Post by Uzb3kistan on Jul 19, 2005 17:48:32 GMT -5
High-Speed Supercavitation
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Supercavitation is a naval revolution that changes underwater warfare drastically. Implementation of this technology into many of the Naval ships and weaponry envisions a future for Naval Warfare that promises high speed hyper-kinetic fights, instead of the slow and silent. This technology seems to be science fiction, however, in actuality, it has been invented years ago and even used by the Russians with the Shkval torpedo in the late 1970's. However, it wasn't until recently that the Navy began to implement the technology into it's larger systems.
Before this technology, Naval submarines and warships were haunted by the drag of of the water. After all, water is around 1,000 times thicker than air, and that meant big problems in the speed of Naval ships. However, if the ship has a special shaped 'cavitator' on it's nose, a bubble of air forms around the entire ship, and the ship is therefore no longer moving through water, but rather through air. This is known as Supercavitation, and Uzb3kistan Naval ships are already using this technology on the service and submerged.
Supercavitation was difficult to develop for the larger ships, and thus was born the ideal of ventilated supercavitation. Ventilated supercavitation pumps air into the bubble to increase it's size and to ensure that the bubble covers the entire projectile, also allowing much larger ships to have the technology.
Note: Supercavitation being used on submarines is future-technology, whilst supercavitating torpedoes are modern/near future technology.