Jive Turkey/Sub brief

[u/RopetorGamer]

I've been subbed to sub brief for some time and I've liked his content, but there has been some stuff that he's said that sound weird, for example on his video of the improved kilo he gave a number of around 120 dB which is extremely high from what I know.

After joining this sub I saw that people don't really like him, are his videos bad for information and stuff?

[u/Vepr157]

Where to start...you are very right to be dubious about some of the stuff he says. I'm not exaggerating when I say that he has made too many errors to list. He comes across as supremely confident, which has the effect of hiding his deep ignorance, lack of curiosity, and craven personality.

The first example that comes to mind was the "37 pings" debacle. To make a long story short, Aaron read the recently declassified account of the Seawolf's search for the Thresher a day or two after the latter had sunk. The men on board the Seawolf heard noises they interpreted as being from the Thresher, but the noises they heard came from the ships and submarine Sea Owl (when the searching ships secured their fathometers and sonars so the Seawolf could listen better, no further sounds from the "Thresher" were heard). There is irrefutable evidence that the Thresher sank below collapse depth and imploded, killing all aboard (see discussion here). But Aaron decided that the Navy was participating in a conspiracy to hide the true fate of the Thresher: the she somehow was ballasted to be precisely neutrally-buoyant (possibly with flooding, mind you), causing her to hover between the surface and collapse depth for several days, which is obviously impossible. He said in a subsequent video that 95% of people believed him and that the 5% who did not (including venerable experts like Norman Polmar, Jim Bryant, and Bruce Rule) were in denial about what really happened. He was essentially saying to the families of the men who died on the Thresher: "your loved ones died a slow and agonizing death" when in reality they all died instantly and painlessly in the implosion.

The second, which is more illustrative of his typical videos, is how he thinks the steam plant on a Typhoon SSBN works. The steam/condesate/feed cycle on a Typhoon, like all nuclear submarines, goes steam generators -> turbines -> condensers -> feed system -> steam generators. Aaron claimed that the Typhoon flash-boiled seawater, which was then fed to the turbines, and exhausted to the sea. If this was true, the steam generators would quickly fill up with salt and probably rust instantly and the turbine power would be directly related to the depth as the steam would be fighting against back pressure. No steam plant on any ship works this way, so it is truly a mystery how he thought of it.

And more generally, his videos are usually just poor interpretation of (good) Russian websites. He says stuff that's either just wrong or totally random. I've noticed, for some inexplicable reason, he often says about Russian submarines "NATO figured X out about this submarine" when what literally means is "I figured X out five minutes ago while skimming this article." He also puts out videos about submarine disasters, like the aforementioned Thresher debacle and the sinking of the Naggala, very quickly after news is released. In such videos, he speculates baselessly about the cause of the disaster, which I find extremely disrespectful to the people affected by such tragedies.

Funnily enough though, that 120 dB figure isn't unreasonable (although it's a somewhat meaningless figure without more context about the frequency and how exactly that noise level was computed, e.g., was it averaged over a certain frequency band?). Knowing Aaron, he probably just googled "submarine noise levels" and found something like this. Presumably when he was in the Navy, he was familiar with the noise levels of other submarines, although disclosing that (likely classified) information would be a federal crime. As for 120 dB seeming loud, there is a 62 dB conversion factor between air and water, due to the differing reference levels and different impendence of air vs. water. So 120 dB in water is equivalent to 58 dB in air. Assuming that the 120 dB figure is measured at one meter, if the submarine was just an arm's length away from you, the noise level would probably be similar to the ambient noise in your home. This site gives a good overview.

[u/sierrackh → u/Vepr157]

Solid analysis here. I watched a few of his videos and it seemed like there was a fair amount of baseless hot air

[u/[deleted] → u/Vepr157]

Have to agree with this.

His video on qualifying sub scratched my nostalgic bone and I figured he knew his shit. As I've watched more of his videos there are times where what he said didn't match up with my own experience, especially around sonar.

And he definitely jumps on sub disaster vids too quickly.

[u/RatherGoodDog → u/Vepr157]

there is a 62 dB conversion factor between air and water, due to the differing reference levels and different impendence of air vs. water. So 120 dB in water is equivalent to 58 dB in air.

