Shocking!China sub stalked U.S. fleet - Washington Times
This is really embarassing! A Chinese diesel-electric sub follws a fleet carrier undetected? What happened to the US nuclear attack sub that ALWAYS accompanies a carrier? My preliminary conclusions:
-the carrier captain wasn’t on a proper state of alert- sonar should have pickep up the sub. I fear for this captain’s promotion prospects.
2) the carrier group commander allowed this to happen-we are not at war, and maybe we were testing the Chinese capabilities
still, it boggles the mind, that a nearly obsolescent sub could follw a US carrier group, undetected, for days!
The Chinese must really think that we are ready to go to war with them-i can’t imagine why 9as WALMART struggles to fill its stores with more chinese-made goods0! :eek:
From the link:
Provided the U.S. fleet did not actually know aboutthe sub and we are declining to acknowledge that fact so as to lull the Chinese into a false belief that they can operate with impunity, (not likely, but possible), it would seem the the U.S. got careless because they were in an area where no other forces (particularly submarine) were expected.
It does not mean anything in particular (besides a throrough reaming of the officers and crews in charge of ASW for that task force) unless it turns out that the Chinese have been doing it with impunity.
Also, there is nothing"obsolete" about a diesel electric sub. In fact, they are capable of sitting much more quietly than a nuke boat, since they can actually shut down more internal operations (for a short time) than a nuke to go completely silent while a nuke can never really shut down the cooling system for the reactor.
Diesel electric subs have disadvantages in terms of range and the need to get near (not on) the surface to use the diesels to recharge the batteries, but they are quite capable of being very efficient killers, even today.
Sorry, I’m just not buyin’ it. The U.S. Navy is not going to confirm that they were aware of the chinese sub. This has been going on for years, it’s just not good policy to release any info. about U.S. ASW capabilities, much better to keep them guessing.
Modern diesel-electric subs are very, very quiet while running on batteries. Quieter than a nuclear sub. So, yeah - if the sub stayed sufficiently distant from the task force, I’d readily believe that it managed to shadow them for a while. The problem is, of course, endurance - a nuclear sub could shadow a carrier for potentially an entire deployment, while a diesel sub will have to surface eventually. Even the best modern air-independent propulsion systems only extend the time submerged to weeks, while nuclear submarines can stay submerged for months.
In any case, this is nothing new. During the Cold War, I recall hearing that Soviet submarines shadowed practically every carrier deployment.
The Kitty Hawk had a fender bender with a Soviet sub. cite
I see this incident as proof, that Chinese espionage in the USA, is paying off. There is a large Chinese spy ring on S. California-evidence has surfaced that the ring was able to steal quite a bit of info on ASW technology, and the new DSX destroyer program. is this evidence that the Chinese submarines can evade detection? Or is this a not-so-subtle message to the US Navy- provide aid to Taiwan at YOUR PERIL!?? :smack:
I am not sure what you meant by this, but US CV’s do not have sonar mounted on the carrier’s themselves. They carry helicopters for that…
Also, the destroyer and frigates escorting the carrier should have been doing the looking, as well…
So I don’t see it as solely the CV CO’s fault. (I don’t see it as anyone’s “fault”, actually. Anecdote below.)
Caveat: maintaining a round-the-clock ASW measures, especially during peactime, quickly wears out men and equipment. So I think that the USN only “pings” when it is in areas that it expects that it might find something.
I was part of a carriers crew in the 80’s. Russian (TU-95?) Bear naval search aircraft routinely overflew a carrier in the western pacific several times during it’s deployment. There usually was an F-14 flying alongside, but if they had it in their mind to drop a bomb, then shooting down the Bear after the carrier was sunk would have been, well, like “closing the barn door yada yada”. Instead, they took pictures of us, and we waved while we took pictures of them.
As far as the sub getting in close, the only folks that care is the “PR” folks in the Chinese Navy.
This stuff happens all the time. It’s a big ocean and a big battle group. It’s out for six months. And as mentioned previously, diesel subs are very, very quite. In normal streaming, we wouldn’t be pinging or listening all the time. It’s very manpower and equipment intensive to keep the group clear of subs all the time.
Just a couple of other things to add:
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The Song, while based on earlier diesel-electric designs going all the way back to German WWII U-boats, seems to be a fairly modern design with the current variant dating from 1999. (wiki)
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A carrier battle group is pretty noisy - if the sub had a general idea where they were, or what route they were on, it’s no suprise that it could intercept and then shadow for a bit undetected (especially given the apparently low alert level).
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The timing of this incident seems to make sense within the larger context of US-Chinese military relations:
Don’t forget that the sub has as much “right” to be in international waters as the US CV group, within agreed apon safety regulations.
So, even if we had seen it, there’s not much we can do about it.
We can park an FFG a thousand yards away and ping the heck out of it to let it know that we know it’s there, but other than that, it’s “smile and wave time”.
