What emerging technologies could put at risk the engine and the exhaust of a diesel submarine with the 10 years ahead technology?

Question

I am trying to build a blog of a short novel about a near-future technology-based sci-fi about the future of conflict. It starts with the stealing of an Israeli Dolphin-class submarine. I thought about social engineering that would allow knowing what kind of wine would the submarine captain and poisoned it with potassium. Maybe doing it for the whole crew before they tell the hierarchy but I thought it might not be realistic.

The other thing that comes to mind is deeply mundane--simple sabotage will do, if done cleverly [and sabotage of that scale is quite difficult]. Messing with the diesel engines and their exhaust and some of the warning systems would be the right way and the whole crew could probably get killed with carbon monoxide poisoning ala Chinese Submarine #361.

However, that sounds like a failure due to existing technologies. I wanted to base it on something that could happen with emerging technologies. So my question is: what emerging technologies could put at risk the engine and the exhaust of a diesel submarine with the 10 years ahead technology?

Answer 1

So this is a surprisingly hard problem. These engines are quite simple and there's few vectors for sabotage or attack directly against the core engines. There's no electrics for EMP or ray attack, (there's no spark plugs). They're hard to throw out of balance with resonance or external vibrations or magnetic fields due to them installed on padding to minimise acoustics. They run with gas contamination down to as little as 5% oxygen. An attack on the fuel supply or oil will work, but that's old news and you want emerging.

The only real attack vectors I can see are those things which are technically external to the engine but control its integration with the rest of the submarine. The clutch control. The snorkel vent solenoid. The throttle. The alternator. The temperature, vibration, and pressure sensors. And the network box that allows all that data to be monitored and controlled from the bridge.

If something that was test deployed in 2010 can be considered "emerging", I'd suggest a StuxNet virus variant targeting some of those systems. (This was a virus that spread across the internet until it found it's target, and then blew up the targeted uranium centrifuges by messing up the careful spin rate, and reporting different state to what they were actually doing).

For example, the virus tweaks the fuel / air ratio per cylinder such that the power generated on one side of the cycle is significantly stronger than the other, stressing crankshaft and piston and related components and increasing wear and tear on difficult to replace parts. The virus also tweaks the reports from the engines accelerometer, reporting that vibration is within design limits (and the acoustic dampening engine mounts make it hard to notice the problem by hearing the difference).

The virus doesn't need to even be delivered to the submarine. Attack a weaker link - say the receptionists machine at the office of a contractor, the virus spreads onto a usb key from there onto a meeting room pc used for presentations, where someone running a training session and needs to screen-share plugs in the handheld computer used to service the embedded systems on submarines, infecting it. That then uploads the virus the next time it's used in a service.

Answer 2

Someone who wants to steal the submarine isn't likely to sabotage the engines -- that would be like slashing the tires of a car you want to steal; it makes the whole job much harder.

Monoxide from diesel exhaust is hard to manage subtly -- the exhaust has a very distinctive odor -- but that doesn't mean monoxide can't be used to kill the crew: any submarine with extended dive duration capability depends on a combination of oxygen storage or generation and carbon dioxide scrubbing, on top of the compressed air that submarines have used for breathing during a dive since the Holland, predating the Great War.

It's relatively simple for someone involved in the last shore call resupply to put compressed CO into tanks meant to hold compressed oxygen -- and since the amount of CO required to kill is quite small, and there are few distinctive symptoms prior to unconsciousness, the first time the boat goes to "extended dive" conditions (running the scrubbers and drawing on the oxygen tanks), twenty minutes later you have a ghost ship (except, perhaps, for someone hiding in an escape trunk wearing a rebreather, or similarly prepared).

Answer 3

Add-on computer program.

Boeing added a computer program to its 737 planes and did not notify the plane owners or users of the existence of this program.

The Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) is an automated flight control developed by Boeing which became notorious for its role in the two fatal accidents of the 737 MAX, killing 346 passengers and crew on board before the aircraft was grounded worldwide in 2019.

First deployed on the Boeing KC-46 Air Force tanker, the MCAS software flight control law adjusts the horizontal stabilizer to push the nose down when the aircraft is operating in manual flight with flaps up at an elevated angle of attack (AoA). On the Boeing 737 MAX, MCAS was intended to mimic pitching behavior similar to aircraft in the previous generation of the series, the Boeing 737 NG. In both crashes, MCAS was activated by an erroneous indication from an AoA sensor on the exterior of the airplane.

A diesel engine is very robust, but it is hard to make a thing foolproof. Fools are so crafty. Well meaning persons augment the diesel engine with a computer program to regulate fuel intake, combustion heat and possibly other variables. Because it is operator independent they do not tell the sailors, or perhaps they mean to and do not because of an oversight, or maybe they issue new manuals and consider the sailors told. The computer augmented diesel does its job well, and maybe a little better.

Until it does not.