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Since their invention more than 120 years ago torpedoes have become the main threat to surface ships and submarines. Today's torpedoes are quiet, fast, equipped with far-reaching sensors and sophisticated logics; they have long endurance and many of them are wire-guided. Torpedoes are designed to sink ships while other weapons such as missiles can only produce some limited damage, causing - at best - mission abort.
Despite many efforts - in particular over the last decade - there are still no means available to really counter torpedoes effectively. `Soft-kill measures' which try to mask the ship's signature by applying noise and/or signal makers are state-of-the-art; in order to improve the effectiveness of these devices, specific ship maneuvers are necessary. Due to their technical and physical principles, noise/signal makers can only be effective against acoustically homing torpedoes; against torpedoes with different attack sensors such as wake homing devices, or even just using simple attack strategies based on well defined random search patterns, they will fail.
Therefore, at least among experts, it is clear that only a "hard-kill solution" - torpedo destruction - can and will provide for adequate safety against all kinds of torpedoes and that all the development thrust has to be directed towards such an approach. However, so far it seems that only the German Navy is pursuing this path.
There have been many publications on recent development efforts over the last years focusing in particular on defense effectors. The intention in writing this article has not been to just add another one to this list. Rather, the intention is to wrap the discussion up, draw some relevant conclusions and start to develop something like a guideline for further activities. Due to the complexity and the sensitivity of the issues such an attempt is to be limited to the more fundamental aspects while details are to be left to separate dedicated papers.
SCENARIOS
In order to better understand the operational and technical problems associated with the realization of an effective torpedo defense system, an analysis of the parameters that have an impact on the solution is necessary. This means that the relevant scenarios have to be analyzed carefully.
In general the torpedo defense scenario can be characterized as follows: by means of its acoustic...