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Subject: Titanium hull URBAN MYTH
Adamantine    1/9/2005 12:59:51 PM

Tom Gervasi did states back in 1986 that there is NO REAL proof that Alfa and Papa or even the Mike and Akula are really make of titanium.

Whatever advantage titanium could confer, it is SO expensive that its not worth it. The Russian are intelligent enough to know that spending 3000-5000 ton of titanium to build the inner hull of Mike and Sierra is STUPID. They Russian can use this amount of titanium to make sure that EVERY Su-27 airframe and every T-80 tank hull are build is 90% make out of titanium.

If you add all the titanium that is use to build 1 Mike, 7 ALfa, 1 PAPA and 4 sierra, you can see that we are talking about 18000 to 24000 ton of titanium.

Do you guy know how much money it need to process this amount of titanium into corrosion resistant grade and to weld them into thick hull?? Yet the advantage confer is NOT worth it.

If Russia really has so much money and so much processed titanium, they DEFINTELY understand that its far more worthy to build MIG-31, MIG-25, SU-27 and its numerous missiles ENTIRELY out of titanium. That will add to the military prowess and power of Russia than making a sub out of titanium pressure hull.

Everyone thinks that MIG-25 is made of titanium before one Russian pilot defected to Japan with a copy. Its made of nicket steel !!

The USN probably BULL to the congress that Russia has titanium hull sub and hence it could ask for more budget to develop sub with better steel hull (eg HY 130) and also better torpedo to penetrate the alledged titanium hull russian sub !

Its another one of the missile gap bull.

I DO NOT have access to classified information. But my economic and engineering sense tells me that its RIDICULOUS to build pressure hull with titanium when you CANNOT even afford to build high performance MIG-25/31 mainly out of titanium. Russian jets do use titanium for airframe BUT probably no more than 20% by airframe weight. If they have so much titanium, they would LOVE to build MIG-31 entire out of titanium to increase range and altitude. The military advantage confer far outweigh such application in submarine.

SR-71 is the only aircraft that is almost 100% build of titanium airframe. It SO EXPENSIVE and DIFFICULT to process the material in such large scale. 30 SR-71 uses no more than 560 ton of titanium. It already cost the very very rich american a BOMB. Now you are telling me Russia uses 18000 to 24000 ton of titanium to build submarine???

That amount of titanium could ensure that almost all high performance Russia fighter like SU-27/30/35, Tu-22m, Mig-25/31/29 are all build mainly out of titanium.

That has FAR more military value that building 13 submarine with titanium hull.

I believe that there is a STRONG possibility that there is NO titanium sub. Titanium may be use in certain area but not the whole pressure hull. its a MYTH.

Has any US navy guy here actually manage to climb to a Alfa and scrape some metal out of the hull for a metal analysis??? probably no.

The intelligent community probably discover that Alfa is very deep diving and very light and has very low magnetic signature. So they thought its titanium.

Well, it could just be a heavily degaussed Hy-130 steel that is made thin. Since Hy-130 is far betterthan HY-80, you could make a thin hull out of it and still enable the hull to be very strong. Or maybe Russian uses even more brittle steel that has tensile strength of 160,000 psi.

Such steel when degaussed is LOW MAGNETIC, STRONG, BRITTLE, GARD TO WELD and could use to make thinner hull that is strong--this is why resreve BUOYANCY is high in "titanium" soviet sub.

You dun need titanium to achieve the above characteristics. HY-130 or even stronger but brittle steel will achieve all the characteristic of mention above AT A MUCH LOWER PRICE.

Aluminium will tensile strength of 80,000 psi but only 35% the weight of steel COULD demonstrate high strength, low ductility, low weight, corrosion resistant, low magnetism and difficulty in welding too. ITS MUCH CHEAPER too.

I think ALFA, MIKE, PAPA and SIERRA are make of very briitle and high yield aluminium or STEEL. Cannot be titanium. Too expensive for small improvement in operational capability.

Russian complicate matter by being condescending. Since the West insist that this sub are titanium, they must as well PRETEND that its titanium. There is no need to admit the truth. They dun have to tell the west how lousy the western intelligent community is and they dun mind BASKING in the GLORY of being capable of producing huge submarine hull out of titanium.

Would you complain to your male friend/buddy when he tell his lady friend that your penis is 9 inch long and 2 inch in diameter even if your penis is only 5 to 6 inched long?? most of you would never bother. would you ?? ;)

Now is USSR really do the crazy things of making sub out of titanium , it must be the low grade variety, the cost of annealed alloyed hig performnce titanium used in aircraft is simply prohibitive.

