Most of the Navy comments seemed to indicate that the Russian sub hit the tower sonar array by accident. Nonetheless, accident or not, it did stop HMS Northumberland from continuing to track the sub, and allow the Russians to go on doing whatever they were doing without interference or detection. Not ideal and certainly not what you would want in a fighting war.

You are assuming that the ship was alone and no other UK or NATO ASW assets were involved. I think that is very unlikely.

Video Mix:
True, but still not ideal: neutralising the anti-sub capability of a major warship has to be a win for any opponent, however well supported she might be by other assets and allies. Taking out a towed sonar array now has to be in the tactical playbook for any submarine, however risky.

It happens more than you think on both sides. Northumberland had a breakdown on her towed array just prior to the incident. What does surprise me is that her Merlin wasn't up tracking the sub during the outage. Dipping sonar and buoys should up to the task, especially when you know you have a CERTSUB 6 miles off your port quarter

Only if you can convincingly make it look like an accident. Doing it on purpose (in peacetime) would presumably be construed as an act of aggression, potentially inviting consequences. In wartime, if you can get close enough to make physical contact with its sonar array, it probably wasn't that much of a threat anyway...

I seem to have read somewhere that the ship's helicopter had in fact seen a periscope, so presumably it was available. The TV programme is obviously heavily edited, and I am sure many events are omitted, or shown out of sequence, for reasons of security, brevity or good storytelling. Nonetheless, a towed array, however useful, does seem rather vulnerable. But probably that is a price you pay for effectiveness. And it makes for a very good TV programme...

In the event of a fighting war, if you can get close enough to an ASW ship take out its towed array, wouldn’t a torpedo or missile be your preferred tactic?

Unless of course you’ve run out of them.

I was wondering about the nature of the threat to undersea cables posed by Russian submarines and how it can be countered short of sinking the sub. Presumably such an attack would require the use of a submersible launched from a mother-sub, which would then have to loiter on station to support the submersible and recover it when the deed was done. Defensive tactics are no doubt highly classified, but maybe in peacetime it'd be something like using disruptive ASW tactics to either prevent the submersible from being launched or to shepherd the mother-sub off-station leaving the deployed submersible and its crew stuffed.

I think this misses the fundamental that the submarine was compromised once it was detected and tracked.

The programme was showing a fast rotating PPI display while talking about the Sonar. Does the Sonar have a PPI display as well as the "waterfall" screens?

Surely the preferred option is to tap the cables, rather than to break them. A bomb will break any cable efficiently, no need for mini subs to do that.
Both the US as well as Russia have specialized bottom crawling subs whose most plausible routine use is to place and maintain cable tap installations.

Its much easier to hack into the machines at either end of a cable than use an SSN to do it - but it gives the navies something to do

Norway seems to have had some 'unfortunate' problems with its undersea cables over the past year.

"Give me a ping`,Taz.One ping only".......

The Royal Navy has form using X-Craft miniature submarines. They were required to bring back severed sections of the cables to prove the success of their missions:

Having just managed to watch the latest episode of Warship - Life at sea, I am again struck by what an omnishambles the whole thing makes the Navy look. Leaving aside the now obligatory fire , and extraction of crew members by Merlin for drug taking, this episode's drama of the flooding caused by a torn seal around the base of the gun barrel and the consequent hand bailing out exercise verged on the comical. Given how vital the mission was said to be, with the attendant and inevitable for channel 5 race against time, the 50% reduction in speed did seem like an obvious handicap, Why did they not rotate the gun to move the seal out of the way on the onrushing waves? On planet earth in 2022. there must surely be a better understanding of how to design ships than this, and better and more effective ways to remove flooding.
Returning to the main event, it is surely not without relevance that while the sub was at close quarters, and before any damage to the towed array, the system went U/S. The Merlin was still not deployed . When the circuit boards had been shuffled to restore the system, the sub was nowhere to be found.
Are Channel 5 documentary makers a Jinx on any vessel they are aboard, or is it really as bad as it seems?
Next episode awaited with baited breath and a deep sense of foreboding......

You can’t turn a 4.5 360 degrees on a T23; despite the seal being split, the forward aspect is still the strongest to face heavy seas. Turning the gun would’ve risked damaging the entire turret.

a-t-g,turning it 360 would not resolve the problem.....! "For a ha`pennyth of tar,the ship was compromised"....

A-T-G I find it hard to imagine that the gun mounting would have an asymetrical ability to withstand the force of the waves, not least as they need to be able to withstand the recoil of the gun in any potential firing position. Turning it 90 degrees would have done the trick. If you are saying the gun mountings can only withstand waves breaking over the bow if it is pointing straight ahead, it makes the design of the gaiter even more lamentable.

Have you included the shape of the turret in your thinking? I have never seen a turret faced anything other that forward in heavy seas, and that includes a typhoon that bent the gun director located on the upper deck in the lee of the bridge.

But the mounting is not the weak point, the GRP turret is.

There is - somewhere - a fairly interesting photo from a T23 who did what you suggested, and it was entirely stoved in.

Im happy to admit that I am no naval architect, but would the GRP not have been a better solution than the hole in the gaiter? Would speed have needed to be reduced by so much?
My principal question remains: surely there must be a way to have designed around this issue? The scenario of waves breaking over the bow in heavy seas is hardly a black swan event.

23s are nearly 40 year old designs, you deal with what you’ve got!

Whilst you're waiting "with baited (sic) breath and a deep sense of foreboding", you might like to have a look at https://www.arrse.co.uk/community/th...307721/page-10 onwards which I hope will give you a fuller explanation of the problem, which is actually with a turret, rather than a mounting.

Jack

Thanks Jack, that was an interesting read, from which I would deduce that the leaking barrel shroud is a common, known problem, and that rotating the turret is a known mitigant of the water ingress, albeit it may not have been possible without sending someone on deck, which looked quite precarious.

Its common in rough seas to traverse the mounting to avoid water ingress. To be honest, I've seen much worse weather than that.
It doesn't always work though. HMS Sheffield had the armoured roof of her foremost turret ripped off in a storm in WW2!

Can't find a reference, but I'd have thought it'd be pretty difficult to steal a TA given size, weight, reeled up in winch, etc. - might have been a towed body?


Very little of what was shown was TA.