Or to p.27 with a flowchart of the "Afloat Computer Network Operations", which uses Fleet Comms to connect to the Annapolis, which connects to a set of antennas?
You wrote "subs won't be at the center of the flowchart", but the sub literally is the closest box to the center of that flowchart.
(This is from an April 2012 document which is part of the Snowden leak.)
An airborne drone could do, does, the same job at 0.01% of the cost and 1/0 less lives on the line. The sub is ridiculous overkill.
It's just 100% fewer lives on the line.
The long usage history of sonobuoys and underwater decoys in submarine warfare seems reason to suppose that the use of similar sacrificial systems within the realm of possible tactics to further avoid detection of a submarine.
(2) A parabolic antenna, or any other very directional antenna, requires a stable platform. Either it's on a huge inflatable raft, or the sub is rigidly attached. Either way, the operation will be noticed.
(3) Sacrificial systems in submarine warfare are rare. They exist but, like aircraft launching flares, they draw attention and are therefor only used once the sub has been somehow detected. Subs don't like anything that draws attention unless things are already hitting the fan.
I'm not sure if you are suggesting that an antenna would have to be detrimental to the radar cross-section of a submarine or if you are suggesting that you can intercept radio waves from a high directivity antenna.
For the former, directional antennas are on all forms of modern day stealth vehicles without compromising the radar cross-section of the vehicle (eg. modern jet fighters).
For the latter I have already seen successful systems such as MADL [1] which use highly directional radio waves to communicate between stealth fighter jets (something you would hope would go undetected). So I highly doubt that submarines couldn't have a similar system in place.
> (2) A parabolic antenna, or any other very directional antenna, requires a stable platform. Either it's on a huge inflatable raft, or the sub is rigidly attached. Either way, the operation will be noticed.
As shown in [1], directional radio waves can be sent from one jet fighter to another. Both of these are not stable platforms.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multifunction_Advanced_Data_Li...
Fighter aircraft as remarkable stable platforms. They spend 95%+ of their time wings-level, say +/- 5*. And most of the motions of an aircraft are commanded by the pilot, allowing electronics a momentary heads up to make decisions re antennas. Compare that to a tiny raft in even moderate seas, constantly moving in every dimension, where the random motion never, ever, stops. Many a fighter jock has suffered sea sickness.
In reality this non-story appears to simply be something convenient for the WP to tack on 2 paragraphs of Trump attacks. Kinda weird.
The OP reads like a funding request. It's a pitch for a world where hackers will live inside submarines close to the action, when we know from experience that even when submarines were used to tap lines that the submarine did nothing other than install the tap and scurry away. (They also retrieved the recorders, but then too scurried away asap.) You don't risk something like a sub, and the lives onboard, on information management that can be done from afar. A drone capable of operating untethered far away from the mother ship might as well be controlled from thousands of miles away. The sub may launch the hacker-drone, but no matter the navy's fantasy, subs won't be at the center of the flowchart.