Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
I like the Gotland's but they're no faster then the Victoria's. They're also a tiny boat with a crews compliment of about 40 people. Both the Victoria and the Gotland could be described as pure coastal patrol boats.
Neither is well suited to carry boarding crews or do boarding actions.
Also the Gotland is slightly slower then the Victoria, and has the advantage of a AIP system for greater underwater transition range, neither is well suited to patrol the arctic or go under ice.
If you want to do specialized missions like inspections and boarding you need a boat that can keep up with a pursuit, you also need the intimidation factor, Submarines are more designed for intelligence gathering and sneaking and punching large holes in unsuspecting ships.
I just think that Subs are ill suited to the mission your talking about. Where they are helpful is to covertly track suspicious ship and call in assets to seize and board.
If we decided that we just wanted to kill vessels that were doing illegal activities (smuggling, drug running, illegal fishing) then I would say go for it, but it seems expensive to use a torpedo on a boat.
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I just think that if our navy is ever in a shooting situation against some other navy, we need something that punches above its weight. We have a very limited defense budged and more coastline than any other country on the planet. For $60 billion dollars we could buy over 100 of the Gotlands successor boats. They're far cheaper than nuclear.
These things are so deadly that the Americans leased one from Sweden to study it after it snuck up on a carrier battle group and killed the carrier in training exercises before slipping away. AIP subs are the hardest to detect.
They aren't the ideal boat for going under ice but can still do it. They can go 18 days and travel 4000 kms submerged, quiter than any other sub. We would be able to enforce our northern sovereignty, something frigates can't do.
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