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Out of curiosity, why do some ASW helicopters field sonobuoys only and no dipping sonar? For example early RN Lynx, their Wessex predecessors had dipping sonar, so do other nations Navy Lynx´s and the successor Merlin.
Same for the Australian Seahawks.

Was it a trend of the time? Were sonobuoys believed to perform better at the time?

I'm certainly no expert on this one but I think in the early days anyway it was a size & weight thing. Dipping sonar was on the SH-3 Sea King (or many versions of it), the SH-60F & R models, the Merlin and the Ka-25, there are probably others but those are ones I can think of. I think that the Lynx is too small, it may be a power issue as well, I suspect that your holding up a lot of weight when you have a dipper down at a decent depth and the waves and current is up.

I do not know why, but in the Cold war days the Dippers would be held close to the carrier while all the Sonobouy equipped birds would be out farther. Perhaps someone who actually knows could tell us why.

B

Also from a pure mechanical standpoint, a few thousand feet of cable and a winch capable of lifting a thousand feet of cable which is dangling vertically is quite a bit of equipment. Then you need computers to analyse the sonar returns, which today could fit in something the size of a laptop would have taken a much larger space back in the day.

I'm not an expert either, but generally the sonobouoys, particularly passive ones, were best used in the outer screen, away from the noise of the task force ships. The active dipping sonars weren't effective at covering large swaths of ocean. They were kept in the inner screen, to detect "leakers" at short range, where the sub's own noise could be covered by the noise of the task forces ships and where, if detected, an immediate hard firing solution would be critical.

Then you have P3 Orions, which just roam freely over the larger areas dropping sonobuyous. This concept is completely efficient. All of the current turbo-propelled ASW A/C (think P3 or TU-142 ((Bear)) use solely sonobuyous or MAD sensors to detect all the subs. Sonalyst's DW gives quite good idea how this stuff works.

Sorry, i'm drunk [8D]

Before drinking more, big advantage of SBs, be it DIFAR/DICASS/VLAD, either active or passive is that you can use these to effectively triangulate the target position (if you cover larger area, where dipping sonar simply loses it's efectivity (due to underwater acoustic limitations)).

Thanks, all of this makes sense, altough French and other Lynxes had dipping sonar, i suppose they exchanged it for other capabilities. And why no dipping sonar on RAN Seahawks? They were certainly strong enough to carry it.

On the other hand, somebody once hinted to me that passive sonobuoys are "louder" then passive dippers due to electric current, Faraday cage effect or whatever(lol this was beyond my educational level).
Can anyone confirm this? Were early sonars not sophisticated to pick this up?

Some of it would also depend on the ASW doctrine of the individual navies and what role the helicopter plays in that.

The early RN Lynx was brought in to replace the Wasp not the Wessex. Its task was to deliver ASW weapons and to give an improved capability with air to surface weapons and radar against surface targets. Plus collect the mail, papers etc. The RN at that had time had active and passive sonar in its plentiful fleet of Sea King helicopters and the Lynx would support those. With sonar buoys on board and active sonar the Sea King had problems carrying more than one ASW weapon and also carrying enough fuel to spend a reasonable time on task. The Lynx helped to bring more ASW weapons to the fight. With an ASW torpedo the Wasp could only fly for something like 10 minutes before it had to return to refuel, the Lynx had much longer legs.

Paul

ORIGINAL: paulinda1212

The early RN Lynx was brought in to replace the Wasp not the Wessex. Its task was to deliver ASW weapons and to give an improved capability with air to surface weapons and radar against surface targets. Plus collect the mail, papers etc. The RN at that had time had active and passive sonar in its plentiful fleet of Sea King helicopters and the Lynx would support those. With sonar buoys on board and active sonar the Sea King had problems carrying more than one ASW weapon and also carrying enough fuel to spend a reasonable time on task. The Lynx helped to bring more ASW weapons to the fight. With an ASW torpedo the Wasp could only fly for something like 10 minutes before it had to return to refuel, the Lynx had much longer legs.

Paul

In light of the above comment, and considering that someone has already mentioned that aircraft such as the P-3 Orion are quite capable ASW platforms with just sonobuoys, torps and a MAD the question perhaps should be: is the lack of a dipping sonar a deficiency at all?

Are helo's with good sonobuoys, a MAD and ASW torps (eg the SH-60B Seahawk, etc) just as capable as a platform with a dipping sonar?

My suspicion is that a mix is the ideal solution, probably why the SH-60F was produced and the 60R is considered multi-mission and can do either SB or dipping (not sure if it can do both with one configuration). As Col Mustard mentioned above, the active dipper used close in to the HVU's to detect leakers where SB's would not work against the noise of the ships themselves. When your talking about smaller ships (DD, FF) certainly the modern ones are designed to be very quiet, so there wouldn't need to be a dipper and SB's MAD and passive ship sonar does the trick. Or indeed, when you have a P-3 all alone doing nothing but listening. When you have a CVN, a couple CGs, an AOR etc all steaming along at 18-30knts, the CV turning into the wind and moving out at Flank regularly - things probably get a bit noisy.

B