Another Chinese Sub

McQ over at Q&O:

 Run Silent, Run Deep…

And pop up like a cork in the midst of a carrier battle group:

American military chiefs have been left dumbstruck by an undetected Chinese submarine popping up at the heart of a recent Pacific exercise and close to the vast U.S.S. Kitty Hawk – a 1,000ft supercarrier with 4,500 personnel on board.

By the time it surfaced the 160ft Song Class diesel-electric attack submarine is understood to have sailed within viable range for launching torpedoes or missiles at the carrier.

According to senior Nato officials the incident caused consternation in the U.S. Navy.

The Americans had no idea China’s fast-growing submarine fleet had reached such a level of sophistication, or that it posed such a threat.

We talked about this a bit on the podcast last night, but this is a very serious incident as far as the US Navy is concerned.  And it brings to mind a few questions.

…

(1) Has our Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) capability degraded since the demise of the USSR?

(2) How many times have the Chinese been able to successfully do this?

(3) Why in the world would you let the US know you had both the tactics and technology to do this?

He egts into discussion on this stuff, and I’ll advise you to go and RTWT.

For my part, some offhand comments:

Nuclear powered submarines, are much quieter, than their Diesel counterparts. We in the west supposedly have the best ASW platforms in the world, been yet for whatever reason we were unable to detect an ostensibly easier to detect submarine than the nuclear powered ones that we’ve all been concerned about.

Granted, diesel power was not likely running when they were within range of our people. But what kind of range are we talking about?

Best I can figure out… Either the sub was sitting on or close to the bottom, waiting for the group to come along, or they drove from just outside range, to within range, all on battery power. Must be a hell of a battery powering that thing.

If it’s the latter of the two, that is one extraordinarily quiet submarine. If it’s the former, and I think this more likely, what we have here, is an incredible stroke of luck, that the sub chose the right spot to sit in, to wait for the group to show up. If that’s the case, I have my doubts that exposure of that ability was ever intended. It just happened.

(3) Why in the world would you let the US know you had both the tactics and technology to do this?

Well, these are communists we are dealing with. Everything that they do is politically motivated. Making the assumption that that is what they’re doing, (I haven’t, yet, but for the sake of discussion …) I would view this as propaganda value. Sort of like spending a couple of billion dollars on a satellite whose only ability was to play monotone music over a short wave frequency back to earth… the music being “THe East is Red”.

I wouldn’t call it sabre rattling, exactly, but again everything they do is politically motivated; doubtless, they see it as having a positive effect on their negotiations around the world on things not military . Fear, he is, after all, a great motivator.

The obvious implications for vulnerability aside , and along with it the questions about our ASW ability… one question we’ve not asked yet…Would we have been better off.. as in, more cost effective… staying with Diesel power technology in our submarines? After all, the Chinese appear to have figured out a way to make them quiet enough to be effective….