Other people have already made points about the quietness of diesel-electric subs; let’s tackle a few other misperceptions:
[ul][li]“What happened to the US nuclear attack sub that ALWAYS accompanies a carrier?” Where did you get his little gem of information? Attack subs do not typically accompany a carrier group. This would be both wasteful and antithetical to their primary mission, which is, after all, to track and tail enemy ballistic missile submarines, or their secondary (now more common) missions, involving SIGINT, SpecOps, and (believe it or not) following whales and other marine life for scientific survey. A sub following a carrier group would be easily detected (or at least localized) by the fact that it has to be near the carrier group. [/li][li]Furthermore, were a US attack sub trail a carrier group, it would pose a hazard to itself and the carrier group by being almost, but not quite, indetectable, thus giving the group the impression that it is being tailed. If at periscope depth, it might also pose a serious navigational hazard, as the carrier group probably isn’t going to be in direct contact with it under standard EMCON procedures.[/li][li]Carrier groups, typically comprising one carrier, 4-8 frigates and destroyers of various configurations and capabilities, plus any number of temporary support, refueling, and auxillary craft, are about as stealty as a marching parade in the middle of the jungle. They can readily be detected from their radio chatter and from (if you’ve the capability) satellite or reconnaissance fly-over imagery. There’s really no way to hide a bunch of cans on the surface, especially if they aren’t particularly trying to be quiet (slow forward speed, EMCON, et cetera).[/li][li]Carrier groups generally have at least one (more often two) ASW frigates which should be able to detect (and ward off) a moving submarine. However, a sub lying in wait, or a diesel-electric sub moving off batteries is very quiet, often quieter than the ambient noise level, and thus essentially undetectible. (Don’t believe anything you read in Tom Clancy novels about finding “a hole in the sea”, i.e. detecting a sub from its lack of emissions. This might have happened on a few lucky occasions but in general form this is nigh on impossible.) [/li][li]In general, neither ships nor subs actively scan with what you traditionally think of as sonar. This is called a “yankee search”, which takes a large amount of energy and makes the searcher radiate far more than the searchee. Instead, “sonar” operators mostly listen with passive arrays (see above) that are typically towed behind the ship. These arrays are very good at picking up noise, particularly the high frequency, periodic noise associated with running motors, the coolant systems of high pressure water cooled nuclear reactors, and cavitation noise from fast-moving propellers. A slow-moving electric boat (especially one with a quiet “noncavitating” screw, which commerical computational fluid dynamics codes can allow anyone with a modicum of experience in compressible fluids to design) will be viritually indetectible.[/li][li]Far from being obsolescent, the Chinese Navy (and general military establishment and equipment) has emerged as one of the most credible threats to the US/NATO interests in the 21st Century, largely by licensing/stealing Soviet technology (which, while often of inferior quality and poorly maintained, was not nearly as ineffective as Tom Clancy would have you believe) and then updating and improving it, keeping the robustness and mechanical reliability designed in by Russian engineers and improving up to a modern technological and industrial standard. If they have somehow acquired the lastest (as of the early Nineties) Soviet wide aperture sonar then their capabilities are as good or better than a second flight Los Angeles-class submarine. [/li][li]That the sub was “undetected for days”, if true, probably indicates a need for change in tactical procedures regarding maneuvers within operational range of mainland China. This might, like any number of happenstances, affect the careers of post and flag officers involved in carrier group operations, but the same could be said for any number of events outside of their control. More than likely, there’ll be a powwow about the capabilities of the Chinese Navy, a bunch of contract studies will be funded to the Beltway Bandits (technical military contractors), and life will go on as before.[/ul][/li]
The sky is not falling, Chicken Little. Heck, it’s barely misting.
Stranger
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
[ul][li]“What happened to the US nuclear attack sub that ALWAYS accompanies a carrier?” Where did you get his little gem of information? Attack subs do not typically accompany a carrier group. This would be both wasteful and antithetical to their primary mission, which is, after all, to track and tail enemy ballistic missile submarines, or their secondary (now more common) missions, involving SIGINT, SpecOps, and (believe it or not) following whales and other marine life for scientific survey. A sub following a carrier group would be easily detected (or at least localized) by the fact that it has to be near the carrier group. [/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
Say what? From Wikipedia:
And, of course, we’ve now somewat found out how good the Chinese are. But they could be better.
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
[list][li]“What happened to the US nuclear attack sub that ALWAYS accompanies a carrier?” Where did you get his little gem of information? Attack subs do not typically accompany a carrier group. This would be both wasteful and antithetical to their primary mission, which is, after all, to track and tail enemy ballistic missile submarines, or their secondary (now more common) missions, involving SIGINT, SpecOps, and (believe it or not) following whales and other marine life for scientific survey. A sub following a carrier group would be easily detected (or at least localized) by the fact that it has to be near the carrier group.[/li][/QUOTE]
From the article in the OP: “The Kitty Hawk battle group includes an attack submarine and anti-submarine helicopters that are charged with protecting the warships from submarine attack.”
If it wasn’t detected until it surfaced, how do you know it was there for “days”?
I still call B.S. The article doesn’t say where the info. came from and it specifically says that the Navy and the Pentagon declined to comment for security reasons. Do you really believe that we’re going to confirm that the chinese sub was being tracked? Much better to let them believe that they pulled it off. This kind of stuff went on constatly during the cold war and the public rarely heard about it. A U.S. Navy battle group is not going to sail blythly along, assuming there are no submarines in the area.
I was going to argue the point, but doing a bit of research on fas.org and the Navy’s website does indicate that a standard Carrier Strike Groups includes a complement of (2) Los Angeles attack subs, which represents a change in doctrine from the Cold War era, where subs operated almost independently of carrier groups except as mission requirements dictated. Mea culpa in that regard; however, all other objections stand.
Stranger
You guys must be reading a completely different article to me. If asked for a summary of the article, I would say:
Attempts to build closer ties between the US and Chinese militaries are meeting with resistance from within defense circles, including leaks to friendly newspapers designed to stir up public alarm.
Aren’t there certain types of sonar that aren’t used often in peacetime? Something about killing lots of dolphins or whales…
Why not? What would you expect the battle group to do? Sink the thing? There are hundreds of potential enemy submarines out there (although not out to sea all at once). The battle groups is probably traveling 300 miles a day. That’s a lot of ocean to travel though, and a lot of submaries to avoid…