The uninvited guest: Chinese sub pops up in middle of U.S. Navy exercise,(military chiefs red-faced)

The Daily Mail (UK) ^ | 10th November 2007 | MATTHEW HICKLEY

[fanfan]

When the U.S. Navy deploys a battle fleet on exercises, it takes the security of its aircraft carriers very seriously indeed.

At least a dozen warships provide a physical guard while the technical wizardry of the world's only military superpower offers an invisible shield to detect and deter any intruders.

That is the theory. Or, rather, was the theory.

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.

One Nato figure said the effect was "as big a shock as the Russians launching Sputnik" - a reference to the Soviet Union's first orbiting satellite in 1957 which marked the start of the space age.

The incident, which took place in the ocean between southern Japan and Taiwan, is a major embarrassment for the Pentagon.

The lone Chinese vessel slipped past at least a dozen other American warships which were supposed to protect the carrier from hostile aircraft or submarines.

And the rest of the costly defensive screen, which usually includes at least two U.S. submarines, was also apparently unable to detect it.

According to the Nato source, the encounter has forced a serious re-think of American and Nato naval strategy as commanders reconsider the level of threat from potentially hostile Chinese submarines.

It also led to tense diplomatic exchanges, with shaken American diplomats demanding to know why the submarine was "shadowing" the U.S. fleet while Beijing pleaded ignorance and dismissed the affair as coincidence.

Analysts believe Beijing was sending a message to America and the West demonstrating its rapidly-growing military capability to threaten foreign powers which try to interfere in its "backyard".

The People's Liberation Army Navy's submarine fleet includes at least two nuclear-missile launching vessels.

Its 13 Song Class submarines are extremely quiet and difficult to detect when running on electric motors.

Commodore Stephen Saunders, editor of Jane's Fighting Ships, and a former Royal Navy anti-submarine specialist, said the U.S. had paid relatively little attention to this form of warfare since the end of the Cold War.

He said: "It was certainly a wake-up call for the Americans.

"It would tie in with what we see the Chinese trying to do, which appears to be to deter the Americans from interfering or operating in their backyard, particularly in relation to Taiwan."

In January China carried a successful missile test, shooting down a satellite in orbit for the first time.

[Jeff Head]

It is true that the Flight IIA are far better at the ASW role because of their helo capabilities...I grant that. But the other Burkes, although they do not have the capability to house the helos, do have the capability to support them.

Just the same, there are far more than four flight IIAs.

The Flight IIA batch started with the Oscar Austin, DDG 79. We have now commissioned DDG 101 Gridley, meaning there are now 21 Flight IIAs commissioned. Four more have been launched and are in run up to commissioning so there will soon be 25 of them. Six more are planned with 3-4 of them already under various stages of construction. Ultimately there will be 31 Flight IIAs.

BTW, DDG 100 was commissioned and is named the USS Kidd. The last, DDG 111 will be named Spruance.

As I said, we should most definitely have kept the Spruance class. But the Burke class is a capable ASW vessel, typically mixing one earlier flight and a flight IIA in a CSG, which allows the two helos from the IIA, the two from the Tico cruiser (and many times there are two Tico cruisers) and the five or six helos from the carrier to a very adequate ASW job, using the deck of the earlier flight Burke to refuel and hop onto.

[Jeff Head]

As to the incident itself. I'm not really all that impressed. It was restricted waters. A sub of that type popping up is akin to running over a mine. Plus, we won't really know if a Los Angeles had it all along, because WE don't advertize our capabilities.

Exactly. My own sources say we did...but they are completely unofficial. Nothing will be said of this officially. But knowing the relative capabilities, I believe the Song was toast.

The Chinese, with the Song being forced to publically surface, have, along with our own (IMHO complicit) press, then used the story to their best effect IMHO.

[Travis McGee]

Interesting times!!!!

[Kevmo]

Citibank and others have been forced to write down their bullshit mortgage portfolios. My unhappy guess-timate is our huge aircraft carrier groups are also headed to a write down.

***I doubt the aircraft carriers would be knocked out completely, but their usefulness would be zero at the time we need them. Should they catch fire, they’d have to turn back from the battle and head home. CNN would have pictures of burning carriers and Chinese celebrating the reunification of Taiwan. What are the chances our carriers would catch fire if Chinese subs can pop up near them and the carriers are in range of surface missiles? Those are the same chances of a successful engagement in Taiwan, and the Chicoms know it.

[Bob]

Having seen a lot of A4 Skyhawks as a kid (grew up near Willow Grove NAS), I’d say the most common configuration was a centerline fuel tank.

Thanks, I couldn't remember if that was the case.

[Squantos]

Yeah it won’t be long before these monkeys are dropping in on everybody.........:o)

http://www.tadgear.com/images%20for%20pages/ab_urban_1_525x700.jpg

[DancesWithCats]

I always have a strong feeling the Bush administration (or Department of State alone) is trying to avoid another cold war, and is keeping a blind eye on China. It’s time to declare a new cold war, and close the market to China. Our money is feeding the Chinese PLA. We are feeding our enemy, feeding our enemy that could develop more devastating weapons. I hope the new Cold War is officially declared.

