What puzzles me in all this is why the submarine surfaced. Having snuck undetected into the middle of the task group one would think that the surfacing would be the last thing it would do. You do not advertise your capabilities to your opponent. It could be that the sub didn’t realize just how close it was to the carrier.
Or one of our subs had been following him and then started to “actively” ping him as if getting ready to fire. The chicoms then got scared and thought they were about to be sunk.
Maybe him surfacing was a way of saying “unc-ral, so sorry”. When he new the jig was up.
At least that is the way I hope it went down.
It could be that they didn't even know that they were in the middle of a US carrier battle group when they surfaced.
There are reasons why you might: to introduce the element of uncertainty for one. Planners must now weigh more heavily the possibility of losing a carrier to a Chinese sub against taking a hard line on the independence of Taiwan.
The Chinese consider themselves to be in competition with us -- at War if you will. It's not a shooting war, but a War just the same. There's value in putting it in the US Navy's head that they can't safely push a carrier battlegroup into Taiwanese waters should a real shooting war start.
Frankly, I think the sub was sitting nearly motionless in restricted waters having been alerted to the possible track of the CVBG. Then they just 'pop-up' when the get the acoustics in stereo. Let's see if they can do it in deep water or without their satellite 'eyes'.