Now lets look at what kind of titanium and their properties are like::

I guesstimate that if russian sub is made of titanium, then ALFA and PAPA probably use

titanium that is between 70,325 psi strength to 108,000 PSI strength.

Commercially this falls between Grade 2,
Grade 3 ,Grade 4, Grade 9, Grade 12, Grade 23 and Grade 28 titanium.

The highest probability is grade 3 with a tensile strength of 86,275 psi. This grade of titanium has a strength to weight ratio close to HY150 150,000 psi steel. And also Grade 2 Titanium with strength to weight ratio equal to steel with tensile strength of 122,000 psi.

Hence I would say that by using HY130, western sub would be 10% tougher than Russian sub using grade 2 titanium or 14% weaker than Russian sub using Grade 3 titanium.

Now if you are a Russian sub designer, you would rather use low magnetic version of brittle HY-130 or HY-150 to achieve the same objective as using grade 2 and grade 3 titanium.

WHY? You can acheieve the same capability at maybe 3 to 8 times cheaper cost.

Even the SUPER rich Japan which is the WORLD BIGGEST producer of processed titanium ( eg sumitomo sitix is world biggest titanium company) do not build their Oyashio with titanium even though Oyashio is inner hull is probably less than 800 ton and cost more expensive that any russian sub pound for pound. The openly admit using NS110 steel. I reckon they probably use NS150.

Dun forget Triomphant which is 14000 ton is already using HSEL 100 which is about 140000 to 145000 psi.

Seawolf should already be using HY 160 since pound for pound seawolf is more expensive than triomphant and seawolf is a SSN and SSN normally dive deeper than SSBN.

 
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Adamantine    RE:Titanium hull URBAN MYTH    1/9/2005 1:07:46 PM
TYPO Le Triompant uses HLES 100 steel, not HSEL 100. The French high elastic HLES 100 steel has tensile strength of 142,000 psi. In contrast HY100 publicly stated to be used for seawolf is only 100,000 in rating. Very low. A early 1960s thresher already has 80,000 psi hull. After 35 years youonly get 100000psi when the French with lower budget manage 142,000 psi ?? Another myth perhaps.
 
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french stratege    I completely agree!   1/9/2005 1:38:14 PM
I completely agree! In fact US were late to used best steels for subs even compare to the French (i know what we use), and it is a reason their subs weight more than French ones.Especially when you know that an hull can weight an half of a sub. BTW special hight strengh steel are also pretty difficult and costly to weld (12 hour heating in some case).
 
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french stratege    RE:I completely agree!   1/9/2005 1:47:45 PM
For the French it is not a myth. The thrue reason is historic. For our first SSBN, as we did not have experience is the sixties even with SSN, our engineers did a bet: to develop and use the best steel to save weight in case of increasing of internal component weight and systems. Redoutable SSBN had a 1700 tons ballast at beginning reduced then when internal system proved more heavy in fact (but the margin still allowed an easy refiting with heavier M4 missile). ANd at this point we took a 20 year advance vs US on steel hull still maintaining for a part. R&D, specs, system engineering and program management are not only a question of money.
 
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ssnguy    RE:Titanium hull URBAN MYTH    1/9/2005 2:26:13 PM
Well I can't refute what you write but I will refer you to "Cold War Submarines" by Polmar and Moore who discuss the titanium hulls of the Pappa and Alpha boats. I can't recommend the book because Polmar isn't rational on the subject of Rickover. He definitely is more pro-Russian (probably because he got a lot more help from them than he has from the USN).
 
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UK-SubFan    RE:Titanium hull URBAN MYTH    1/9/2005 3:44:06 PM
The economics were the reason why they stopped making the Sierra II which was all titanium, at least the outer hull. It is the reaons why the Akula use steel equivalent to what western submarines are constructed of. You forget that in the Soviet Union the government didn't have to answer to the people on where money was going compared to western govts who have to justify spending. Also due to the nature of their economic system they were able to experiment with different ideas. True titanium is a mother of a metal to work with and weld, though with their experience from the Alfa they have contributed a lot. The Soviets realised that it was just too much hassle to make all titanium subs, thus the Akula...
 
