Modern Naval Warfare - Navy Log Book #2

Modern Naval Warfare - Navy Log Book #2

Welcome to the second Navy Log Book. This time we decided to get more technical and give you a tiny peek of "behind the scenes" mechanics.

Submarines by nature are some of the most complicated vehicles ever conceived. In complexity they are comparable only to spacecraft and additionally submarines have to operate in a vastly more hostile environment even if nobody shoots at them.

Your Virginia class sub submerged, well trimmed and underway.

In order to pilot a submarine in average you need to control the propeller turns, the rudder, two sets of planes (one aft and one fore or on the sail), two sets of main ballast tanks (fore and aft) and an assortment of compensation and trim tanks. Additionally you will need to keep your eye on the environment as factors such as sea state, sea temperature, salinity etc. play a part in the seakeeping of the boat. As one of our consultants (and active NCO) has pointed out if you take a submerged sub out of the Mediterranean and in the Atlantic through the Strait of Gibraltar the sub will start to sink due to different environmental factors (e.g. salinity). All of this is just to move from point A to point B without taking into account any navigation or operational needs. No it is not as easy as driving a car and that's why it takes from 2 to 4 four people to do the job depending on the sub class.

In previous US submarine classes there where four people driving the sub:

• Helmsman

• Planesman

• Chief of the Watch (sitting behind them and putting order to chaos)

• Diving Officer of the Watch (making sure the boat sinks, but not too much!)

In the Virginia class subs and through the use of automation these four positions where consolidated into two:

• Pilot

• Copilot

The pilot and co-pilot station in a Virginia Class Block III submarine. Along with the main operating displays all the analog controls and gauges are also working. In fact the "fly-by-wire" and "auto-trim" systems are advanced enough that the two positions are for operational reasons and redundancy rather than for technical reasons. However there are manual overrides for all the automated systems and (you guessed it!) they are duly modeled. "If that's the case" then you'll ask "why there is almost nothing for me to do at the helm station in modern subsim games?" Well guess what? Not anymore...

This time it actually floats! In order for our development team to achieve a true and realistic approach to the matter a standard research procedure is to learn from the works of the veterans of the subject matter (in this case the subsim genre). Strike One! There is NO subsim that actually ever simulated underwater physics! Then the only other alternative is to research the works of the sibling genre; Aviation Simulators. Strike Two! Indeed, the sector of aerodynamics and aerodynamic stability is deeply researched by the simulation development community. But still there is a missing part for a complete simulation of underwater physics; Hydrostatics.

Behind the scenes look of the submarine along with the locations and status of the various ballast, trim and compensation tanks. Also both the center of buoyancy and the center of gravity are indicated.

Underwater acoustics to the rescue. The research and development done on the underwater propagation of sound, a topic of another time and another log book, set