New iranian Sub

Browno, I found a decent pic of the WWII X craft you mentioned, and it does somewhat resemble the Iranian sub

IN the first picture tied up at the pier..you are looking from the bow aft. Just below the waterline at the bow you see the tops of what appear to be tubes or openings. One each on both sides of the bow. They are in the right location to be torpedo tubes. The problem with this type of boat is the loadouts..they cannot possibly have a large weapons compliment. Meaning they dont operate far from base and their next load of weapons unless you can figure out how to get the weapons to them and load at sea. Meaning you dont have airheads for a crew on the tender or the boat. Obviously you cannot load at sea in rough waters.

THe next obvious question is how do you get the weapons down into the hull. Most boats have another angled hatch ..in this case it would be under the artificial turtle shell or turtle back. If you look carefully what you see is two horizontal hinges further back on the hull behind the large grey disc sticking up out of the deck and in front of the big can horizontal on the deck. While not a hundred percent sure ...this looks like access to the inside of the turtleback..or the artificial fairing which covers the actual hull.

modern mines are torpedos...they function very much like torpedos.
This stuff you sometimes see floating with spikes sticking out ..this is something one gets at yard sales...in the weapons arenas. Not that suitable for submarine delivery ..especially a boat like this ..surface ships yes..submarines no.

The sail structure....where the people are coming out of a hatch. First off ..it doesnt look like there is a hatch protector on the hatch. Good work practice is to manufacture a disposable hatch seat protector to keep your hatch seating surface from being scratched up when people are entering and leaving..expecially with pebbles and rocks stuck to the soles of their shoes or loading heavy equipment down the hatchs. If you cut or scratch the hatch at the seating area...you have to weld and rework it. Time and money. Not to mention that if you go down ..and it leaks you can be in trouble.
The picture with the guy bending over looking at or talking to the guy coming into or out of the hatch..look under his feet...Debris....looks like rocks or cigarette butts...but it doesnt belong there. You dont leave debris where it can fall down into other moving parts...bad practice...cleanliness is a good practice ...always. They probably have to put their butts out before going below decks. Good idea too.
This is not a high pressure hatch...by its thinness and construction...it will have three or four dogs or lugs coming out or extended by a hand crank to dig in and hold the hatch tight ..under the lip of the seating surface. This is not how high pressure hatchs are designed. The hatch below it had better be high pressure design and you'd better have one..too. This type of hatch will not well survive an underwater explosion.


The handrail is a solid piece welded handrail...for people entering or exiting or people on top the sail when on the surface. Underway ..submerged this limits speed. Flow noises can move over such a handrail and cause resonating vibrations if they reach the proper speed. This is not a fast moving boat submerged. With that blunt ended can on the deck in front of the sail structure..they will create bubbles if they get any submerged speed thus giving themselves away.

The masts themselves sticking out of the sail structure...they are not faired in .....reinforced. Meaning the boat cannot move fast underwater with the masts sticking out of the sail and extended. You will damage the masts at speed unless you retract them into the stowed poslition. The first one is obviously a periscope. The other one is a surface radar type set...just like you see on a fishing boat. Another reason to think this is not a deep diving boat. But then again ..how deep are the Gulf waters??
The tall mast on the aft of the sail is the snorkle..it appears to have antennas or lights on it also. This mast appears to extend by folding up or down...up on the surface and down/aft on a hinge when underway. It fits into a pocket or a vee notch designed on the back end of the sail structure. This is the snorkle used to feed air to the diesel engine for making electricity and or propulsion power when on the surface. Also this air source would be used to ventilate the boat with fresh air when surfacing. The diesel exhaust appears to come out of a small square or rectangular hole on the side of the sail structure ...foreward of this mast. You can see it in some of the surfacing pictures on the other pages..where they surface and the mast starts swingng to the upward/vertical position to begin snorting air. White water is coming out of a small hole in the side of the sail structure ..this would be the diesel exhaust. This is a simple solution in sucking in air to prevent having to design a complex telescoping mast. The piping you see going behind the sail on the hull appears to be connected to this mast..where it goes back and into the hull to the diesel engine...below decks...the engine exhaust and air intake pipes.

THere appears to be a small hatch foreward...painted red and white. Looks like rescue colours making me think there may be a watertight hatch or bulkhead hatch internally at the torpedo room for isolation. This would be a good idea.

The gray circular box on the foreward deck appears to be some kind of sonar dome with handrails guarding or protecting it..from damage. Probably a good idea especially when in port or in dock with lines all over the boat for servicing.