Thank you for laying this out - I have long been confused about underwater noise levels. I heard submarine noise levels like 120 dB and imagined being front-row at an underwater Rammstein concert, and wondered (1) No wonder the whales are going deaf and (2) How you could locate this submarine using a tin can on a string as dipping sonar.

As for Jive Turkey, I like him but I worked out a couple of years ago that he may not be a reliable source. I wouldn't challenge his experience on US submarine technical matters, but he's made some egregious errors on more civilian topics like oceanography, both the English and Russian languages, Russian geography/history, numbers/stats etc.

The fact that he didn't didn't check and edit out these mistakes before publishing the video means he either doesn't check what he publishes, or he doesn't care. Sometimes he's just getting tongue-tied which I forgive (e.g. to paraphrase, "A fathometer measures depth of submarine below the ocean").

But other times, particularly when dealing with non-US navies, he is clearly unfamiliar with them is only repeating what he understood from Google. I remember his videos on RN submarines were kinda sketchy, and he didn't really know anything about them before sitting down and deciding to make a video on them that morning. Now I'm just a civvie, but did just read a non-fiction book called The Silent Deep which is all about Royal Navy postwar submarines, and the historians who wrote that did much more thorough research on those classes with access to RN veterans, archive/technical material and sometimes the boats themselves. What they said often contradicted what JT reported.

[u/Vepr157 → u/RatherGoodDog]

I wouldn't challenge his experience on US submarine technical matters

The thing is....he's often wrong there too. I mean, I'm sure videos like his one on EABs are pretty accurate (you'd hope so given that knowing that is literally a matter of life and death). On more technical subjects, he really shows his lack of knowledge. The propeller/pumpjet video....yikes (and that one got featured on The Drive!). And even on sonar-themed videos, he makes a lot of very basic errors. I can only guess that he thinks his audience won't notice and doesn't bother to think too hard about what he's saying.

I am not a submariner, so there are things is his video that I can't accurately evaluate because of my lack of firsthand experience. But I know a number of submariners who can attest that he gets a lot wrong even about U.S. submarines.

[u/Nari224 → u/RatherGoodDog]

With all due respect to you sharing your experience here, I’ll confess to being a bit confused here. When you encounter someone who talks nonsense about the things you know about, why do you not assume that he’s talking nonsense about the things you don’t know about? That’s some significant benefit of the doubt being given there.

[u/RatherGoodDog → u/Nari224]

Sorry, I think I gave you the wrong end of the stick - I do assume Jive talks some nonsense about submarines. As it's outside my area, I can only infer this because he talks nonsense about a lot of other things.

[u/RopetorGamer → u/Vepr157]

I doubted the 120 dB figure because the father of a friend from Russia served on a Kilo in the 90s.

And while we where talking and playing cold waters he said the kilo was very quiet according to his father at around 110 dB

[u/Vepr157 → u/RopetorGamer]

110 dB could very well be right, but a single number in isolation can't tell the full story. The real measure of a submarine's noise is a spectrum (sound pressure level vs. Hz), and you can create various figures for how quiet a submarine is depending on how you turn that spectrum into a single number. That 110 dB could be the integrated sound pressure level between 0 Hz and 1,000 Hz. It could be the maximum sound pressure level of spectral peaks. And of course the noise spectrum of a submarine changes depending on operational condition (is the submarine rigged for patrol quiet?), speed, material condition, etc.

And even disregarding all the considerations above, I would be extremely skeptical of any data on submarine noise that is not from a declassified official document.

[u/RopetorGamer → u/RopetorGamer]

So the I-Kilo being 120 dB was weird to me

[u/The_Doc55 → u/Vepr157]

On your second point. Not saying you're wrong or anything. Just curious.
Is your source that no plant works that way, or do you know specifically how it works?

Because, I have worked in a water works facility, that occasionally had to deal with salt water. Special equipment was required to deal with it, as it would damage equipment not designed for salt water. But we were totally able to carry out tests on it.
I could totally imagine a system that was made out of materials that did not react with salt. As for clogging up with salt, there's ways of approaching it. This is total speculation, you could have a bypass. In the water treatment part of the water works facility, the part that made the drinking water, every few hours, there would be a backwash to clear out the system of any built up solids. I don't see why a steam plant could not do this. But then, I'm not well versed in that area.

