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China picks its lowest-scoring officers to command nuclear submarines
Business Insider ^ | Apr 16, 2024, 4:30 PM CDT | Michael Peck

Posted on 04/17/2024 9:52:45 PM PDT by Zhang Fei

The job of commanding a nuclear submarine should go to smart and well-qualified officers. Or at least that's the case in Western navies.

Not so in the Chinese navy. Except for engineers, Chinese submarine officers tend to come from military academies with the lowest college-entrance-exam scores, a US military analyst said. This suggests that People's Liberation Army Navy sub commanders are not the "best and the brightest" officers who may be most equipped to cope with the stresses and challenges endemic to submarine warfare.

Based on China's college-entrance exam — called the gaokoa — the People's Liberation Army Navy engineering university ranks No. 2 in test scores among the military academies, while the submarine academy consistently ranks in the bottom three, according to a paper written by Roderick Lee, an expert on the Chinese military at the US Naval War College.

"Assuming a student's Gaokao score is generally indicative of overall performance potential, this suggests that PLAN submarine officer cadets tracking towards non-engineering department positions are inferior to their engineering brethren," Lee said.

Rivalry between the engineers on the lower decks who keep the ship's engines running and the bridge officers such as captains, navigators, and weapons officers isn't unusual in any navy. In the US, all submarine officers and commanders are trained in nuclear engineering. By the time a Chinese officer reaches submarine command, they've had more than a decade of training and fleet experience since taking their college-entry tests.

Still, the disparity inside the Chinese navy is remarkable, given that submarines would be one of China's most important weapons in a conflict with the US, Japan, or Taiwan. The PLAN operates around 60 submarines, including six armed with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, plus six nuclear and 46 diesel-powered attack subs armed with a variety of anti-ship missiles and torpedoes.

(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...


TOPICS: China; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: china; nuclear; nuclearsubmarine; silentservice; ssbn; ssn; submarine
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To: rfp1234
"Their equivalents of John McCain. Weird."

If every chicom sub captain loses subs as efficiently as McCain lost aircraft, then the world will be a better place.

21 posted on 04/18/2024 5:12:06 AM PDT by Flag_This (They're lying.)
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To: clearcarbon

It sounds like the Chicoms have a low opinion of their submarine fleet as a fighting force and its where they send all their dregs.


22 posted on 04/18/2024 8:41:05 AM PDT by sarge83
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To: Paladin2

Currently we are testing to see if we can put these people on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and how that works out. In the last twenty years it’s been a huge success and failure depending on how one looks at the results.

The low IQ Joint Chiefs have adopted all the latest Marxist policies and committed the armed forces to becoming good young pioneers.

On the other hand, we haven’t won a war since Desert Storm, the military hates white Americans and America in general, has inserted itself into national politics and elections and couldn’t fight their way out of an outhouse full of rattlesnakes.


23 posted on 04/18/2024 8:44:50 AM PDT by sarge83
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To: sarge83

[On the other hand, we haven’t won a war since Desert Storm]


That’s not incompetence. The Korean War wasn’t lost, but it wasn’t won either. WWI was pended with an armistice that resulted in what might be considered a continuation war in 1941. The country’s most definitively concluded wars were also the ones in which the most resources were expended.

In WW2, for the duration of the war, 40% of economic output was used up. Civilian car production ended and did not resume until war’s end. Essential goods like sugar and flour were rationed. 16m men were drafted, or about 1/4 of the male population.

Most of the wars before and since seldom involved killing as much of the enemy’s overall population as occurred in WW2 (12% of Germany, 5% of Japan). During the Philippine-American War, blood-curdling atrocities were committed to pacify opponents of US annexation. While probably less ruthless than average, they were essential to a swift victory. Vietnam, unlike WW2, did not involve burning the enemy’s (North Vietnam’s) cities to the ground. Korea was similarly fought with limited resources and severely constricted targeting.

Bottom line is that superior resource allocation wins wars and the butchery of enemy populations either during the big war or post-big war phase wins occupations.


24 posted on 04/18/2024 3:26:50 PM PDT by Zhang Fei (My dad had a Delta 88. That was a car. It was like driving your living room)
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