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Old 18th Jan 2022, 12:52
  #822 (permalink)  
Dryce
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
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Originally Posted by Going Boeing
As Rattman said, it’s the depth of water around the harbour that is important.

In deep water, the submarine can change depth to sit just above or below temperature inversions to reduce the chances of detection from noise produced by the boat. In shallow water, the submarine captain has fewer evasion choices so enemy ASW assets (including submarines) can focus on the waters around the harbour to pick off submarines entering or leaving.
You don't usually park your expensive SSN close to harbour worrying about layers and temperature.

The advantage of being close to deeper water is speed of deployment.

A SSN can trundle about the depths at sustained speed. But there are are operational consrtaints. It needs a specific range of depth to do that speedy trundling safely in peacetime with a decent amount of water above and decent amount below.

So if you sit your SSN harbour facility somewhere where there are 100s of km of shallow waters to transit then getting the boats in and out means a slower transit time - if you lose a couple of days or more getting out and the same again getting back then that reduces time on station and adds to your lifetime costs.(Losing 4 days on 90 day patrol is 5% over the lifetime). If you end up doing much of that transit on the surface then you're visible and vulnerable.
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