AGREE!! Why do we insist on calling them our 'friends'!!? That is so wrong. They're no more our friends than was Hitler and the Nazi party.

[ex-snook]

"I always have a strong feeling the Bush administration (or Department of State alone) is trying to avoid another cold war, and is keeping a blind eye on China."

'Free traders' and Neocons have duped Bush into thinking that our critical enemy are 'Islamo-fascists' without a world force military anything, who rely on improvised bombs and suicide cars. China must be getting a big kick out of our stupidity. Elect Rudy and the blind will lead the blind.

[eyedigress]

You can’t tell me pings don’t have mode 4 or above. This is unbelievable. My My.

[Kevmo]

Yikes

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

Last year.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/14/world/main2179694.shtml

[rlmorel]

That is a plausible scenario, much more plausible than this Chinese sub just bobbing to the surface to make a point.

I know that our sub fleet played hardball with the Soviets during the Cold War, and the Soviets both hated and resented it. There are some who think the USS Scorpion was sunk deliberately in retaliation for our accidental collision and sinking of a Soviet sub in the Pacific. (never publicly admitted, but a sub showed up in Yokosuka with a mangled sail just five days after the Soviet sub disappeared...if one draws a circle with the radius of five days sail at low speed for a damaged sub, the circumference falls near the location of the lost Soviet sub)

I have heard the Chinese sub fleet is NOT currently an effective force, I recall reading an analysis recently that said they had an extremely low number of sorties from port, not even enough to train effectively.

I don’t recall where I read it, though.

[Doofer]

So how did a Chinese sub gets into the middle of an a naval exercises and know one knew it?

I know the same thing happened to the Battle Group I was part of back in the 80's. We were off the coast of South Korea conducting war games. A submarine surfaced and the lookouts on my ship spotted it.

This sighting was reported to the Anti Submarine Warfare Commander for the Battle Group aboard the Flag Ship. They reported back not to worry basically, since this was a US sub that was part of the orange forces [simulated bad guys] that had been detected and sunk earlier that mourning.

Anyway 8 minutes after the sighting this sub decided to light off it's radar and low and behold it was the surface search/targeting radar of a Russian attack submarine.

You should have been there to see all of the excitement that caused. [grin]

Anyway I believe this story is rehashing an earlier story from a year or so ago.

[Kevmo]

Thanks for that post.

If that were the case, then we shouldn’t see anyone lose their commission over this incident, right?

[Doofer]

I was in the middle of a NATO task force, where we were the bait. Our own Navy couldn’t find us. We sank every ship in the whole flotilla.

Finally they made us go through a 1 mile wide check point so they could sink US!

skimmers = targets

pure and simple.

I was in the Surface Navy for 20 years and we never detected a submarine unless it wanted to be detected and that was almost always when they either went active with their sonar or they surfaced and were within visual range and a lookout spotted them or they lit off their radar and our Electronic Warfare people picked up that radar.

Hopefully our subs and ASW aircarft, what's left of them which isn't much, do a better job then the surface Navy.

[Doofer]

Not being a Navy guy, I dont know sea tactics. It seems like a diesel submarine must make some noise that can be detected. Let’s hope in the lessons learned from this, we actually learn a lesson.

A diesel sub running on batteries is nearly undetectable.

[B4Ranch]

I wonder what their capabilities are these days if this is old news.

[rlmorel]

This incident apparently took place in 2006 sometime. I found a blog from February 2007 which talks about this in the past tense. This same blog has an interesting (if unverifiable by me) discussion of PRC submarine capabilities. For example:

"... The Song Incident: One of the two patrols conducted in 2006 appears to have been the widely reported surfacing of a Song-class diesel-electric submarine near the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk in the South China Sea. The news media and pundits dramatized the incident as an example of China expanding its submarine operations, the Chinese government downplayed the reports as inaccurate, and the Pentagon said the media made too much of the incident...."

There is also an interesting graphic, derived from data obtained (according to the blog) by the Freedom of Information Act which portrays the number of patrols carried out by PRC submarines up until 2006:

They say there were only TWO patrols by the entire PRC sub force during 2006, and the "Kitty Hawk Incident" was supposedly one of them.

I will say this much: I must take with a grain of salt any information from this organization that runs the Strategic Security Blog website (The Federation of American Scientists) because they do indeed have a political agenda, that of disarmament. That said, it meets their political goals to downplay reports of a strong PRC submarine force or any increase in its capabilities because I suspect (don't know if it is true, someone else may know better) they feel that is how the government gets more money to fund the military in the USA. I think these might be the same people who complained the US deliberately overestimated the Soviet military might during the Cold War to justify more military expenditures for the US military.

I hesitate to shill for this site, but it seems to have more info up front in this article than anywhere else...all others seem to just make guesses. Check it out and decide for yourselves at The Strategic Security Blog (Run by the Federation of American Scientists)

I am interested in hearing what others think.

For the record, I personally think we need to massively build up our diminished sub forces and anemic antisubmarine forces, not just for the PRC, but also for a resurgent and militaristic Russia, Venezuela, Iran...etc.

[antisocial]

“Is this the same navy that wants to give the oceans to the UN?”

That would be funny if it were’nt so true!

SEKD-Bump

[fanfan]

Good question.