What would be the strategic advantages of a true deep-diving submarine capable of operating at oceanic trench depth...

What would be the strategic advantages of a true deep-diving submarine capable of operating at oceanic trench depth? Current subs are only capable of safely diving 600 meters or so. That's about 5.5% of the depth of the deepest parts of the ocean. How would it change military strategy if there were subs capable of handling ANY oceanic depth? What would such vessels look like?

Attached: fo0227_marianatrenchweb2[1].jpg (620x3205, 673K)

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Prolly verry little,most of the targets you are interested in hang around at or above sea level and your weaponry and detection work best close to the surface. I guess the same could be asked of aircraft but there aren't cargo-subs, close-marine-support and other non attack-sub submarines to my knowledge.

The use of underwater weaponry is relativley limited compared to regular marine, aerial or ground-based systems so the use of the entire ocean floor isn't nececary, and besides, 99,999% of the worlds oceans aren't the Mariana trench.

Theoretically you could reach underwater cables in international waters and snoop on/cut them, but that's pretty much about it.

First of all, it would make submarine warfare truly three dimensional, as an enemy sub can now be expected to be anywhere in ghe ocean, not just in the 600m topmost layer. You might not detect them even passing directly under you if they are deep enough.

>going into Underwater Vore Hell
>ever

first of all, that image is bogus as the max operational depth of military subs is wizard-class top secret information that not even most of the crew are let to know.
there are limits that the crew needs to reach in peacetime trials but wartime performance is an entirely different beast.

the real issue with ops in those depths isn't the pressure, but that the best way to hide in the ocean is being on the other side of the thermocline.

subs (in real life, not hollywood subs-chasing-subs fantasy land) are sitting ducks when found, decoys only buy you time and are not magical smoke screens you can vanish into.

the trick to staying alive is not being found in the first place, and the key to that is being able to dive over or under the thermocline.
going deeper will just make it harder for you to reach it.

a torpedo with a modern sensor suite doesn't care if you are 10 nautical miles away horizontally or vertically, as long as you are on the same side of the thermocline it will hit you with almost certainty.

and a torp is much easier to harden against high pressure than the crew compartment of a manned sub.

it is actually much easier to detect something under you than ahead of you because the speed of sound increases with depth and you have to filter out less interference from currents which are mainly going horizontally.

cables are already reached via remote controlled underwater drones (called UUVs), no need to dive the entire sub to those depths.
this is standard practice and basically all major cables are tapped this way.

last but not least, the biggest advantage and main role of ballistic subs is that they can break to the surface within a minute of receiving launch orders, this gives them extreme first and second strike capabilities.

going to the ocean floor would entirely defeat that core mission.

Attached: ThermoclineSeasonDepth.png (390x401, 53K)

More interesting to me is the concept of underwater submarine depots at current operating depths

What a fantastical idea worthy of a short story

there were plans to detonate thermonuclear charges in the ocean to create underwater craters which would then covered with a dome, thus creating a giant diving bell for subs to park.

the problem with that is that when you set off nukes in the ocean everybody with an underwater triangulation system (aka every blue ocean navy) and their grandma can pinpoint the position.

We should go set off bombs in the Mariana trench

waste of nukes. nothing would happen other than some slight bubbles at the top half an hour after the detonation.
the trench isn't a steep grand canyon type abyss depicted in OPs image and most other media.
the slope going to the bottom is extremely flat compared to land features, and is more a continous hill.

Losharik is supposed to be operational soon.

>current subs are only capable of safely diving 600m or so
Yeah uh nah as previously mentioned test depth and actual crush depth on modern subs is ultra extra super duper top secret stuff, but it's safe to assume we can probably do better than 600m

Yes, but everybody else would think we were building a sub hangar down there; just think of all the effort they'd have to put out trying to match our supposed deep-sea capabilities and spy on our secret Mariana sea station.
We could bankrupt China with the Sea Race the same way we bankrupted USSR with the Space Race.

It would mean that you could have mobile undetectable nuke carriers very close to enemy shores.

>the max operational depth of military subs is wizard-class top secret information that not even most of the crew are let to know.
Maybe in your shit navy.
Max depth can be roughly figured from hull thickness. Did you see the drydock pics of the Kursk? Do you know the yield strength of steel?
You cannot build a submarine that can both travel to the Trench and resurface from the bottom. It simply will not float.

The weird thing to me about Losharik is that the USN apparently considers that class of sub an unnecessary luxury (NR-1 was retired with no replacement).
Meanwhile the Russians are beyond cash-strapped and still think they need it.
Why?

They just think differently. There was a physics question that Americans thought was impossible but the Soviets were readily able to answer. Russians also has an anti satellite satellite that can change orbit and get near another satellite in order to compromise it. They had tank drones during World War 2.

Also Losharik is old.
hisutton.com/Spy Sub - Project 10831 Losharik.html

thermo toros have a max depth, below which the engine can no longer expel exhaust and stalls.

wont tell you how deep tho

Americans also thought that unmanned turrets are not worth it but Russians think otherwise.

>the deepest we can go in the ocean is 600m

It really puts into perspective how big of an impact vertical distance has compared to horizontal distance. If you were to walk straight up into the sky for 15 minutes, you would hardly be able to recognize the ground below you, while the farthest I could walk in 15 minutes is the front gate to my housing edition. Weird stuff.

You havent been flying a lot have you?

I have and that only further proves my point. You could walk up for 2 hours and reach cruising altitude for a passenger jet which is so incredibly high, you start to see the shape of the earth, while walking horizontally for 2 hours wouldn't even get you to another town.

looking at that picture makes me irrationally uneasy

>the max operational depth of military subs is wizard-class top secret information

Okay, let's say there is a massive fudge-factor of 10. This would require either new physics or super-classified hull materials like exotic graphenes which can endure insane PSIs (or kilograms per square centimeter depending on your preference), but it would still get hardly 60% of the way to the maximal ocean bottom.

I may have misunderstood you then, but yeah, earth is big if thats your point.

I was really just making an observation on how it's weird that really high elevation is such a small distance compared to far distances on the ground. The distance it takes you 12 seconds to cross on foot will kill you if you fell that far and that's always difficult for me to wrap my head around.

>he doesn't know