Not when Panda-Huggers such as Poohbah and Ronald Montaperto kept people disinformed. This article is about that very phenomenon...the Pentagon had bad intelligence and didn't think these would be operational nearly as soon as they now are. Why?
It is not alarming.
The speed with which they attained operational status confounds the rose-colored glass-wearers predictions. Their degree of quietness is beyond that predicted as well.
China knows we can see to the bottom of the ocean as if it were a clear air on a sunny day at the beach.
Several points need to be made in reply to this point:
First, Synthetic Aperature Radar assets require satellites we no longer have functional. If anything, it might be a capability that the Chinese will have...and we won't due to lassitude. As Alamo-Girl reported...we lost the mathematical secrets which enabled this tecnhology by an expatriate Chinese scientist from Lawrence Livermore blabbing when he went to visit China...On an emergency basis, we should consider the following: The U.S. Navy should consider the rapid improvement of its anti-submarine capabilities, to include re-activating 5-10 retired Spruance class destroyers to improve its deep-ocean ASW capability. The Navy should also consider re-activating the anti-submarine warfare capability on 4 squadrons of Lockheed S-3 Viking carrier-based ASW aircraft-a capability that was removed in 1999.
Second, they were never "real-time" in surveillance, requiring massive post-acquisition signal processing. Third, although they could give us a narrower area of where to hunt, they weren't perfect. And Fourth, even with the narrower area of focus ...Our ASW assets are today just a pale shadow of themselves after the Xlinton Peace Dividends. And many of our assets, such as the Viking S-3, are retired or so old...they should be like the Orion P-3C ASW patrol plane.
Current defense budget cutbacks threaten the Navy’s Boeing Multi-Mission Maritime Aircraft, which would at long last replace the latter...but not until sometime late in the next decade...