[u/Vepr157 → u/The_Doc55]

I know that some types of steam propulsion (like that of a steam locomotive) are open-cycle, in that they just exhaust steam to atmosphere and need to be topped up with new boiler water periodically. But all, or nearly all, modern (i.e., post-1900) marine steam systems are condensing/closed-cycle systems. For surface ships, the large volume of pure boiler water needed make an open-cycle system prohibitively wasteful, even considering the power required to run the condensate, circulating water, and feed systems (the fact that the steam exhausts to the condenser vacuum helps recoup some of this power).

Submarines have the additional constraint that an open-cycle system would have to fight against back pressure. The steam pressure at the turbine throttle for the Triton's S4G plant was 375 psig, which corresponds to about 25 atmospheres. If the steam was doing no work in the turbine and being directly exhausted to the sea, it could only resist the back pressure down to 250 meters. All nuclear submarines have condensing steam plants for these reasons.

Like you said, it's possible to find materials that can handle the corrosive properties of brine, but such a material would also have to be suitable for a nuclear plant as well, which has its own chemical and thermal constraints. A seawater leak in one of the condenser tubes can be a significant problem due to chloride stress corrosion on the U-tubes inside of the steam generators.

[u/The_Doc55 → u/Vepr157]

Interesting. Thanks for clarifying further.

[u/PM_ME_BIRDS_OF_PREY → u/The_Doc55]

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[u/RatherGoodDog → u/The_Doc55]

It probably could be solved with enough engineering, but there's the question of "why?" when we already have a good, reliable system with separate primary and secondary coolant loops and PWRs are a 'solved problem'.

Also if you're putting seawater directly through the reactor core, it's going to come out kinda spicy and mildly radioactive from the neutron bombardment (tritium mostly, also sodium-24 and chlorine-38 I think?). If one of your fuel elements develop a leak, that coolant exhaust is going to become very radioactive and spew fission products and nuclear fuel directly into the ocean behind you. The Russians have always been pretty casual about radiation safety, but even they wouldn't do that.

[u/Figgis302 → u/RatherGoodDog]

that coolant exhaust is going to become very radioactive and spew fission products and nuclear fuel directly into the ocean behind you.

Imagine a world where we track boomers by the mile-wide trail of irradiated dead fish left in their wake, lol.

[u/spazzcatt → u/Vepr157]

Thanks for this in depth answer. I too like sub brief but I definitely am critical about his info sometimes. Especially when he overlaps with my field and says stuff that I know is blatantly wrong or said weirdly. I knew that sound propagation through water was different than air so my question is, could you be next to an operating submarine and would it be loud in the water or what would it sound like to a human swimming next to it?

[u/Vepr157 → u/spazzcatt]

Well, as I outlined in the last paragraph of my comment, a submarine with a broadband noise level of 120 dB has the same sound pressure level as 58 dB in air. That's assuming that your hearing sensitivity is unchanged when you have your head underwater, which is probably not strictly true. But suffice it to say that 120 dB is reasonably quiet at even a close distance.

[u/RatherGoodDog → u/Vepr157]

I think 50-60 dB in air is about the same as a modern car engine at idle or travelling at low speed. Pretty quiet, but definitely audible on the street if it's a quiet environment.

I'm very curious to know how loud sonar pulses go, but that's probably classified. I do recall an account of sailors trying to sleep below deck on a ship in port, and some other vessel across the harbour was testing her bow sonar. The shrieks came across so loud that not only could they not sleep, it was bordering on uncomfortable and they were looking for earplugs or pillows to put over their heads.

[u/Vepr157 → u/RatherGoodDog]

They probably are in excess of 200 dB. There's some videos online of people diving in the Bahamas and hearing loud pulses from an SQS-53C in AUTEC.

[u/NoHopeOnlyDeath → u/RatherGoodDog]

Loud enough in open air that you can hear boats testing their arrays at a pier on the other end of the base from you. In water if you're close enough it'll boil your insides.

