Navy Announces ICEX 2011 Subs

NORFOLK, Va. (NNS) -- Commander, Submarine Force (COMSUBFOR) announced the Virginia-class submarine USS New Hampshire (SSN 778) and the Seawolf-class submarine USS Connecticut (SSN 22) have commenced Ice Exercise 2011 (ICEX-2011) in the Arctic Ocean, March 15. 

USS New Hampshire is home ported in Groton, Conn., and commanded by Cmdr. John McGunnigle, while USS Connecticut is home ported in Bremerton, Wash., and commanded by Cmdr. Michael Varney.

The two submarines will conduct testing on submarine operations in Arctic waters. 

"It is critical that we continue to operate and train today's submarines in the challenging Arctic environment," said Capt. Rhett Jaehn, ice camp officer-in-tactical-command and deputy director of operations at COMSUBFOR. "ICEX 2011 is the latest in a series of Arctic exercises, which are key to ensuring our submarines are trained and ready to support U.S. interests in this region."

The overall exercise has been planned and will be coordinated by the Navy's Arctic Submarine Laboratory located aboard Naval Base Point Loma San Diego. A temporary tracking range will be built into the ice flow at the Applied Physics Laboratory Ice Station (APLIS) North of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. The camp consists of a small village, constructed and operated especially for ICEX, by the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory, and members of the U.S., Canadian, and British navies. 

U.S. submarines must continue to train in the Arctic environment to refine and validate procedures and required equipment, as the Arctic Ocean serves as a route for submarines to transit between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The U.S. Submarine Force conducts these exercises in the Arctic in order to assure continued access to this unique region.

Submarines have conducted under-ice operations in the Arctic regions in support of inter-fleet transit, training, cooperative allied engagements and operations for more than 50 years. USS Nautilus (SSN 571) made the first transit in 1958. 

USS Skate (SSN 578) was the first U.S. submarine to surface through arctic ice at the North Pole in March 1959. Since those events, the U.S. Submarine Force has completed more than 25 Arctic exercises at a pace of one ice camp every two years. Three of these have been done in conjunction with allied submarines.

Rescue submarine sent into action

YOU can never have too many photographs of a futuristic-looking rescue submarine being driven into the cargo bay of one of the world’s largest transport aircraft.

This is the NATO Submarine Rescue System being inched aboard an RAF C17 Globemaster at Prestwick Airport in Scotland as the Navy’s ultimate ‘emergency service’ is tested.

Over the next week or so, the white submarine will carry out a mock rescue from a stricken boat off Norway to test the ability of the ?47m system – and the men and women behind it – to respond to a crisis anywhere in the world.

The distinctive white Submarine Rescue Vehicle is the instantly-recognisable ‘face’ of NATO’s rescue system, which is based at Faslane, but there’s much more to this underwater emergency service which is actually owned by Britain, France and Norway.

There’s a robot submersible used to locate a downed submarine, clear away any debris and deliver the life-saving pods through an escape hatch.

There’s the small rescue submarine itself, crewed by two pilots and a rescue chamber operator, and capable of rescuing 15 submariners at a time – at depths of up to 2,000ft (610m).

And there’s a portable decompression and medical support unit which can take up to 68 deeps.

It requires 28 lorries, two Globemasters and three even larger Antonov transport aircraft to move the entire system – and it’s expected to deploy to a stricken submarine within 56 hours.

Hence the dry (or rather wet) run off Bergen in western Norway.

There’s already been a successful test dive for the kit in Loch Long at the RN’s armament depot in Coulport. But this is the first time the entire rescue apparatus has been moved by air.

“The system works,” explained Brian Grant, the rescue system’s base manager. “We’ve proved that time and again in various exercises but the one thing we’ve never done is transport the entire system by plane.

“We’re confident we can do it – this is just the final tick in the box.

“We train constantly to make sure that we’re ready at a moment’s notice. Our loch dip at Coulport was really valuable in keeping our hand in and was a great success.”

Naval base gets sonar upgrade

State-of-the-art system to detect submarines worth $3.8 million

The capital region's military sector received another boost Wednesday with the announcement that a new $3.8-million facility will be built at CFB Esquimalt to maintain the navy's submarine-detecting sonar system.

The facility will replace an aging building where work on the Canadian Towed Array Sonar System -CANTASS -is carried out for use in patrol frigates and DDH-class destroyers.

"Because the facility will be newer and state of the art, there will be other functions they'll be able to do in the facility as well," said Capt. Craig Baines, base commander at CFB Esquimalt. "But the primary function of it will to maintain these towed-array systems."

The contract for the project has gone to the Victoria branch of Ledcor Construction, said Saanich-Gulf Islands MP Gary Lunn, who represented Defence Minister Peter MacKay at the funding announcement.

"Construction is expected to begin next month and should be completed by April next year," Lunn said.

Twenty-one new construction jobs will be created.

Baines said the 1,600square-metre building project is part of a larger effort at the base to consolidate and modernize the Fleet Maintenance Facility.

He pointed out that the Canadian navy just celebrated its centennial, which, he said, is a great source of pride but also an indication that some of the base facilities are aging and out of date.

"As a result, we're in that predicament where we need to renew our infrastructure here on the base.

So for me, as the base commander, it's absolutely fantastic news to be able to join in this announcement," said Baines.

CANTASS is important for navy ships, said Baines, who described it as "one of the critical systems on board that increases our capability against foreign submarines."

The system trails behind ships like a big hose, and is made up of a series of hydrophones inside a sheath. Each system has 20 12-metre modules towed behind a 1,525-metre cable.

"It's a pretty high-level piece of technology and requires a lot of maintenance," Lunn said.

