VegaBond

Yeah this is a Tom Clancy event here definitely, I mean what happened to the 500 mile screen of whats out there? The Carrier group has so much detection of surroundings.. this baffles me.. maybe it was let in purpose but yeah wow maybe they surfaced to ask directions..

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xTYBALTx

Yeah, totally. And at the same time, it is of course possible that the USN didn't spot the sub before it surfaced. I'm just sayin'.

If that sub did indeed make it there undetected, then, wow. Sure throws a spanner in the war plans for NATO.

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Morganan

Exactly, the best determining factor would be who released the story. If the USN let it "slip", then for sure we detected it and want them to think we couldn't. If the Chinese let it out, then it's another story. If some reporter was on board and happened to see the sub surfacing and the story went from there, we are back to not knowing for sure either way.

Kerostasis

I could see it going either way.

On the one hand, the US is accustomed to working with Nuclear submarines -- which carry lots of advantages, but have the drawback of making small amounts of noise in their nuclear plant all the time, even when not moving at all. Diesel/Electric subs aren't as powerful overall, but can be extremely quiet while moving at slow speeds underwater.

On the other hand, we surely know that enemy submarine fleets contain large quantities of non-nuclear subs, and would be looking out for that, right? Those destroyer nets are placed at a pretty wide radius from the carrier, and the enemy sub does have to move to get past them. Unless they were lucky enough to be sitting stock still right in our path, I guess.

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Axis of Eeevil

Aren't US subs a normal contingent of a battlegroup's drills?

Is there a possibility we were working together with the Chinese and they had to surface to "burp" and someone saw it that shouldn't have, so they had to go public?

With the right salinity/temp gradients and a current, a sub can go a long way with very little chance of being detected by passive sonar, from what I understand.

Temperature, salinity and current profiles are completely different in much of the Pacific in an El Nino year...

Where did this story come from is potentially the most important question here, particularly if it's a rehash of a past known event.

Anyone find anything further about this referencing a different source that isn't just parroting?

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gunjunkie

Bear in mind that surfacing could have been a measure to prevent ramming. There is very little information about the exact parameters of this encounter. It's possible that the Song class was in the path of the carrier group and the captain decided to surface to avoid a possible collision. Also, I suspect that the Chinese would have learned more by staying undetected than by surfacing. Another option is that the sub got pinged (Actively detected), and surfaced to avoid any trouble. We're just not getting that side of the story.

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Do or do not, there is no try....
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Morganan

nah, you don't need to surface to recharge batteries, only on-load/off-load personel/provisions/equipment/etc.

Not a diesel sub, they have to come close to the surface every 10-15 hours to recharge their batteries. That's why diesel sub's are typically kept to coastal defense types of missions, the farther out to sea they go, the less effective they are in today's environment.

Water temperature is the only thing that matters of what you listed once you get 200 miles+ away from shore

nah, there is no way the carrier could have gotten close enough to the sub for that to have happened without the sub knowing it long in advance unless the captain of the Chinese sub was a complete moron. Typically you don't put moron's in command of an expensive submarine, you put them in charge of a Mcdonalds. Although a picture of the sub that did surface would tell it's own story, by how high it sat out of the water.

I'm betting on the latter.

El_Gringo_Grande

It is hard to detect subs. Very hard. Some of my friends that went the submariner rout would tell stories about how close they would get and how often. Sometimes they would be within yards of a ship for hours and do this for days on end. They would do it to both our and other countries navies.

I was on coms once when we got actively ping by one of our own during a major fleet maneuver. (BTW active ping is VERY loud when you are below the water line.) I could hear those in the tower scream out and go all crazy.

And battery powered subs are quieter than our nukes. Simply fewer moving parts and less heat to hide. And it isn't much easier for our attack sub to find theirs.

So this isn't surprising. I heard one captain say that if there was an all out conventional war our surface ships would be hard pressed to survive a week in certain waters.

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- "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt
- "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson
- "People should not be afraid of it's government, government should be afraid of it's People." - Line from V for Vendetta
- If software were as unreliable as economic theory, there wouldn't be a plane made of anything other than paper that could get off the ground. Jim Fawcette

Daxx

Sounds like it sucks to be a seaman.

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Trooper

Wouldn't that be something if that actually was true? Neither side was able to detect or failed to even look and they just happend to find each other in the biggest water hole? No wonder we cant find a 6' arab in a big sand box.



my favorite lines from the entire article.

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that sounds like a good idea trooper.
-Vulcan

Switch

If china wanted to attack right now, we'd be screwed. Most of our assets are tied up in the middle east. Fortunately, china has bought up so much US debt that it would be like shooting themselves in the foot to attack now. We'd surely renounce our debt to them and use that free credit to bring our economy back on line.

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|TG|Switch

Better known as:
That noob who crashed the chopper.
That noob who ran over the mine.
That noob who TK'd me with a sniper rifle.
That noob who hit that APC at 300m with light AT! Our APC...

xTYBALTx

Hrmm

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Daxx

Not really. China may have a massive army, but it doesn't have any infrastructure to support it outside of their own nation. Sure there a big threat to their neighboring nations, but theres no way they could invade the US.

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El_Gringo_Grande

Couldn't be more wrong. Even though the focus is on our land troops our true power is in our Naval forces. There is no country that even comes close to what we have.

China is focusing, as it has for thousands of years, on coastal type defenses. They have always sucked when it comes to invasion type forces. Maybe when the Mongols mixed in with them.

We are, at this point, about as safe from a land invasion as a country can be. Our only weakness is from ballistic missiles and, to a much lesser extent, an air raid of some sort.

__________________
I’m not racists, I have republican friends. Radio show host.
- "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt
- "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson
- "People should not be afraid of it's government, government should be afraid of it's People." - Line from V for Vendetta
- If software were as unreliable as economic theory, there wouldn't be a plane made of anything other than paper that could get off the ground. Jim Fawcette

War.mongeR1

Now the thread is getting really interesting! Anyway, I don't think this whole event is any more than a little bit of international muscle flexing. It happens all the time and we usually never hear about it.The Chinese and the US do it to each other constantly. No biggie.

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"Common sense is not so common." -Voltaire