Chinese Sub Pops Up Amid US Navy Exercise

One NATO figure said the effect was "as big a shock as the Russians launching Sputnik." 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 USS Kitty Hawk. By the time it surfaced, the 160ft Song Class diesel-electric attack submarine had sailed within viable range for launching torpedoes or missiles at the carrier. The incident caused consternation in the US Navy, which had no idea China's fast-growing submarine fleet had reached such a level of sophistication.

Comments

Carriers, so big, so beautiful, so dead

[jollyreaper]

Our fleet hasn't seen real naval combat since WWII. Anti-ship missiles are incredibly lethal and it costs far more to defend against them than it does to fire them. It will only take a few hits to ruin the day for any American task force. Sure, start a war with Iran. After the first carrier takes a hit that knocks it out of action for a two year repair, our fleets will be kept so far out at sea that their tactical usefulness will be zero. Score one for the Iranians.

The whole concept of the super-carrier is very vulnerable at this point given the kinds of weapons available to potnetial hostiles. The only reason why they persist with such glowing reputations is that they have not been put to the test in battle, their vulnerabilities not made clear. In this case they are like the battleships of WWII, or possibly more apt, the battle-cruisers. The battle-cruisers were up-gunned so they could fight with the big boys but they lacked the armor to stay in the fight. Very expensive viking funerals, they were.

The only development that will save the carrier is if active defenses can be improved to the point that nothing but nothing will get through the wall of fire. As it stands, our current ships are simply not survivable. Frigates and destroyers will get goatse'd if hit by a serious cruise missile. The torps out there these days can break a ship in two. The Russians, of course, designed torps that were supposed to be able to bust a carrier's keel in one hit.

Our whole military aparatus is still stuck in the 20th century and is still trying to bring forward concepts that saw their genesis back in the Cold War. It's going to take a serious kicking of our collective asses to force the Pentagon to reevaluate our military and put together something that's realistic and sane. But I'm not sure how big of an ass-kicking it'll take. We're getting a good one in Iraq and the lessons don't seem to be sinking in.

The first time is easy...

[pedantic bore]

It's not clear whether the sub actually navigated its way into the heart of the carrier group, or whether it was just sitting there waiting for the other ships to sail by. It's a cheap and easy tactic, and they could have had subs stationed along the common navigation channels or the exercise area (which is no secret) long before the exercise, just in case they got lucky and the carrier group sailed over their heads. Worked for the U-boats, still works today.

But it's not quite so easy the second time. Were the US ships using any active sonar? It doesn't say, but my guess is they weren't, because this is a fairly provocative thing to do -- especially if you're in waters that another country is claiming are its territory. But now that the Chinese have made a provocative move of their own, they'll have the picket ships and helos pinging away and dropping sonobuoys. And it wouldn't surprise me if the Chinese subs all find themselves with a silent new shadow the next time they leave port...

Ah, the bad old days are back again.

And here's a quote as true today as it was then.

[DaedalusHKX]

"The war wasn't meant to be won or lost, it was simply meant to be fought. The war was never meant to end, merely to go on."

Do you folks actually think that both sides of this conflict hate each other as much as the peons do? Sheesh. When the rich meet at the country club, the boys from Company A, and the boys from Company B, regardless of nationality, are friends.

The same is true of "presidents", "bankers" and anything else. Gentleman's rules, to all games. Gentlemen don't KILL each other. They get proxies, peons, idiots and fools to slaughter each other in their names. After all, only fools would hate someone they've never had a chance to get to know, or witness first hand their deeds (and their motivation, of course). Short of aggression carried out against the individual in question, "fighting a war" generally involved mass psychosis, usually cultivated by carefully trained and prepared "superiors" and "intelligence personnel."

This stuff's as old as the world. The wars will go on, the arms races will go on, and humanity will go on. All the fears and the doomsayers are merely meant to up the ante, and keep the peons scurrying about, frittering their lives away doing nothing at all interesting or worthwhile, other than what they have been TOLD to do by someone else, for someone else's benefit and minor, if any, benefit to themselves.