CANTASS is refined enough for technicians to not only ascertain what types of vessels are in the water, but also, in some instances, detect the identities of individual vessels.

The CANTASS announcement followed Tuesday's announcement by Prime Minister Stephen Harper of a $155-million facility for nine new CH148 Cyclone helicopters at 443 Maritime Helicopter Squadron in North Saanich.

Other recent project announcements at CFB Esquimalt include one last September for a new hazmat facility, and another in December for a new base firehall and emergencyresponse centre.

Lunn said it is all part of a national strategy for improving military sites.

"The strategy commits to replacing or refurbishing 25 per cent of defence infrastructure over the next 10 years and 50 per cent of defence infrastructure over the next 20," he said.

SA sub exercises with US frigate

The Heroine-class submarine SAS Charlotte Maxeke (S-102) has exercises with the US Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate USS Stephen W. Groves (FFG 29) off the South African coast. 

The US Africa Command (AFRICOM) says on its website the exercise, last week, was part of a series of joint-training operations between South African and US navies. Commander Matthew Rick, commanding officer of the Stephen W. Groves, told the AFRICOM news service that the exercise allowed his crew to test their ability to deal with real-life situations they might face during their military career.

"Training with another nation's vessel allows the crew to execute in real time," said Rick. "We train constantly using simulations, but having an actual submarine to train with provides hands-on experience that is unmatched in anything we can do while independent steaming. Combine that with the chance to work with the South African Navy and it was a win-win situation for both crews and nations."

The exercise focused on close quarters maneuvering which allowed watch standers to train in vessel avoidance and contact management. "It is extremely rare to have the opportunity to train with a foreign navy's warship," said South African Navy Commander Darren White, commanding officer Charlotte Maxeke. "We met every objective, and were impressed with the precision with which the crew of Stephen W. Groves handled this exercise." 

Two Stephen W. Groves sailors, Lieutenant Shane Collins and Ensign Daniel Stayton, had the unique opportunity to spend two days embarked aboard Charlotte Maxeke. "It was really impressive to see the professionalism and efficiency with which Commander White's crew went about their operations," said Collins. "They were great hosts, and the whole experience is one I will treasure."

"The crew of the Charlotte Maxeke brought us on board and helped us feel right at home," said Stayton. "I had a great time and walked away immensely impressed with the type of operational tempo and command climate they have aboard." Stephen W. Groves also hosted numerous ship riders from the Charlotte Maxeke. This training was part of the US Navy's initiative to strengthen military partnership nations throughout the continent of Africa, AFRICOM added.

Submarines could become invisible to sonar

Scientists at the University of Illinois in the United States have developed and successfully demonstrated a sonic cloak that could make submarines completely invisible to sonar.

The team of scientists, led by mechanical science and engineering professor Nicholas Fang, announced earlier this month that they have produced and demonstrated an acoustic cloak that makes underwater objects invisible to sonar and other ultrasound waves, finally proving what has long been speculated.

“We are not talking about science fiction. We are talking about controlling sound waves by bending and twisting them in a designer space,” Fang said in a statement. “This is certainly not some trick Harry Potter is playing with.”

Rather than absorbing sound waves, the new material bends sound waves around the object, making it appear invisible.

The researchers tested their clock by wrapping it around a steel cylinder and submerging it in a water tank with an ultrasound device on one side and a sensor on the other. The cloaked cylinder did not show up on their equipment and proved invisible to a broad range of sound waves.

They then tried testing objects with different materials and densities, with similar results.

The cloak itself consists of 16 concentric rings of acoustic circuits that channel sound waves. Sound waves vary their speed from the outer rings to the inner ones, becoming faster further inside the rings. Because speeding up requires energy, the sound waves flow around the cloak’s outer rings, guided by channels in the acoustic circuits. The circuits bend the sound waves to wrap them around the outer layers of the cloak.

The metamaterial cloak can cover a wide variety of sound wavelengths, from 40 to 80 kHz, although in theory it could be tuned to cover tens of megahertz. Military sonar systems operate anywhere from 1000 Hz to 500 kHz, according to an Australian government report. This would make submarines covered in the cloak invisible to sonar, as the sound waves pass around the vessel rather than bouncing back to the sonar detector.

"This is not just a single wavelength effect. You don't have an invisible cloak that's showing up just by switching the frequencies slightly," Fang said.

The technology could also be applied to other areas of submarine stealth, such as cavitation, whereby small bubbles form and implode around fast moving objects like propeller blades. Fang and his group believe they could harness their cloak’s properties to balance energy in caviation-causing areas. Thus, the cloak could be used to keep noise from getting out of a submarine in addition to stopping sonar waves from bouncing back to their source.

Another benefit of the breakthrough would be in the medical industry, where the metamaterial could hide unwanted body parts during an ultrasound scan. The development could also lead to higher definition ultrasound scanners.

In addition, the technology could be used for soundproofing and improving the flow of sound waves in auditoriums.

The use of metamaterials, which have properties that do not exist in nature, has produced a lot of theoretical papers, but realising those ideas has been a challenge until quite recently. In 2008 a report by a research team suggested that a 3D acoustic cloak couldn’t work, but this has been proved otherwise, Science Daily reports. At the moment scientists are well on the way to creating an invisibility cloak that works on the optical level, the BBC reports.

So far, metamaterials have successfully been used to make objects invisible to other wavelengths. In 2007, scientists and professors at Duke University and Imperial College, London, demonstrated an invisibility cloak that could shield a small area from microwave detection, EE Times reported. This could lead to improved stealth fighters that don’t rely on radar absorbent materials to hide from radar.