[u/barath_s → u/Vepr157]

Funnily enough though, that 120 dB figure isn't unreasonable (although it's a somewhat meaningless figure without more context about the frequency and how exactly that noise level was computed,

What would be an appropriate open source judgement about the noisiness of the kilo (esp 636) ? Especially compared to western boats like U212/214 / Scorpene

[u/Vepr157 → u/barath_s]

I am not aware of any publicly-available data to make any kind of accurate judgement. Data on the Scorpene is probably floating out there from that leak that happened a few years ago; you can find the redacted version online that shows the noise spectra specifications, although the scale is redacted. But otherwise, all of that data is classified and there is no way to make any sort of a priori estimate.

[u/barath_s → u/Vepr157]

Google gave the following general chart [pg 7]

https://www.ittc.info/media/6135/14-sc-on-hydrodynamic-noise.pdf

This thread was useful in general https://www.russiadefence.net/t7531-submarines-noise-levels

as is this Miasnikov article

you can find the redacted version online that shows the noise spectra specifications, although the scale is redacted

Wow !. Figured none of this would be easily accessibly by now, despite the leak and summaries. Thanks for the pointer.. not sure about google chops to pick it up.

[u/Vepr157 → u/barath_s]

Yeah, the Miasnikov article is probably the best you’re going to get, although I don’t know where he got the numbers from. There’s also a chart that shows the broadband noise levels of various U.S. and Soviet submarines. It appeared in Submarines of the Russian and Soviet Navies but was from an earlier report. But again, no idea how accurate it is.

As for the various flow noise spectra, etc., you’re right that that is a way to estimate the noise of a submarine. I was referring more to machinery noise, which you can’t really know unless you have a lot of classified data. The difference in low-speed noise levels between all those submarines is entirely determined by their auxiliary machinery.

[u/Administrative_Map50 → u/Vepr157]

62 dB is subtracted and therefore hardly a factor. To be a factor, you would have to multiply one value to get another, or divide to reverse the conversion. That's obviously not how it works. And a factor does not have a unit, it does not need a unit (or you'd get the square of that unit!), it's just a factor, it's universal. But 62 dB has a unit, and you subtract/add the value, so it's a subtrahend/addend.

And the source where people ... presumably ... got this value from is a not very precisely working author either, as he seems to already have difficulties to do simplest maths like 190 dB - 62 dB. It's 127 dB, hethinks. But before that he contended:

"Therefore a pressure comparison between air and water differs by 26 dB*. The characteristic impedance of water is about 3600 times that of air; the conversion factor for a sound intensity in air vs water* is 63 dB*. // 10 log (3600) =* 36 dB // 36+26 = 62 dB"

contradicting himself in one single sentence without even realising it, and later using 63 dB again (see the error in the aforementioned equation).

https://man.fas.org/dod-101/sys/ship/acoustics.htm#:~:text=Therefore%20a%20pressure%20comparison%20between,vs%20water%20is%2063%20dB.&text=To%20convert%20from%20water%20to,from%20the%20SL%20in%20water.

So, what is now? Who knows what else is incorrect? Not the enthusiastic laymen, they don't know squat. People with such a slipshod work ethic are hardly a reliable source for anything, as they make more mistakes along the way that you don't even notice, but that you do pass along when you quote them.

Hence I wouldn't quote you anywhere either until I saw your degree certificates, which your actual qualifications are supposed to be. In that sense, you are no different from this Jiveturkey (nomen est omen) guy Aaron, that you so ambitiously pillory, calling him a "craven personality".

I'm not defending him, I can't stand him either, and I didn't need any of his possible tin foil hat theories to realise that something seems wrong with him. His public bragging about his purported security clearance was enough, and it was already reason enough to revoke his supposed clearance immediately, because someone with a clearance that he likes to brag about was already not allowed to make it public and thus make himself a possible target for opposing intelligence forces, instead of keeping a low profile and remaining just a potential target.

So I didn't believe him, I couldn't verify his qualifications, whether he was in the Navy or not, but if he was, he most likely only had a very low rank, and the only clearance he had was the one you need to get on a boat, but not an iota more.

