Navy says goodbye to Cold War classic.

True.

Still, I've read in more than one place that a 688 traveling 20 knots submerged is quieter than most other nuclear boats sitting still.

And the ability to move at speed and still be undetectable is significant.

And finally, the Los Angeles class had to be capable of moving at the same speeds as carrier battle groups. Each CBG having at least one and sometimes two or more SSN escorts.

And the minimum speed for a CBG is 20 knots while the maximum speed can easily be around 30 knots (and of course a carrier itself can go faster still).

^I doubt that. The 688 class was already in development when that incident occured, and we were already aware of how fast a November class boat went. Our boats have traded high speed for silent operation, perfect for what subs do, kill other boats and surface ships. I'd liken it to the Germans choosing armor and safety, rather than speed and firepower as the British did on their Battlecruisers leading up to and during WWI. Jutland/Skagerrak settled that arguement.

No, a 688 is faster and more manuverable than a 637, period. The 637's S5W reactor puts out significantly less power than a 688's S6W(especially the 688i boats with the D2W core), 78MW to 165MW.
You are correct in your second statement, however. Silence, an advanced sonar and fire control suite and a good sub driver will serve you better than raw speed. The Soviet Apha Class was capable of speeds exceeding 40 knots, unfortunately their reactors were noisy and the speed made cavitation noises that could be heard from miles away. The only thing I want speedy underwater are the damned torpedoes!

I know a guy soundproofed his truck so quiet that he started hearing wind noise. It had always been there, but nobody'd ever been able to hear it over the rest of the racket.

The LA class did the same thing for submarines. All that was left was stuff nobody'd ever been able to hear on other subs because of all the noise they made creating movement in the first place. And even those subs had supposedly been "quiet." The 688 was a game-changer.

Searching for an LA that didn't want to be found was a matter of looking for the quiet spot in the ocean. It was a black hole of sound. They can replace it. But you can't build something quieter than "silent."

And Seawolf makes the 688's sound like a freight train.

Yeah, the goal was to make the Seawolf as quiet at 25kts as the Los Angeles was at 15.

Doesn't the Seawolf also carry something like twice the weapons loadout of a Los Angeles?

IIRC, the Los Angeles class boats (before the forward Tomahawk missile tubes were added) carried something like 25 torpedos, or Harpoon missiles, or Tomahawk missiles, or about 50 mines.

But the Seawolf can carry around 50 of each plus double that in mines.

OK. I see we've moved back on topic. But I've been drinkin', so I'll go back to the pilot/UAV argument:

Here's the tale of the tape:
UAV: Signal delay, jamming, relatively limited visibility, even with perfect visibility there is something to be said for being there.

Pilot: Plane needs to haul around 200 additional pounds of meat computer, Plane needs to carry oxygen to support said meat computer, Plane can only accelerate, decelerate, and turn as fast as the meat computer can deal with without dying or blacking out.

Who wins? I dunno. As a communicator, I have some idea what a pain in the ass it is to maintain the reliable comms UAVs require, but there is a lot more a plane can do when it isn't hampered by the need to keep a human alive in it.

I hear Sweden's diesel electrics are the quietest subs in the world right now. Obviously they're not suitable for long duration voyages like the US Navy needs but for Sweden's coast defense needs they're perfect; almost completely silent. The US Navy does a lot of their advanced submarine training work out of Naval Station San Diego (including training surface warship crews in anti-sub drills) and for a while they were borrowing one of Sweden's subs to do all the benchmarking and to act as the opposition sub. That's how good Sweden's subs are.

That'd be a little hard on port facilities the world over, dontcha think? The minimum speed of a CVBG is zero.

^I would say that the Swedish Gotland class has real competition for the "most silent operation" award. The French Scorpene, The German Type 214 and the Japanese Soryu classes are quite advanced. I'd pay real money to see these boats in an exercise against one another!

I've operated against a German built diesel during BALTOPS and it wasn't pretty- for us. I've rarely seen a TACCO so frustrated, and we had to resort to active tactics to get him. And that was back in the early 90's. I'm sure there have been improvements.

Marso and Krieg - I played Sweden once in an online geopolitical game. I've been enamored with their defense industry since.

I don't think there is a navy in the world that could operate against them without losses in the Baltic. They've learned to operate in a sea that doesn't afford the luxury of thermals to hide under!

Nahhh, you just put a conveyor belt at each dock, see, and . . .

Was he puttin' on the ritz?

Active would be the standard tactic for a submerged diesel. There's no passive prosecution of a target that makes no noise.

I was referring to the minimum speed to conduct flight operations if there is no significant wind (5 knots or less).

Doesn't a carrier have to normally get a minimum of just over 20 knots of wind over the deck to safely launch and recover aircraft?

Because I thought the last aircraft that was designed to be capable of a launch with no wind and the carrier not moving was the A-5 Vigilante.

Well, that depends on a few things, but we're straying into topics that I have to shut up about. For the most part you are not wrong, however. Here are a couple tidbits I can throw out, however, that don't relate directly to plant noise:

1. Spooking a guy into screw cavitation. That's more an art than a science.

2. Catch 'em while they're snorkeling, or wait 'em out until they bleed down their batteries and HAVE to snorkel if you know they are confining themselves to a certain oparea, such as a chokepoint like a harbor entrance or some such.