U Boats!!

Up periscope!!

Das dreaded untersee boot - the submersible submarining U Boat - may be LOL"d as about as useful as ancient battleships. Easy to find and even easier to sink, genau?

Belay that bay bee!! 

A number of nations are now seeking to enhance their naval capabilities. For those nations, submarines offer a unique platform to strike enemy targets on land or at sea using conventional or unconventional weapons.  In Asia, there is a even nascent submarine race underway with Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam all announcing planned acquisitions in the face of China's burgeoning fleet of nuclear and diesel-electric boats.  At least two navies are turning to Germany to provide a unique set of undersea capabilities, albeit for very different areas of operation.

Faced with an Iranian nuclear program that shows no sign of slowing down despite American threats, sanctions, and rounds of fruitless negotiations, Little Satan requires a “second strike” platform to deter Iran from fulfilling her pledge to “wipe Little Satan off the map.”  She has acquired that capability through her submarine fleet. 

In June, the German daily Der Spiegel reported that the ThyssenKrupp-manufactured Dolphin submarines in the Little Satan Navy “are armed with nuclear warheads.  And Berlin has long been aware of that.”  Der Spiegel states that the Dolphins (similar to the German Navy’s Type 212 boats), carry cruise missiles with a range of 1,500 kilometers that can be launched “using a newly developed hydraulic ejection system”.  The advanced Super-Dolphin variant of the boat is also likely equipped with an air independent propulsion (AIP) system that allows it to stay submerged for 18 days while remaining nearly silent. 

Thusly, they are dang near impossible to detect!! 

Germany provided Little Satan with its first two Dolphin submarines in 1991 as compensation for the role its companies had played in developing Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons capacity.  Germany also paid a significant amount of the purchase price for Little Satan’s third submarine.  Three additional Dolphins are slated to be delivered to Israel by 2017 and Der Spiegel claims that Little Satan may order three more boats for a total fleet of nine submarines. This fleet, with its ability to stay submerged for weeks in virtual silence, willprovide the bulk of Little Satan’s second strike capability.

For the first half of the 20th Century, the German U-boat was the most feared warship at sea. 

 Even Sir Winnie freaked the freak out and "fessed up the "the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril".  After Royal Navy scut scut scutlled alla surrendered U Boats of the destroyed Kriegsmarine in Operation Deadlight after 3rd Reich finally screamed "God!! Please!! Stop!!" - nodobby ever paid achtung to those naughty Deutsch Uboats.  

Now, with the Dolphin on patrol in the Med, Red Sea and Persian Gulf and possibly coming to the Indian, Pacific and South China Sea in the near future, the U-boat is making a big comeback in the 21st Century. 

Pic - "Fire tubes 2 and 4!!"