Posted on 11/09/2007 4:55:08 PM PST by fanfan
When the U.S. Navy deploys a battle fleet on exercises, it takes the security of its aircraft carriers very seriously indeed.
At least a dozen warships provide a physical guard while the technical wizardry of the world's only military superpower offers an invisible shield to detect and deter any intruders.
That is the theory. Or, rather, was the theory.
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 U.S.S. Kitty Hawk - a 1,000ft supercarrier with 4,500 personnel on board.
By the time it surfaced the 160ft Song Class diesel-electric attack submarine is understood to have sailed within viable range for launching torpedoes or missiles at the carrier.
According to senior Nato officials the incident caused consternation in the U.S. Navy.
The Americans had no idea China's fast-growing submarine fleet had reached such a level of sophistication, or that it posed such a threat.
One Nato figure said the effect was "as big a shock as the Russians launching Sputnik" - a reference to the Soviet Union's first orbiting satellite in 1957 which marked the start of the space age.
The incident, which took place in the ocean between southern Japan and Taiwan, is a major embarrassment for the Pentagon.
The lone Chinese vessel slipped past at least a dozen other American warships which were supposed to protect the carrier from hostile aircraft or submarines.
And the rest of the costly defensive screen, which usually includes at least two U.S. submarines, was also apparently unable to detect it.
According to the Nato source, the encounter has forced a serious re-think of American and Nato naval strategy as commanders reconsider the level of threat from potentially hostile Chinese submarines.
It also led to tense diplomatic exchanges, with shaken American diplomats demanding to know why the submarine was "shadowing" the U.S. fleet while Beijing pleaded ignorance and dismissed the affair as coincidence.
Analysts believe Beijing was sending a message to America and the West demonstrating its rapidly-growing military capability to threaten foreign powers which try to interfere in its "backyard".
The People's Liberation Army Navy's submarine fleet includes at least two nuclear-missile launching vessels.
Its 13 Song Class submarines are extremely quiet and difficult to detect when running on electric motors.
Commodore Stephen Saunders, editor of Jane's Fighting Ships, and a former Royal Navy anti-submarine specialist, said the U.S. had paid relatively little attention to this form of warfare since the end of the Cold War.
He said: "It was certainly a wake-up call for the Americans.
"It would tie in with what we see the Chinese trying to do, which appears to be to deter the Americans from interfering or operating in their backyard, particularly in relation to Taiwan."
In January China carried a successful missile test, shooting down a satellite in orbit for the first time.
Thanks.
Not to mention what that says about the Phantom pilot who shot down a friendly aircraft while parked on the flight deck.”
If I recall the safety film correctly, a plane was doing high power turn ups behind the bird carrying the sidewinders. the direct jet blast into the missile’s motor was said to have fired the sidewinder into the other (McCain’s-wow) plane.
A bit of history : Spain/Portugal/Dutch owned the oceans until the English won the Battle of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Thus the British empire grew and grew through her control of the oceans(the world speaks ENGLISH because of it). It wasn’t challenged until napoleon/france in 1800, then finally the empire upon which the sun never set, began to decline in WWI.
Starting in WWI and gaining great momentum in WWII, the US Navy has taken over the role as ruler of the 7 seas. All the other naval powers are second raters by comparison. The russians tried it, and the USSR collapsed, esp its navy. Now comes the chinese and their naval ambitions, this LOST treaty for UN control of the seas is but one more chinese ploy to gain supremacy on the oceans.
Object lesson : no country can become an empire until it controls the oceans. Napoleon tried it on land and got his butt kicked by the british navy, finally dying in exile on a BRITISH island. Hitler tried it too, and his U boat fleet was finally wasted too. Kruchev tried it w/cuba, until confronted by Kennedy in the naval blockade, and the closest we’ve ever come to nuclear war.
This LOST treaty is nothing more than all the other pisants trying to take control of the seas away from the US navy. They can’t do it by force so they try the pisant lawyers route. They’ll only do it if our navy has become wimps. What a sad conclusion, esp to all those brave american sailors who died making the US Navy the COP of the marine world, the bringer of peace to so many nations...
Though I agree with your assessment of surface ASW capability, I think the ASW role for the CVBGs is supposed to fall on their LA class sub escorts. Modern diesel-electric boats will be our bane for the foreseeable future.
Unfortunately we're going to have to suffer a severely damaged or sunk bird farm to get REALLY serious about this.
“They’ll only do it if our navy has become wimps. “
Our top navy pentagon officials have been cheerleading for LOST. As well as Bush, Senator Lugar and many others. They certainly are wimps, in my opinion.
Thanks for the history lesson.
Yes, there’s another biblical/historical lesson here as well, something about esau and a bowl of soup...
Unless you wanted to and seeing that it was a naval exercise they may have wanted him to surface. Think, that sub would also not want to tell us he had penetrated the group.
Once he surfaces we can back trace our tapes of the exercises and see what sound or electrical traces occurred just before he surfaced and as he left.
We now get more out of it than he got by showing off (for which he got NOTHING.) So it is just as likely one of our subs did something to make him breach the surface and show himself.
Once he did that we now have pics as well as the traces for our records. Now he is marked and cataloged. He would have been very stupid to allow that unless he felt forced.
Jeff Head was right. The vain and spoiled ones are wrong.
...need to split our fleets into many smaller ships, BTW, and build up ground and air forces.
Nanoweapons are going to make the whole concepts of radar and “early warning” into a total farce.
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