How tall are submarine periscopes

It has more than 12 miles of pipes and more than 99 miles of cable. There are different software systems, and 20 million lines of code. And the whole thing must be completely silent—to try to remain undetectable. Suffren will undertake the three current missions of the Rubis-class subs: protecting the other French submarines that carry nuclear warheads, of which one is always at sea somewhere; protecting the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier strike group; and performing discreet intelligence gathering.

But it will also have two new missions: sea-to-land warfare thanks to its naval cruise missiles and deploying fully-equipped special forces underwater, thanks to a dry deck shelter. This is a removable steel module which allows divers to exit and enter the submarine while underwater. The captain of the ship, named earlier as Commander Axel Roche, and his crew of submariners, will start sea trials in early To start with he no longer has what is perhaps the most iconic of submarine instruments: the periscope.

No more standing alone at the foot of a mast, eyes clamped to a visor, turning slowly on a small platform to take a peek at the world above. From a design point of view it means the space formerly taken up inside the control room by the bulky periscope and its complex, heavy hoist system, has been freed up. In the Suffren, the command room is set slightly behind the sail. A traditional periscope is up to 60 feet long, so that the hull can remain hidden underwater while the periscope lifts up hydraulically to poke up out of the waves.

Once below periscope depth, sonar typically is used for navigation. Newer submarines are equipped with two types of periscopes, one on the right starboard side and one on the left port side. For example, the USS Springfield has a Type 2 attack scope on the starboard side and a Type 18 search scope on the port side. The Type 18 scope is limited to operations in the daylight. It takes photographs with a mm digital camera and then displays those images on a television monitor.

Some periscopes also have night vision , a still camera, a video camera and can magnify images being viewed. Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. Prev NEXT. Traditional periscopes serve a vital purpose, but they are bulky and take up a lot of space in a submarine's already cramped interior.

In order to be effective, the well of the periscope has to run the entire height of a submarine. This limits how the sub's sail — the towerlike structure atop submarines — and the compartments below can be laid out, as they need to have room for the massive metal pylon running through them. It also requires the sub's control room to be on a smaller upper deck toward the sail, instead of on a wider deck below. Additionally, only one person can look through a periscope at any time.

That prevents other crewmen from getting a full view of their targets or surroundings, and could lead to delays as others take turns looking through the periscope. Finally, because the periscope well penetrates the hull of a submarine, damage to it — whether from a collision with another vessel or even extremely rough seas — can be very expensive and time consuming to repair, not to mention potentially deadly.

The US Navy and Royal Navy believe they have found the solution for such problems with their newest nuclear-powered attack submarines, classified as SSNs. Instead of the traditional periscopes, Virginia-class boats are the first US subs with photonic masts.

Rather than run down the entire hull, the masts are built into the sail and extend and retract like a telescope, which means the control room can be placed on a lower second deck, where there is more room.

Each mast has three cameras: infrared, high-resolution, and color. These cameras are connected to TV screens in the control room through fiber-optic cables.

The masts, each of which can rotate degrees, also have a laser range finder, allowing the crew to accurately chart distances for targeting and navigation. Until , the crew of every Virginia-class submarine operated the masts with a joystick system developed by Lockheed Martin.

But the joystick was difficult to handle for many younger sailors, who described them as "clunky" and "real heavy. The Navy's fix? Xbox controllers , which are far more intuitive for sailors who grew up playing video games.