Welcome to the future :)

The only reason I keep watching this mess is because it is, frankly speaking, fun to watch. Nothing more, nothing less.

Re:Simple solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

We need a commander-in-chief that doesn't abuse his position. Many are probably afraid to sign up, not wanting to be stuck on a ten-year tour-of-duty. We should have been in and out of Afghanistan in a few months, and we shouldn't have entered Iraq at all. We didn't have a single good reason to invade. Why would anyone want to sign up for an pointless war? Our soldiers should have the right to protect our country with honor.

Re:The danger of diesels

[WindBourne]

Funny thing about the schkval is that in the 50s/60's, we were designing and about to build a Mach3 bomber ( B-70 valkrye). About the time of go-no go, the Powers was shot down, and USSR had their ICBM. Kennedy wisely decided that it would be a waste of money to pursue these, though he kept the research going for faster planes (which Nixon killed) and better rockets (NASA). Now, we see a torpedo that is KNOWN to be fast. Of course, it is not accurate, but who cares. If you can get it close with a small nuke (which russia owns), you own the ship. The real problem is that supposedly Russia has turned over that info to China. So now what do we do?

Back in the 70's, Carter predicted that the day and age of large ships needed to end due to the ease that USSR (and other nations) could get to them. His goal was to push for small ships that worked together, basically a parallel system. Sadly, reagan killed that and pushed us back to the day of the battleships. Now, we have the ddx, but we are still pushing major ships. It strikes me that we will need to have automated or remotely controlled ships that can do the search and destroy missions. But just as the Air force fought that, the Navy is fighting that as well.

Re:Simple solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

Submarine technology is actually way less relevant to the threats of the modern world than even freaking tanks.

This is one of the stupidest statements I have ever read on Slashdot.

Two points (and there are many more that I won't discuss):

1. Just because there isn't fighting on the seas today doesn't mean that there couldn't be. It would be wise to look at how submarines were used in WWII (axis and allied submarines). The use of submarines in the Pacific Theatre was particularly devastating. I'll give you a hint on how they might be used today if a major war broke out: submarines might be used to attack the transportation routes of a certain precious substance that starts with an 'O' and ends with an 'L'. It also might have the middle letter 'I.' This same tactic was used in the past to bring the Japanese empire to its knees in WWII long before US bombers were in range.

2. You were talking about "the threats of the modern world" and nuclear SLBMs didn't cross your mind? Really? Then you are dumber than a doorknob.

Re:Simple solution:

[mosb1000]

You do know that's a reason for them not to attack us, right? I mean, it's not like we'd honor their treasury bonds if they declared war on us.

Re:Simple solution:

[happyslayer]

As a former ASW (anti-submarine warfare) pilot, I would like to point out that, in 1998-2000, the Navy decided that "we don't need ASW to be a primary mission for the carrier." So, they assigned the carrier helos additional duty as an ASW platform ("They can handle anything inside 50 miles"), P-3s to take care of the long range stuff ("They're available"), and F/A-18s to do surface search ("They're always around, anyway").

Now, don't get me wrong, a helo can be an excellent ASW platform...if its crew is given time to train, if the carrier has enough of a "heads-up", and if they aren't doing plane-guard 90% of the time (hovering near the carrier to pick up an wrecked pilots.)

F/A-18s can't spend the time down low (they use too much gas and would rather drop bombs or shoot aircraft, not to mention that's a lot of work for one guy in a cockpit), P-3s are great, but there are only so many and they have a huge area to cover, and they have a big crew with lots of run-up for a mission...plus, they are usually based far away from where the carriers actually are. ("We just spotted a sub! Get your boys out there!" "Roger that, we'll be on station in 4 hours...")

Not being a bubblehead (submarine guy), I can't speak to any limitations on subs, but there are only so many, and a kamikaze diesel sub can and will cause a lot of tight sphincters on any ships in his area.

