What If ...?

Some cutting-edge research (my concept illustration below) has been tested recently by a team contracted at an advanced submarine projects lab. The concept seems to hold promise for submarine defense against non-nuclear torpedoes, even the 200-knot Russian Shkval ( шквал = squall ). See FAS also for more on the VA-111 Shkval underwater rocket.

The project is naturally shrouded in ultra secrecy. No one has talked about it on record. It has come to my attention by very casual inadvertance. Almost nothing related is yet to be found on the web. For the time being, let's call it a 'what if':

As NASA knows, chemistry has an increasingly significant role in high-risk undertakings. Obviously, that has also been the case for submarines since day one.

Inbound torpedo locked onto your sub despite deploying those decoys and other countermeasures? Why not throw up a neutral buoyancy, high mass barrier between the sub and the attacking, underwater rocket? Imagine a thick, concrete wall. Isn't that rocket going to penetrate it? No way. At best it gets severely rattled and deflected off course with an ugly new and un-hydrodynamic configuration. Hopefully, it just explodes safely in your background.

By now you must have many questions. Most are still unanswered, but here is what can be shared:

1. Material: lightweight, hydraulic super-polymer concrete

2. Set-up time: Less than 25 seconds (accelerated by discrete vibrations from a co-ejected sonar emitter).

3. Storage volume and weight: negligible when dry-stored in outboard flukes (shaped appendages as found on either half of a whale's triangular tail).

New idea? Almost as old as submarines. Consult naval history and see (1991) US Patent 5069109 - Torpedo countermeasures, for example. Updated concept uses advanced concrete versus nets. More on those 345 MPH torpedoes here.

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Submarines are always silent and strange.