Submarines Get Quieter

choi

Anti-submarine warfare | Seek, but Shall Ye Find?  A proliferation of quieter submarines is pushing navies to concoct better ways to track them. Economist, Aug 6, 2016,
http://www.economist.com/news/sc ... concoct-better-ways

Note:
(a) "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."  Matthew 7:7 (King James)
(b) "DURING war games played off the coast of Florida last year, a nuclear-powered French attack submarine, Saphir, eluded America's sub-hunting aircraft and vessels with enough stealth to sink (fictitiously) a newly overhauled American aircraft-carrier, Theodore Roosevelt, and most of her escort. * * * Saphir, launched in 1981"
(i) Rubis-class submarine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubis-class_submarine
(first-generation nuclear attack submarines of the French Navy; All submarines of the class (except for Casabianca [the last name of a French warship captain (1762 – 1798)]  are named after gemstones: lead ship is Rubis [commissioned in 1983- ], ship 2 is Saphir [commissioned in 1984])

* The "casa bianca" is Italian for a white house.
casa (noun feminine; Latin noun feminine for "house"): "house"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/casa

And "bianco" is Italian adjective masculine for "white."

(ii) French-English dictionary:
* rubis (noun masculine; from Latin adjective masculine rubeus red)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rubis
* saphir (noun masculine): "sapphire"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/saphir
(iii) USS Kitty Hawk (commissioned in 1961; decommissioned 2009) is the lead ship of Kitty Hawk-class aircraft carriers, which were succeeded by Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, which included USS Theodore Roosevelt (commissioned 1986).

(b) "For an inkling of the silence of the new generation of such subs when they are running on battery power alone, without their engines turning, Jerry Hendrix, a former anti-submarine operations officer on the Theodore Roosevelt, asks: 'How loud is your flashlight [which also runs on battery]?' "

choi

(c) "American carriers retired the S-3 Viking submarine-hunting warplane in 2009, leaving shorter-range helicopters to compensate."
(i) Lockheed S-3 Viking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_S-3_Viking
(Introduction 1974; Status  Retired; Range: 2,765 nm (3,182 mi, 5,121 km) )
(ii) Note "helicopters" in the quotation.
(iii) The most modern JET hunter of submarines is Boeing P-8 Poseidon (introduction 2013; range: 4,500 nautical miles (8,300 km) ).  en.wikipedia.org

(d) "Modern submarines are not merely quieter than their predecessors, they are also better armed. Many carry anti-ship guided missiles as well as torpedoes. One such, the CM-708 UNB, was shown off by China in April. It packs a 155kg warhead and, after popping out of the water, flies at near the speed of sound for about 290km. An export version is available but, if you prefer, Russia's submarine-launched Kalibr-PL missile offers a bigger warhead and a terminal sprint at Mach three."
(i) C-802
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-802
(in service        1989–present; the export upgraded version of the Chinese anti-ship missile YJ-8 鹰击-8 ; section 2 Variants: "CM-708 UNB: submarine launched naval variant with 290 km range")
(ii) For Kalibr-PL, see
3M-54 Klub
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M-54_Klub
(2012- ; Its NATO codename is "Sizzler")
(iii) Russian-English dictionary:
* калибр
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/калибр
(Romanization: kalibr: "calibre (diameter of the bore of a firearm)" )

choi

(e) In June this year, US "began tests in the Pacific of the Sea Hunter, an unmanned (and, for now, unarmed) 40-metre trimaran"

trimaran
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimaran
(section 1 Etymology)
(f) "Sound, whether of engines turning or sonar pulses returning, obeys the inverse-square law. Its strength changes in inverse proportion to the square of the distance it has travelled. That means it falls off fast. Ideally, therefore, detectors need to be close to their targets."

inverse-square law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law

(g) "The arms race between surface vessels and submarines has been going on for almost exactly a century—since Germany's demonstration to its enemies in the first world war of the threat from its U-boats. By the end of the second world war, the Allies had become so good at finding U-boats that German crews taking to the sea had a life expectancy of about a week."
(i) U-boat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-boat
(refers specifically to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in the First and Second World Wars)
(ii) take to: "to go to or into (a place) <Thousands of people took to the streets in protest>"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/take%20to