Posted on 05/13/2010 9:44:54 AM PDT by george76
The People's Liberation Army's Navy (PLAN) submarines cannot spot United States satellites high overhead as the submarines leave their bases at Sanya on Hainan Island, Qingdao in Shandong province and Ningbo in Zhejiang province, and head for deeper water.
Plenty of very deep water can be found in the South China Sea, especially in the zone north of the Spratly Islands, east of the Paracels, and south of the Luzon Strait.
"A more challenging area for submarines to operate undetected is the East China Sea, which is quite shallow from the Chinese coastline up to the Okinawa Trough ...
Detecting submarines via satellite is a form of Non-Acoustic Anti-Submarine Warfare (NAASW). Lasers, infrared and other detectors and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) in space may be used as part of this NAASW activity. Satellites might see subtle undersea disturbances caused by submarines, watch wave patterns on or beneath the sea surface, or detect subtle variations in ocean temperature.
Over the next 18 months, the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) - operator of the US spy satellite fleet - is planning multiple satellite launches, and China must assume that one or more of these new US surveillance satellites will help support US Navy efforts to locate and track PLAN submarines.
A US Navy oceanographer from Australia, Paul Scully-Power, who became the first oceanographer in space, flew on the space shuttle Challenger (STS - 41G) in 1984. The US Navy later admitted that the mission had successfully detected the undersea or internal waves generated by a submarine which had been tracked successfully at relatively shallow depths. This was deemed, "incredibly important to us" and was reported by the Washington Post in 1985 - quoting a senior US Navy admiral at the time.
(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...
MI Ping
Next thing ya know, Obama will tell the world how many nukes we have ... oh wait
What is not being told are the weapons that can target these boats, and at the very least, we can obliterate Hianan island and give them no home to go to. The diesel-electric boats will limp around on batteries waiting to be destroyed and their noisy nuke boats will be tracked down and eliminated by the silent-as-death Virginia-class hunter-killer boats.
I’m convinced the X-37 “space plane” was developed to deploy and retrieve kinetic energy weapons launch platforms. Last I heard, the first X-37 is still up there, with another coming online soon. Obozo doesn’t think we need a lot of nukes anymore, he may be correct.
Please understand that when Iran brings it's nuclear weapons online, we had better have a nuclear deterent. Otherwise we're toast.
And if you don't understand how gentle of a response that was, please take my word for it.
Nicely put.
Gee,
Do you suppose one of them was in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20th?
Of course, we’ll never hear about it.
LLS
No, he is not correct and we invite disaster by thinking that he is.
LLS
You read something into my statement. I never said we didn’t need a nuclear deterent, I’m only saying that this system, if it exists, will decrease our dependence on a nuclear deterent. Similar destructive force without all the nasty radiation and the international outrage that will follow a nuke strike. We can use it for strikes that would have previously required nukes to be successful.
IMO, reducing the size of our nuclear arsenal sends the wrong message. It makes it clear we are willing to downsize our military. And we are. We have China, Russia, soon to be Iran, most of the Islamic world against us, and Obama wants to reduce our nuclear arsenal to the bare bones. There are still other nations that have nukes today, that might in some instances also wind up being nuclear threats.
While I did miss the "...a lot of..." part of your comment, and that does alter my perception of your post, it still leads me to disagree with your take on this matter.
Thanks for the response.
Well, wait until Obama hears about this. He’ll put a stop to it.
They take too long to reach the target unless the mission is to kill 100,000 women and children, also known as "market share".
Given that the "holy grail" of Global Command/Global Strike is to have steel-on-target inside of single-digit minutes, the pre-positioned/orbital kinetic weapon is the way to go.
Attempting to track subs by satelite is not new. While I have no idea how effective they are, there are many things which they try to monitor via Satelite (distortion of Earth’s magnetic field, Hydrogen release, radiation streaming, etc.).
Who’d thunk that would be able to do that?
It was an NK long-range mini sub. You gotta stay current. ;-)
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