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Adamantine    Reply to UK-SubFan   1/9/2005 4:40:07 PM
Well your argument sound familiar. Officially, the US analyst also say Russia dun have to answer to its people etc. But Russian are intelligent people. They build weapon that make sense and capitalise on their strength and reduces their weakness. They know they cannot compete in building expensive aircraft carrier the size of Nimitz and hence they build Oscar with its huge missile---still cheaper than AC carrier with its 75 aircraft. Even with a huge military budget, there is still priority and scarcity. My view is same as Tom Gervasi, titanium sub is a myth. No one can really confirm that Russian sub is make of titanium, unless Russia allow western engineer to inspect their sub !! Sierra is discontinue probably because it uses steel that is between 120,000 to 140,000 psi in strength. Its far more brittle, expensive and brittle to weld than steel with 80,000 to 100,000 psi strength. Akula probably uses steel that is weaker , more ductile and cheaper to weld than those steel that is use to build Alfa, Papa, and Sierra. Titanium is light but high strength steel of lower thickness will achieve THE SAME hull strength at FAR LOWER cost. There is no reason to use a material that is 5-10 times more expensive when you can use super high yield steel. The strength to weight ratio of HY130 is slightly stronger than grade 2 titanium. I have strong suspicion that those briitle alfa and sierra are made of HY130 or equivalent. No matter how expensive steel that rates between 120,000 to 140,000 psi happens to be, they are still FAR cheaper than grade 2 and grade 3 titanium or their equivalent. The reason why titanium is use in airplane is because ANNEALED and properly ALLOYED and TREATED titanium can be 2 to 3 times more strong than grade 2 and grade 3 titanium. BUT THERE IS NO WAY YOU CAN USE THOSE AEROSPACE GRADE TITANIUM TO BUILD SUB. Do you have any idea how much it cost? It is so expensice that even MIG-25 dun use it. Although MIG-25 desperate need such steel for it airframe to survive MACH 3 rigour. There is NO reason for Russian NAVAL engineer to use titanium with strength lower than 600 MPA. Because low magnetic high yield steel can acheive the same strength to weight ratio as such low quality titanium. Titanium that is betwen 685 to 1000 MPA is prohibitively expensive. You dun even dream about using it to build a tank, let alone a sub hull. Dun bother what those experts says in books. They are govt mouth piece or they are fed wrong info. Many author of sub books dun have economic and engineering common sense. You can be the admiral of a huge fleet, but you may not understand engineering common sense and engineering economics. US dun build sub hull with titanium because it has LOW cost to benefit ratio. Those brilliant Russian naval architect understand that to. They are not idiot. Building sub with expensive and brittle high yield steel is already a technical/economical mistake. But they are not as foolish as to use titanium. even the most idiotic naval engineer know its ridiculous. If cost is not the issue, why dun Russia make its MIG-25 and T-90 tanks with titanium ? They dun. Its economically not feasible. Its easy for US to create myth of titanium hull Russian sub. WHY? because Russia will unlikely to export any of these brittle high tensile steel sub to other country and this LITTLE DIRTY SECRET is not likely to go public. You cannot do the same with SU-27. Because there is so many operator. Such lies will easily be debunked. You cannot create myth that SU-30 airframe is made 100% of titanium because Malaysia, India and other more DEMOCRATIC operator will tell the press that its not true. You can see those aircraft in airshow, maybe even touch it. Its easy for some spy with proper equipment to test the material of the hull with special equipement at a distance. Now since when can you touch a alfa or sierra in a naval show?? Sierra sub has a INNER titanium hull, you cannot touch it even if you want. The outer hull is officially said to be made of steel. Unless you take a machine a bore a hole into a sierra sub hull and take it back home to analysis the composition of the hull :) The USN love to use such titanium myth to gather more fund from the miserly congress. You cannot blame the Navy, without such urban myth, the congress will rather spend more money to build schools, reduce tax, or some PORK project that win VOTES than to fund the seawolf, nssn and mk48 adcap mod7. You need to paint Russia sub is 10 feet tall to get the budget you need to fund your priority. Just like you need to tell boss why you need to increase the entertainment budget---because your competitor splurge on your customer heavily. A titanium sub is something that you cannot PROVE or DISPROVE easily. Its a good target to propagate a myth. The worst thing is a tank. Many tanks are destroyed in various war. Whatever myth there is can be demolish easily. If you claim that T-72 is invincible, a wreakage in Iraq will prove that you are a liar. But what the probability of Sierra engaging a LA class in real world firing REAL shot? Very low. Russia and US will never fight. Because it is MUTUAL ASSUR DESTRUCTION. no point. The only time when titanium is clearly superior to high yield steel like HY130 or HY150 is when you use titanium that is aerospace grade and has
 
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gf0012-aust    sorry, I beg to differ re titanium hulls.   1/9/2005 7:22:51 PM
good grief, a little bit of basic research for those who profess to have military access, and you'd know that the russians were using titanium there are enough russian subs (and an alfa that was recently decommissioned) lying on the west coast of russia to show that they used titanium in their hulls. these platforms had swedish and US assesssment teams to look at the issues of radiation handling before being cut up. it's not an urban myth. there's enought CTBT/IAEA inspectors running around who can verify it - especially with the last Alfa that was decommed a few months back. (RANSAC report)
 