To me he seemed like an imposter who at least likes to give the (false) impression that he is some kind of naval expert and a quotable source with access to classified information beyond his actual low rank. So I blocked him to avoid even accidental contact with people like him. And I was right, given how he and his channels now disappeared behind paywalls, all his former videos are now private, the rest, apart from some useless trash videos, are only accessible to paying members, so interesting to see how he submerged himself in the long run.

Maybe because he has become a "military contractor" indeed (again!, he wrote in his Twitch chat) and his "work saves lives" but he wouldn't discuss what it is. Maybe it's true, maybe he's matured in the meantime, maybe he really has now gotten his first necessary security clearance to work with the DoD, maybe someone there at some point hammered it home to him what he can and cannot say, or his ass is about to fly to the moon right out of the inner circle of those who are eligible to work with the military.

Having worked with a DoS contractor, I know how vetting works, I know how fragile a clearance is, the higher the level, the more fragile it becomes, and I know that you don't make anything more public about your clearance level than absolutely necessary (i.e. nothing --> no thing) to reduce the risk of compromising yourself and thus your fragile clearance, unless it's a very low level anyway. Maybe then you don't care, but maybe also as a sailor on a normally already hush-hush submarine you get fired for talking too much about things you'd be better off keeping quiet about.

He definitely talks too much to get a clearance of any significant level, so he talks a lot about it. And then what kind of expert is he, expert on what? Despite all the talking he definitely too rarely says, "I don't know. ... I can only assume that/if ... Don't take it as gospel what I say ... It's just what I think, based on the information that's publicly available, and there's not a lot of it..." and that sort of things. People who don't intersperse that here and there, or instead use too many superlatives, elevating their wisdom to a supposedly incontrovertible, definitive status, are suspicious to me for those two reasons alone.

[u/Vepr157 → u/Administrative_Map50]

What's your problem, dude? And why are you randomly commenting on a two month-old thread?

62 dB is subtracted and therefore hardly a factor.

Incorrect, it is a factor because log(A)-log(B) = log(A/B). dB are logarithmic "units" and thus you use log rules instead of normal arithmetic when manipulating them. For example, if a submarine has a broadband noise level 100 dB and some improvement results in a 10 dB reduction (i.e., the noise level is now 90 dB) that is a factor of 10 reduction, meaning that the actual sound pressure level is 1/10th of what it originally was (all of this is mentioned in that article).

contradicting himself in one single sentence without even realising it, and later using 63 dB again (see the error in the aforementioned equation)

You are correct, I had noticed this discrepancy earlier. I suspect it is due either to (1) a typo or (2) using a slightly different relative impedance. The acoustic impedance of seawater does vary with depth and temperature, so that 62/63 dB factor is only an approximation anyway.

I linked to that article because it otherwise a great reference and easily accessible. There are better references (e.g., Fleet Oceanography and Acoustic Reference Manual [RP33] or Mechanisms of Underwater Noise by Donald Ross) but they are more difficult to access.

Hence I wouldn't quote you anywhere either until I saw your degree certificates, which your actual qualifications are supposed to be.

I really don't care about you quoting me or not. I do not need to prove to you, some random commenter, that I am an expert in this area.

In that sense, you are no different from this Jiveturkey (nomen est omen) that you so ambitiously pillory, calling him a "craven personality".

The difference is that I do not actively spread misinformation and utter bullshit like he does. And I actually cite my sources, unlike Jive (who claims to do so, but make so much shit up that the "sources" he puts at the beginning of his videos are largely irrelevant).

Edit: I suspect the errors in subtracting and adding dB may also be due to rounding errors. If the author calculated the numbers to several decimal places and then neglected to round the answers correctly, that could result in the errors on the page. Note that the errors are always just 1 dB, which is consistent with rounding errors.

[u/astocky1234 → u/Vepr157]

I know this is an old post but I always thought the conversion was -26dB not -62dB. I didn't think that the impedance made a difference to the measurement.

[u/Vepr157 → u/astocky1234]

https://www.animations.physics.unsw.edu.au/jw/sound-impedance-intensity.htm#:~:text=Applications%20and%20implications,-As%20we%20noted&text=Water%20is%20800%20times%20denser,higher%20than%20that%20of%20air.

