‘Captain, a Diesel Submarine Is Right Under Us’: $4,500,000,000 U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier Was ‘Torpedoed’

National Security Journal ^ | Oct 17, 2025 | Isaac Seitz

[where's_the_Outrage?]

Key Points and Summary - In a massive 1999 naval exercise, the Dutch diesel-electric submarine HNLMS Walrus, playing the role of an adversary, achieved a stunning simulated victory against a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group.

-Told it was "expected to lose," the submarine's skilled crew used stealth and passive sonar to penetrate the defensive screen.

-The Walrus "sank" multiple escorts before launching a successful mock torpedo attack on the supercarrier USS Theodore Roosevelt. The carrier is valued at around $4.5 billion and has thousands of personnel on board.

-It then daringly sailed directly underneath the carrier to escape, proving the profound vulnerability of even the most powerful surface fleets to quiet, modern conventional submarines.

Ever since the end of World War II, the aircraft carrier has been the centerpiece of the U.S. Navy's strategy.

Carrier strike groups allow the U.S. Navy to project power all across the world and provide assistance to any allies in need.

However, despite the comprehensive measures taken to protect them, aircraft carriers are not invincible.

In one such instance, a Dutch Walrus-class diesel-electric submarine was able to penetrate an American carrier’s defenses and simulate a successful torpedo strike against it.

This was just one of many instances of a small submarine slipping through a carrier strike group to “sink” a super aircraft carrier.

JTFEX 99-1 was one of the largest naval exercises since the Gulf War, involving 24,000 personnel, with 15,000 at sea, and a vast array of ships and aircraft.

The exercise spanned a massive area from Norfolk, Virginia, to Puerto Rico, simulating a high-intensity conflict scenario.

[GingisK]

I thought the lesson there was that the Brits need to reprogram the computers on their defense systems to recognize that a French Exocet missile fired from an Argentine jet is hostile.

The British also learned to go ahead and install those AA defenses, seriously improve their fire-fighting technique and equipment, and have redundant pumps aand power sources.

[Pilsner]

The hysteria is overdone. War games bind blue force hand and foot, give red force superhero abilities.

And are you familiar with with distinction between paper war games, and a real submarine, really penetrating a real anti submarine screen, to get a firing solution on a real aircraft carrier?

[C19fan]

Yes I believe so.

[If You Want It Fixed - Fix It]

Explains 9-11 being so successful...

[Pilsner]

In the for what its worth department, I heard a mechanic in a Air National Guard unit tell a story about an exercise where Air Force units were supposed to fight a Navy Carrier Task Force -- I think in Gulf of Mexico America. Two Air National Guard F4s approached the Task Force at wave top height, at the moment when hostilities were to begin. They were undetected, popped up over the aircraft carrier, and as the went over opened up something, flaps, air brakes, (I'm not a pilot) that allowed several rolls of toilet paper to drop out, and bounce across the deck, leaving unimpeachable proof that had the attack been real, it would have successful.

The Navy responded by prohibiting Air Force aircraft from flying within a mile (or 3 or something) of their task force, for "safety reasons."

[Zhang Fei]

[And are you familiar with with distinction between paper war games, and a real submarine, really penetrating a real anti submarine screen, to get a firing solution on a real aircraft carrier?]

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The Iranian Navy is familiar with it, couldn’t land a blow while its Holy of Holies, its nuclear program, turned to rubble.

[Zhang Fei]

[Interesting. So it appears they would go the blockade route-starve them. Does that mean a Berlin Airlift response? Doubt the Chicoms would stop them. Then there’s those islands they’ve built up. During the standoff the pipsqueak Philipine navy could take them over and dare the Chicoms to respond with the US there locked and loaded.]

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I think they’re gearing up for a rerun of the Pacific War. Not so much an ideological or even historical imperative so much as all rulers being glory hounds. In democracies, that impulse is reined in by popular anger at the human and material costs imposed on the population of a major war. In a dictatorship, a ruler can ensure a consistent message that combines need (threats from other powers), payback (vis-a-vis Japan for WW2, the US for the 800K Chinese dead in WW2) and maybe civilizational glory.

A blockade gives the US plenty of time to respond. The question is how big Xi wants to bet. If it’s a Putin-level effort (6% of GDP), the operation might as well be stillborn. What made D-Day successful was scale.

[Zhang Fei]

800K Chinese dead in WW2 should read 800K Chinese dead in Korea.

[Repeat Offender]

If it’s anything like the exercises I participated in - yes; bound hand and foot. The red team was supposed to locate and “bomb” our position…..when they couldn’t find us, we had to change our camouflage to contrast with the snow. An entire company was marched out into an open snow covered field and the red team flew over us. Surprise, surprise they “killed” a whole company of Marines. We just so happened to have no air support, no anti-aircraft capability, etc…..with a dead company, the BN had difficulty hitting the next objective. The upside - we flipped off the pilots as they flew over.

[ridesthemiles]

HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER?????

[null and void]

That’s better. Dad was stationed outside Peking in 1945 to keep a contested coal mine from being shutdown by Chiang Kai-shek or Mao, it provided the city with critically needed coal for the winter.

[doorgunner69]

Think I heard about that, or similar.

[doorgunner69]

The Japanese killed a lot more Chinese than that in WWII.

[Zhang Fei]

[The Japanese killed a lot more Chinese than that in WWII.]

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The Chinese killed a lot more Chinese in the civil war, and the ensuing purges and famines. The civil war around the time of the Civil War killed maybe 30m, the entire US population then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion

The real issue isn’t the actual numbers. It’s the state-directed fairy tale, fed with mother’s milk from an early age.

[Svartalfiar]

And are you familiar with with distinction between paper war games, and a real submarine, really penetrating a real anti submarine screen, to get a firing solution on a real aircraft carrier?

And did this Swedish submarine "sink" our carrier in a real situation, or in a war game where we weren't allowed to use most of our asw capabilities?