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french stratege    RE:Titanium hull URBAN MYTH    1/9/2005 7:32:00 PM
BTW it is possible Russian try to use titanium on small alpha subs ( 6 if I remember) after all the price would be 50 $/kg so adding maybe 3/200 m$ in western price to a 700 m$ SSN even in TA6V. At mig 25 design time Russian did not have the massive titanium production factories they build in the seventies. However I suspect that they went back for commodity and price issues vs high strenght steel. I agree for the general consideration of titanium vs steel.
 
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french stratege    RE:Titanium hull URBAN MYTH    1/9/2005 7:34:25 PM
We don't use HLES 100 for export SSK but HLES 80 it seems.
 
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Adamantine    HLES 80 and state secret of diving depth   1/10/2005 1:27:15 AM
Yep, HLES 80 is use for export. Its tensile strength is rated at about 113600 psi. Slightly better than the NS110 steel use by the Japanese Harushio. This mean that even a small country buying a SSK is actually using steel that is tougher than the HY90 and HY100 that is used to construct NSSN and Seawolf. Then again, its hard to believe that the state of the art seawolf and NSSN is made of lousy material like HY100 or HY90. The absolute diving depth of a submarine is a STATE secret. Its a VERY important state secret. YOu dun want to divulge it because you do not want your opponent to know whether their ASW torpedo is deep diving enough to attack your sub or not. For example if your opponent design torpedo that can dive to 500 meter and is barely enough to hit you if your sub is constructed from HY80, then if in REALITY your sub is constructed from HY130 or HY150, you would have escape destruction as you can dive deeper than your enemy torpedo. Another reason why its important to keep the material of your sub secret is because you DUN want to let your opponent know whether their depth charge (nuclear or conventional) KILL radius against your sub. If your opponent is unsure, they may have to force to attack you at closer range to ensure your destruction. This will REDUCE the effective employment envelope of their weapon. In short, if the enemy dun know your real hull strength, they dun know the effective kill radius of their depth charge against your sub and they dun know whether their torpedo can kill you in one hit or not. As such they may OVERDESIGN their weapon and end up having bigger weapon and lower number of weapon carried per launching platform. Or your enemy may understtimate the power of your propulsion system as they do not know the TRUE density of your hull. The denser your hull, the lighter your machinery and propulsion must be. Conversely if you use HY150 instead of HY80, you can build hull of the same strength butmuch thinner. This will SAVE weight and enable heavier propulsion system (more shp and MW) or more weapon . Its easy to hide secret with a SUB because its not for export and its not easy for outsider to know whats inside.
 
