Free Kirov Saga: Armageddon (Kirov Series) by John Schettler

commissioned into the navy in June of
2012 with a host of new technology that made her an evolutionary leap in
undersea warfare. While not as fast or even well armed as the more powerful Seawolf ,
the Virginia class was much less expensive, and went on to become the
primary replacement for the Los Angeles Class boats and the mainstay of
the US undersea attack sub fleet.
    It was one of the first submarines to forsake the time honored
periscope for a newer “photonic mast,” which utilized an array of sensors,
including thermographic and laser-based range finders, and high-definition
low-light cameras. With no eyepiece, the old classic role of the sub Captain
peering through his periscope and ‘dancing with the grey lady’ was now a thing
of the past. Instead the mast was controlled by a joystick to pivot and present
visual data relayed directly to several banks of computer monitors displayed in
a large control room.
    The workhorse of the sub’s sensor suite, of course, was her sonar,
mounted in a spherical bow array with additional sensors in the sail and keel
of the sub. These could be further augmented by both low and high frequency
towed sonar arrays, and the equipment was so advanced that good operators
claimed they could actually detect the sound of Russian sub crews talking to
one another inside their old Kilo class boats, once called “the black
holes of the sea” because they were so quiet.
    The Kilos may have been quiet in their day, but that day
was now long past. Advances in US sonar technology had now made any boat
conceived and built before the 21st Century obsolete. Now the sonar operators
would sit before wide panel computer monitors and watch a waterfall of green
signal data tumbling down their screens, combining the visual sensory information
with anything they might hear, just like old radar operators would monitor
signals on their screen. Human eyes now joined ears in the assessment of the undersea
environment. The waterfall of data would indicate noise for potential contacts
as enhanced white areas within the falling green signal matrix, allowing the
operator to watch the contact as much as he might hear it.
    Information from all the ship’s systems became a data fusion that
painted the overall picture of what was happening outside the boat. The net
effect of all these listening arrays was to collapse the uncertainty factor,
and winnow down the information to answer the same old questions. What was the contact?
Where was it? What was it doing? The information was distilled into range,
speed, bearing and heading, and the system was so good that operators could
even hear sound from a ding on a ship’s propulsion blade. A library of sounds
was recorded and stored on all contacts made, and various ships or subs could
be quickly identified by their sonic “signature.”
     Situated on the port side of the boat, the sonar operators now
shared data with the combat system screens on the starboard side of the control
room. Together they combined to give operators an overall “situational
awareness” of the undersea environment around them that was unsurpassed.
    At the same time, Mississippi was one of the quietest subs
in the world, with new anechoic coatings, noise canceling technology, isolated
deck structures and a novel design for a pump jet propulsor that did not use a
rotating propeller and reduced noise from cavitation. It also removed the need
for a long rotating drive shaft extending all the way to the boat’s reactor. The
old hydraulic systems that once controlled rudders and fins were now replaced
by a “fly by wire” electronic control system, further reducing noise. Inside
the nuclear reactor that drove the ship, water was circulated without the need
to rely on noisy pumps, adding additional stealth. All told, it was said by
some that the new boats were quieter running at their flank speed than an older Los Angeles class boat was sitting idle at a berth in the harbor.
    The business end of