Re: Wet Navy in the future

> > I'd expect to see lots of smaller vessels and brown water navy stuff
> > on the edge of controlled spheres of influence. Smaller vessels up
to
> > frigate size would be useful on some worlds for Coast Guard type
> > duties.

Probably these will operate all over the oceans, too. If you think in
scenarios somewhat smaller than full-out war, there is enough to do for
small-to-medium sized policing vessels. If you suspect a vessel of
exceeding
its quota of the shark-whale catch, or find that cruises liner has been
taken over by pirates, you don't really want a nuke from orbit as your
only
option.

> > Most roles would be coast guard type S&R or Police work.

Which will be desirable all over the oceans.

> As long as ships transport goods, and the oceans remain mostly opaque
to
long rang sensors,
> there will be subs.

In fact, there are scenarios where bulk cargoes are shipped by
submarines.
Subs need less energy than surface ships. Main problem nowadays is an
efficient airless drive - nuclear reactors are out of favor for civilian
shipping nowadays. Such cargo subs would, of course, be as different
from
war subs as freighters are from warships. They would not need to dive
very
deeply, nor would they have to be especially stealthy.

> Neutrino detectors will render all forms of nuclear propulsion for
subs
obsolete from
> a stealth perspective [these are science fiction detectors that do not
> require many tonnes of heavy water and can block neutrinos from
directions
> other than where it is pointing, more sensitive too].

Hardly. I know a bit about Neutrinos (did a Ph.D. on them, in fact).
From
basic physics, there is no way you can detect neutrinos from a nuclear
reactor with any efficiency without a lot of mass (not neccessarily
heavy
water). So your sub-detection sattellite will be HEAVY. Present-day (not
SF)
neutrino detectors can define the direction from which the neutrino is
coming. But the resolution (again from basic physics) is so poor that
you
may perhaps be able to detect the presence of a submarine within the
search
range of a ASW plane, but little more. A neutrino detector is not the
end of
nuclear submarines.

Greetings
Karl Heinz