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Adamantine    RE:sorry, I beg to differ re titanium hulls.   1/10/2005 1:58:47 AM
I dun have military access as I am a civilian :) But those CTBT/IAEA inspectors MISSION is to see whether the alfa is properly CUT and dispose. They dun do the actual cutting and they dun know the temperature of the BLOW TOUCH use in cutting ALFA. Their job is not to do a METAL analysis of ALFA hull. They are just to ensure proper records and disposal of disuse nuclear sub and to ensure the plutonium or enriched uranium dun went missing. Do you think the Russian would let those CURIOUS inspector to take peice of the ALFA hull to do a metal analysis? Okay lets ASSUME Alfa, Papa, Mike, Sierra is REALLY make of titanium. As I have mentioned earlier, titanium come in many many grade. Those grade that is even REMOTELY affordable to be use in such a large scale would be the inferior grade. Such titanium are no better than HLES 100 or HY150 in terms of sterngth to weight ratio. Which means the advantage in diving depth of a Sierra over a Le Triomphant is either non existent or very very small. Bulk titanium is not that expensiv compare to the total cost of a modern submarine. The hull of a submarine is never the major cost factor. Its the sonar, sound quieting equipment and nuclear reactor that cost a bomb. But titanium of usable grade is very expensive. especially aerospace grade. The reason why MIG-25/31 and SU-27 do not use titanium in a LARGE scale (assuming alfa is made of titanium) maybe because titanium that is suitable for aerospace application is so expensive that only small quantity is used. If USSR titanium industry is big enough in the 1970s and 80s to produce ALfa, PAPA, MIKE, Sierra, its definitely big enough to build most of its TOP NOTCH high speed interceptor with titanium. The only reason why they dun can ONLY be due to 2 possible reason:: 1) The titanium that is use to build sub is very cheap compare to the aerospace grade needed to build MAch2.5 to mach 3 airplane. hence the hige titanium industry develop to build sub cannot be redirect for aerospace application. RAW titanium is cheap but the annealed, alloyed and highly processed high yield variety is prohibitively expensive. The different in yield strength between grade 1 titanium and the Highest grade is about 3 times !! This possibility also IMPLY that the French and American do not use titanium for sub hull NOT because they cannot afford to buy the grade 2 or grade 3 titanium to make submarine, but BECAUSE the high yield steel they use are EQUALLY tough, strong, corrosion resistant and MORE ductile and weldable. Meaning if given the same budget to build a submarine hull as the Russian, The American and French would rather spend the SAME money on HY150 steel or HLES steel that are more FAR more CRACK RESISTANT in high tempo usage and still deliver the same strengh to weight ratio. It should be NOTED that i like to use the term STRENGTH TO WEIGHT RATIO because most titanium grade are no more than 90,000 psi in strength. much lower than HLES100 or HY130. But they are strong because their LOW density permit you to construct a THICKER hull of the same density as using HY130 or HLES100 steel. So if two plates is of the same weight, the titanium plate is thicker and hence stronger. This mean that to actually compare the strength of steel and titanium, we must adjust for density. After this adjustment, we find that a 86000 psi grade 3 titanium will offer the same diving depth as steel with 148000 to 150000 psi tensile strength (roughly equal to HY150). With the same logic, a grade 2 titanium with max yield strength of roughly 59500 psi is roughly as strong as HY100. For two plate of the same area, SIMILAR weight BUT different thickness. The titanium plate is about 73% thicker. This is due to its low density. Apart from chemical and metallurgical reason that make titanium hard to WELD. Another often IGNORE factor is the fact that the REAL reason why grade 2 and grade 3 titanium offer deeper diving depth than HY80 HY90 and HY100 is NOT because titanium of such inferior grade has higher tensile strength BUT because you can use thicker titanium plate as titanium is 42% to 43% lighter than HY steel. So for the weight and area, titanium plate is THICKER than steel plate. The THICKNESS is what that enable titanium sub to EITHER dive deeper or have greater resreve buoyancy if deep diving is NOT needed. You either use THIN titanoum hull to decrease hull weight and increase payload and equipment weight or resreve buoyancy or you use THICK titanium hull to dive deep. Now if you chose to use THICK titanium hull, your welding PROBLEM will multiply. Titanium is already brittle and hard to weld, by increasing thickness you may make welding even more intractable. Cracks develop more easily and impuity in welding process will cause crack to propagate faster in thicker plate than thinner plate. This explain why high density HY or HLES steel is more weldable and less brittle than low density but thicker titanium plate. T 2) The second possibility is that there is NO titanium sub. Its a myth.
 
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UK-SubFan    RE:Titanium hull URBAN MYTH    1/10/2005 11:07:10 AM
I also have another source and that is my wife's uncle. He works on Russian nuclear subs installing equipment and electronics. He has talked about his work in a general manner (ie nothing that was classified) and about Russian subs due to my personal interest. And we did talk about the Alfa and its construction.....
 
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displacedjim    RE:sorry, I beg to differ re titanium hulls.   1/10/2005 12:06:55 PM
"Their job is not to do a METAL analysis of ALFA hull. They are just to ensure proper records and disposal of disuse nuclear sub and to ensure the plutonium or enriched uranium dun went missing. "Do you think the Russian would let those CURIOUS inspector to take peice of the ALFA hull to do a metal analysis?" ---- Ummm, who do you think we send on those missions? Offhand, I'd guess they are metallurgical experts and intelligence officiers. Do you think that just because the Russians don't let us take pieces that means we don't? :-) Displacedjim
 
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Adamantine    RE:sorry, I beg to differ re titanium hulls.   1/10/2005 12:29:02 PM
Okay even if some of those people is metallurgical expert, they may not be doing hull analysis due to supervision from Russian. Even ASSUMING they STEEL some metal for analysis, they MAY NOT tell the whole world and EMBARRASS the western intelligent community by saying its not titanium :) They may say only waht they are told to divulge. :)
 
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gf0012-aust    RE:sorry, I beg to differ re titanium hulls.   1/10/2005 5:38:56 PM
"they MAY NOT tell the whole world and EMBARRASS the western intelligent community by saying its not titanium :)" Intel doesn't work like that. If original analysis was wrong and they discover that their foundation data assumptions were skewed because of it, then nobody shutsup just to save face. Thats not how it works at all. Under the protocols, such info would be shared within hours. You don't have to cart off a piece of titanium to work out whether it's titanium - that's why you send in experts. ;)
 
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