Do they have enough room on board for oxygen creating equipment. I doubt it ...as most of this equipment uses alot of electricity when submerged. It would take most of what a generator/battery provides to power this type of equipment used to seperate oxygen and hydrogen from seawater.
Potable water for cooking or bathing would be by a small reverse osmosis system...or just from storage tanks filled prior to getting under way. THen again .these guys if extended in missions would probably take salt water baths....if at all. Service on diesel boats can be rough compared to that for which many are accustomed.

As to taking divers ..Seal types out to sea for operations on a boat of this type ..you can do it yes...good luck. It is not set up well for this type of work nor to carry thier equipment. The little can on the deck can carry only so much. Much better off delivering them by air or small surface boat at night....than on this vessel.

This is a bit of what I can tell just by these pictures.

Thanks,
Orangetom

Originally posted by proprog
Iran builds locally-designed torpedos

That's cool.. but do they have any guidance system? If not.. then your taking a risk. It's likely the midget subs will have a very small compliment of torpedoes, and unless you have a trained and experienced crew, your shots will have a high chance of missing.

Originally posted by SteveR
unless you have a trained and experienced crew, your shots will have a high chance of missing.

and giving your position away in the process

Information on Ghadir

very nice Pavil on your link on page 3 to the USS Virginia. Very intresting pictures showing how they get the boats from land into the water. In this case it is some kind of floating barge in a drydock type arrangement. THe boat appears to be hauled onto the barge floated in the drydock and then the barge can be pumped down and sunk to put the boat in the water
This appears to be a variation of how a floating drydock operates where the whole drydock rises or is submerged.

It is ..no doubt a huge undertaking to get one of these boats from a building where they are assembled to a platform outside and then onto a barge...and into the water. Alot of careful planning has to come together to make such movements.

If you look carefully in one of the other pictures you can see the sonar dome of another boat in the building and under construction.

Thanks for some great pictures,
Orangetom

Does the USS Virginia have Trident missiles? or are Nuclear Missiles a Cold War Relic?

The threat were dealing with now is terrorisim so i dont think stuff like that will be used unless the war with Iran will start.

The USS Ohio class U-Boat is the US Navys biggest out of all, Then the Los Angeles Class?

The Soviet Typhoon class U-boats are a beast in designs, Wish NATO had somthin like that.

The USS Virginia as does the other boats being built of this class...also the later versions of the Los Angeles class and the Sea Wolf class carry the tomahawk cruise missles in vertical launch bow tubes..located in the ballast tanks. 12 missles each if memory serves me right .
These Tomahawk missles can be armed accordingly to the mission requirements. Though I am sure it is not told to the public..I am certain a couple of them would be "Special" unless specifically the load out was differently tasked.

Nuclear warheads can be made very small now days. Small, with lots of bang for the buck so to speak. The main item of intrest for this type of weapon , outside of the weapon configuration itself, Is the delivery system. HOw accurate and dependable is the navigation system. This is the main thing being watched for in nations which have or are looking to acquire nuclear weapons....do they have good delivery systems. While just having nuclear weapons is a problem ..behind the scenes and not spoken much to the public is what is the status of the delivery systems.

Submarines are very potent sources for delivery system for this and even conventional weapons.
The advent of The vertical launch tomahawk system from attack submarines is one of the developments which sealed the fate of many of the large ballastic missle submarines ..boomers. This along with increased accuracy of the navigation systems in use today.

Oh by the way..the large Ohio Class boomers ....some of them are no longer in use as boomers ...in the sense of carrying the Trident ICBM missles. They are in shipyards being modified to carry large numbers of Tomahawk missles ..over a hundred of them. They are becoming basically a Arsenel ship...ie..a stealthy arsenel ship. These were very expensive ships to build...years ago. They have found new ways to get the taxpayers moneys out of them.

Thanks,
Orangetom

Originally posted by Browno
Does the USS Virginia have Trident missiles? or are Nuclear Missiles a Cold War Relic?

The threat were dealing with now is terrorisim so i dont think stuff like that will be used unless the war with Iran will start.

The USS Ohio class U-Boat is the US Navys biggest out of all, Then the Los Angeles Class?

The Soviet Typhoon class U-boats are a beast in designs, Wish NATO had somthin like that.

The USS Virginia is designed as a close in Fast Attack SSN, to carry seals, and operate in shallow conditions.

The Ohio is the biggest, and until recently by far the quietest in the USN fleet, but the Typhoon is the biggest in the world.

