Foolish Chinese Submarine Captain

The headline, "China Sub Stalks USS Kitty Hawk," has been blaring as the main headline on Drudge’s site all day, today.  Drudge’s headline link takes you to the Washington Times article regarding this incident, which was written by Bill Gertz.  The Times article is titled China sub stalked U.S. fleet, and begins this way.

A Chinese submarine stalked a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group in the Pacific last month and surfaced within firing range of its torpedoes and missiles before being detected, The Washington Times has learned.

The first reaction one has, as Billy Beck said, is “Yikes,” and, if indeed the Chinese Song class sub was slinking around the Kitty Hawk, and its phalanx of protectors, UNDETECTED, there is a real element of yikes to the incident.  Yikes, because the much vaunted sonar systems of the U.S Navy, whether ship borne, air borne, helo borne, or sub borne, seem to be lacking.

But there is something very foolish about the Chinese sub skipper surfacing his boat within view of any of the elements of the carrier battle group’s defensive team.

Submarines are meant to be operated undetected, period.  The Chinese skipper has now, foolishly, played his hand.  The chances of this particular Song class submarine, or any other, to once again perform this feat, this broach of carrier battle group defenses, are now greatly diminished.

As an aside, I’ll share a short story with you.

I’ve been out on maneuvers with a U.S. carrier battle group, onboard the USS LOS ANGELES (SSN688), playing the enemy, and I can remember the glee we had, taking photos of the carrier, and displaying the photos in the main passageway of the sub.  We had penetrated so close to the carrier, undetected, that we had to take three (3) separate photographs in order to make one (1) complete photo of the carrier.  After snapping our panoramic of the carrier, we crept away, still undetected, and then radioed the carrier to notify it of its demise.  The carrier’s skipper didn’t quite believe us, so we sent the skipper the photo montage, with our skipper’s compliments.

Posted by on 11/13 at 02:23 PM

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