.
Why did the skipper holler "What have I just hit" if they were tracking a sub? He'd say 'The bugger's hit is". I doubt they even knew it was there.
It might have snagged the cable as it tried to get a close-up of the frigate's private parts but hit the towed array? Hmmm.

Suffin' don't smell right about this - as reported.

 

[capnsensible]

HMS Northumberland gets up close with a Russian submarine | Navy Lookout

 

[penfold]

2020, that took a while to report?

Not exactly a state secret given it's been documented in a TV show. Russians having a bad day at the office.

 

[Seastoke]

Collide with her towed array sonar?

Send a newk up its arse .

 

[capnsensible]

Send a newk up its arse .

I see your time at the Joint Services Command and Staff College wasnt wasted then.

 

[Seastoke]

I see your time at the Joint Services Command and Staff College wasnt wasted then.

Aldershot old boy.

 

[capnsensible]

Aldershot old boy.

Where the army goes, the pong goes.

 

[Slowboat35]

Send a newk up its arse .

The Navy lost that capability several decades ago.

Frigates don't "fight off" submarines and haven't done for decades either, they desperately try to avoid being noticed by them and generally fail.
The question is more like whether a sub wants to reveal its presence known by smoking a mere frigate, depending on it's ambitions.

However this looks very like a reversion to the old Cold War tactics of snooping at ultra-close range or even an attempt to cut the sonar away. Regardless, either way the sub seems to have screwed the pooch and the RN was exceedingly lucky bur neither came out of this at all well imho. Towed array should have had that boat pinpointed way, way before it got that close unless the sub knew something it shouldn't do about approaches to its close-in blind-spots and came in real (ie a bit too...) ballsy trying to exploit them.
There's lots we will never know about this incident (such as how long had Northumberland been streaming the array after its last turn) so most of the above is surmise, but the RN will be VERY redfaced about letting a hostile boat get that close, and we also will never have any idea whether she came home intact or curtailed. The latter would be a VERY serious breach indeed if the Ruskies went home with the tail.

A study of the exploits of RN (especially, naturally) and USN submarines during the Cold War reveals almost incredible tales of derring-do right up in the USSR's backyard; trailing their latest surface ships ten/twenty feet below their hulls (How visible is that to anyone looking over the stern?) to photograph propellors and sensors in the Barent's Sea, right off Murmansk!

Russian nuc submarines back then had the sound signature of a freight train while NATO's were by comparison all but silent.
The Russians have since caught up, big time.

We now need to be seriously worried about their subs' capabilities, as this incident shows.

 

[Seastoke]

Where the army goes, the pong goes.

We did have a marine division.