Wow that is a really good idea! Even with conventional loadouts they would pack an awesome punch.

I bet one of those parked off the coast could give new meaning to "Didn't see that one comming".

How many Tommahawks could one Ohio class sub carry?

They could be quite a force to be reckoned with.

Alot.

Considered a prime example of military transformation initiatives, SSGNs will carry up to 154 strike missiles and be able to sustain more than 66 Special Operations Forces personnel. SSGNs also will serve as platforms to develop and test new weapons systems, sensors and operational concepts that could further transform naval warfare, including large unmanned undersea vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles and off-board sensors.

www.gdeb.com...

They're called SSGN class submarines.

Iranian U-Boat crew logos:
www.iranian.com...

The USS Ohio will be re activated in 2007, It would be boss since the conversion has been done.

There are a few more Virginia Class U-Boats under construction

USS Ohio has performed a clean sweep of her first sea trials after the conversion.

USS Virginia(SSN 774) is commissioned and in service. USS Texas(SSN 775) is under construction and will be comissioned into USN service in April or May of this year. USS Hawaii(SSN 776) to be delivered this year, and USS North Carolina(SSN 777) next year.

I am bumping this thread back up to the front of the Weapons section of ATS such that some can get a idea of how the sizes of this submarine and the new Iranian boat posted here are very similar.

The Iranians must learn the craft of building submarines just like anyone else. You start at the bottom of the design curve and work your way up. You dont start at the top and work your way to the bottom. It takes years and years and years of dedicated work and huge sacrafices. A difficult task for any nation.

Thanks,
Orangetom

Just found this thread, thought I would provide a few additional details and correct some incorrect analysis.

The hull design is North Korean, but it is the Sang-o class. The Iranian version of the Sang-o class can reportedly carry 16 mines deployed by 2 533mm torpedo tubes. Much of the electronics are reportedly Russian and Chinese. They are designed to deploy the EM-53 bottom-tethered mines, a very sophesticated and lethal Chinese bottom mine.

According to a defense document crafted in September 2005 that was leaked out of Iran by a former high ranking officer of the Revolutionary Guard, the Iranian mini-sub strategy is to mine the 4 KM wide strait area near Bandar Abbas supported by over 1000 fast boats armed with 50 cal machine guns, rocket launchers, and anti-tank missiles. Remember, while the strait itself is much wider, there is only one 4 km wide lane that where deep draft vessels can travel safely without running aground in the Strait of Hormuz. The rest of the strait is too shallow. On Navigation charts, it shows 1 lane 2km wide for bidirectional traffic, with 1 KM wide buffer on each side.

An Iranian blog taken down late last year had extensive details of the Iranian mini-submarine program, and many of the pictures were stolen and have been propagated by other bloggers on the web. I think those photos can be found in another thread on this forum. The google cache has expired and is no longer available unfortunately.

The current production rate is 1 every few months since last year. There have been pictures circulated of 3 of the subs launching, with another in construction. It should be finished in a month or two.

The straits shallow water and fast currents make the Sang-O class particularly dangerous. While they don't have the sonar technology to track an enemy sub or even a ship at long range, the subs are perfect for minelaying. Even the Iranians, who have virtually no experience building submarines can have success in the strait, the waters are so loud that detection range would be limited to about 1-5km for even the best sub based sonars, which would make it very difficult for the US Navy to hunt mini subs with other submarines.

Given the ranges in the strait, it would be equally difficult for the Navy to do ASW operations with aircraft until dominance of the coastline has been established.

As far as the Iranian Kilo subs, they have been in poor shape for years. Last summer, Russia announced they might modernize the subs for 90 million per, this would be the first upgrade since being delivered in 1992-1994.

It is unclear however if the deal was signed, or if this ever happened, since Washington never made a stink of it.

www.sptimesrussia.com...
www.cast.ru...

Until the Iranian Kilo's are upgraded, they would be ineffective against modern warships, and would likely be used only in the minelaying role. Remember, they have early 1980s tech sonars, only have torpedos for offensive firepower, they have the propeller noise problem the first Kilo flight had being they were exported before Russia fixed that problem, and can in no way be reasonably compared to the Chinese, Indian, or Russian Kilo's which are much more modern.

Interesting.. This Iranian blog bit.
And yeah I was pretty optimistic about the Iranian kilos unitl I did a little look-see and came up with rather disappointing information..

Originally posted by proprog

that looks like the sub the japanese sailer had on gilligans island

all i could find was this image from that eppisode of gilligan's island