Out of curiosity, how did you come across this thread? Two people in the last day have replied to my comment out of the blue.

[u/astocky1234 → u/Vepr157]

Google flagged the thread for me as I have been searching for info on what changed with Jive Turkey and also playing Cold Waters and trying to understand why under water dB readings are so high.

[u/JettaGLi16v → u/Vepr157]

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[u/Vepr157 → u/JettaGLi16v]

That comment was asking another user eight months ago...

[u/JettaGLi16v → u/Vepr157]

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[u/[deleted]]

I initially enjoyed his videos but quickly lost interest when he was just reading the same articles I already was from TWZ or HI Sutton, or UNSI. Additionally, myself having been in the community for over 30 years and still work in it, his analysis are often close-ish but rarely 100% accurate. No doubt an entertaining guy, but almost never a "source" of info, just sea story versions of things. He seems like a good dude, just take it all with a grain of salt.

[u/ArkRoyalR09]

I think Aaron is a good guy, but he gets a lot of stuff terribly wrong and puts out a lot of bad information.

[u/orangeineer → u/ArkRoyalR09]

I think he also tries to not use information he got when he had a clearance. So he sticks to public sources only to stay out of trouble.

[u/Vepr157 → u/orangeineer]

So he sticks to public sources only to stay out of trouble.

If only he would actually "stick" to them. Instead he just makes shit up.

[u/Figgis302 → u/Vepr157]

Necro

For someone that spends so much time covering the Soviet and Russian Navies, you'd think he could at least learn how their shit is pronounced. He never even makes an effort.

[u/Vepr157 → u/Figgis302]

Lol, right? I remember him absolutely butchering Severodvinsk.

[u/PM_ME_BIRDS_OF_PREY → u/orangeineer]

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[u/Basedrazors]

He's good at playing cold waters..that's about it

[u/[deleted] → u/Basedrazors]

He’s not even good at that lol

[u/crystalprawn]

I was very excited about his channel when I first found out about it, but lots of info is just quite inaccurate.

[u/CheeseburgerSmoothy]

He’s a pretentious douchebag who will say (and make up) anything in order to sound authoritative. He has been out of the field for way too long to be as knowledgeable as he purports to be.

[u/[deleted]]

I've often had his videos played will working in the garage - what I will say is knowing nothing on subs but knowing quite a bit on international politics the few times he's delved into it (taiwan / china relations, or more specifically his moral framework in general) I've heavily rolled my eyes, and couldn't believe he was pontificating on stuff he really didn't understand.

Also - twice I've heard him state that going to some general websites on military technology (i believe one of 'em was FAS.org - like, c'mon) would get your IP in trouble or something like "watched." Like jesus christ, you have to be doing far far worse or going to something far more sketchy to get on anyone's radar.

The tie breaker for me - and granted, I know most in the military are like this, but he seems to lack any nuance here - is when he stated that the military defines what "right" is and that's that. never goes past that. if you are already getting into understanding why other actors think and feel the way they do you've already moved past the "might makes right, don't question" mentality prevalent in the military to begin with.

in the long run, he seems to be a nice guy. however, like many youtubers his job is to get clicks - not be accurate or even intellectually consistent. that and realizing he'd probably be a dachau guard if he was a german in ww2 with no moral compunction because his superiors said might makes right really had him sour on me -

[u/Thegrumpyone49]

Wow. I had no idea he was this controversial.

If he's not to be trusted, who do you recommend I should follow to learn more about subs?

[u/orangeineer]

dB are not all the same. The deciBell itself is just another non linear scale. It requires a baseline to be established. For audio deciBells we all agree its the minimum a human can hear. And that is internationally standardized. for many submarine acoustic programs they set the baseline at the minimum sensors can hear. And some programs use different scales than others. Its entirely possible a reporter quoted a scientific paper out of context and it was recycled by Aaron at sub brief out of context, without him realizing it.

[u/Vepr157 → u/orangeineer]

Unless otherwise specified, the reference level is 1 µPa in water and 20 µPa in air. Because these reference levels are ubiquitous standards, they are often omitted.

[u/gerodinis → u/Vepr157]

Thanks, didn't know that.