As the parent pointed out, no one has really tried to challenge the US for a long time, and we've gotten soft in this area (think ASW during WWII, mine warfare, brown water ops in Vietnam, etc, ad nauseum.) It usually takes either a big scare or a smoking hole in the water before anyone dusts off the old books and starts to really think about how the job needs to be done.

ASW is a highly-developed skill, and when you start to dismantle that skill, you suffer for a long time. If we haven't reversed those decisions to downgrade the ASW mission, maybe this will be an early enough wakeup call to undo the damage before someone decides that we're weak enough to slap us where it hurts.

It only takes one carrier with a hole it the side to win the public affairs war.

Background/Disclaimer: My experience was as an S-3 pilot, a carrier-based ASW aircraft. I've been out of the Navy for 3 years now, so all my points may be hopelessly out of date. On the other hand, I doubt the war on "terrah" has had any admirals sweating enemy subs, and people (as a group) don't really change, do they?

Re:Simple solution:

[couchslug]

"There are good reasons to have a draft"

Such as?

I'm too lazy to parapharase this post I made elsewhere, so I'll just edit to reflect retiring recently:

Rant mode on:
My opinion as a 26-year Air Force NCO is that a return to conscription will cost lives for nothing, would be a financial disaster, weaken the armed forces, not build any sort of (positive) shared national identity among the victims, and otherwise is a terrible idea.
Conscription instantly builds justifiable, bitter resentment among the tiny minority of victims. By the time you filter the physically and mentally fit out of the pool, you have an even smaller slice of the youth population. Not being totally stupid, some of these folks wake up to the fact that THEIR sacrifice is to appease some other fellows desire for SHARED sacrifice, whatever THAT is. These bitter humans form a pool of first-termers who will not re-enlist. Guess where the investment in training them went? Out the gate along with their ability to train brand new people, who must suffer learning by (KABOOM!) experience instead of mentoring.
Training the rotating victim pool falls to the career enlisted, who are exhausted thereby, and saddened at the deterioration of the military they had worked so hard to build. More career people quit...depleting the mid-career ranks, later depleting the senior ranks...
The blast radius of this stupidity isn't limited to Army units. Conscription was famous for scaring those unwilling to be bullet catchers into the Air Force and Navy. I came in a few years after the draft ended, but the horror stories were still fresh and I believe them. Drug use (not healthy for quality aircraft maintenance or fighting aircraft carrier fires...Forrestal, cough, cough..), discipline problems (hard to threaten someone who WANTS to be discharged!), morale in the shitter, you name it.
Effectiveness goes down, costs go up, waste goes up, experience goes away, and the downward spiral goes on unless a Ronald Regan shows up to un-fuck it.
Rich folk still dodge service as they always have and always will, because there is no SOCIAL censure for doing so. Poor folks who don't want to be there, led by inexperienced supervisors, die and are wounded in greater quantities than in the highly effective Volunteer Force. Surviving conscripts, shanghaied by a government that took them, fucked them, and chucked them end up homeless and ruined, just like the last time.
World War II is over, and that massive level of shared service is not economically supportable or necessary or intelligent due to technology. Army service is not a viable substitute for parenting either, because the kind of harsh discipline that is necessary to control the actively unwilling no longer exists and the public will not tolerate it. Society has changed, and I respectfully submit that proponents of conscription either have no clue or deliberately want it as a spoiler to damage the military.
Consider the Volunteer Force. It rebuilt itself during the 1980s into an effective war machine, won the (conventional) Gulf War battles with minimum loss and impressive speed, withstood the first drawdown, and is doing surprisingly well at simultaneously managing drawdown/transformation/the mess in Iraq.
Do we REALLY want to toss conscripts into the mix? Why would putting less-committed, less-professional, less-trained people into incredibly stressful situations be better for anyone?
Anyone out there with substantial recent US military experience favor a draft? Very few I've heard from.
The lessons of conscription have been learned.
Read and heed:

http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/Vietnam/heinl.html