Chinese sub plays Marco Polo with US Navy battle fleet... and wins.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Darius871


Are we reading the same thread? Which U.S. posters ever expressed surprise that a sub could do this, or even expressed unawareness that this has been done by other countries for decades?

Originally posted by Impaler[WrG]
This is the Tiawan Strait which we have been plowing through it over and over to intimidate the Chinesse, they probably just parked the sub in our usual path with the engines off and wait for the fleet to pass over head and just float to the surface. Theirs no sound to detect what so ever in that kind of senario and its a logical defense if you know your enemy is going to come through a particular piece of water. I'm sure the Chinesse planned all this very carfully and deliberatly to counter-intimidate us or at the least shake our confidence. I don't dout they were prepared to lose the sub in question should we be trigger happy and blow it out of the water just to see how close it got before being blown up.

Originally posted by Whoha
I think Impaler got it, they were using pretty much the same course for the Carrier group, and on the 11 billionth run through the Chinese put a sub in the pathway.

And this isn't the first time that the US has made this kind of mistake either.

[Darius871]

Impaler merely described one method with which a determined sub skipper could have gotten so close to the carrier; this does not indicate surprise, discount other methods, or even imply that it hasn't been done before by other countries (which is virtually common knowledge, especially on a forum chock-full of military geeks where there have been threads like this in the past).

Meanwhile Whoha himself said that this has happened before, which blows your argument out of the water (no pun intended).

[snoopy369]

I want to know why we didn't sink it... a submarine close enough to hit our carrier should bloody well be sunk, or at least boarded. You don't know what some rogue Chinese agent might do with a ship (or rogue Al Qaeda agent)...

[Darius871]

Originally posted by snoopy369
I want to know why we didn't sink it... a submarine close enough to hit our carrier should bloody well be sunk, or at least boarded. You don't know what some rogue Chinese agent might do with a ship (or rogue Al Qaeda agent)...

If everyone got in such a hissy-fit over a Chinese fighter going down when it clipped a U.S. recon plane by accident, what do you think would happen if the U.S. navy sunk one of China's most advanced submarines, 60-man crew and all, for harmlessly surfacing in international waters?

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Darius871
Impaler merely described one method with which a determined sub skipper could have gotten so close to the carrier; this does not indicate surprise, discount other methods, or even imply that it hasn't been done before by other countries (which is virtually common knowledge, especially on a forum chock-full of military geeks where there have been threads like this in the past).

Meanwhile Whoha himself said that this has happened before, which blows your argument out of the water (no pun intended).

Quite true, but it all boils down to one thing - it was pure accident / routine maneuvres that made it possible for the chinese subs to do what they did - not due to chinese capabilities.

Having such fantasies about supremacy can be extremely lethal.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Darius871
If everyone got in such a hissy-fit over a Chinese fighter going down when it clipped a U.S. recon plane by accident, what do you think would happen if the U.S. navy sunk one of China's most advanced submarines, 60-man crew and all, for harmlessly surfacing in international waters?

The Chinese by their conduct said that was A-OK.

[snoopy369]

An armed vessel suddenly appears in the middle of a battle group, within striking distance of a carrier.

I'd say that's just provocation for us to sink it. The sub has an obligation to know where it is; it clearly knew what it was doing.

[Darius871]

Originally posted by BlackCat
Quite true, but it all boils down to one thing - it was pure accident / routine maneuvres that made it possible for the chinese subs to do what they did - not due to chinese capabilities.

Having such fantasies about supremacy can be extremely lethal.

I think you're construing attitudes that weren't ever actually expressed. Nobody here has said the Chinese aren't capable of sneaking a sub through a U.S. carrier's defensive screen. If anyone would care to make that argument now, I'll gladly laugh at them with you.

[Darius871]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
The Chinese by their conduct said that was A-OK.

Like I said, ultimately only a hissy-fit with no real teeth, but at the time a lot of people were on the edges of their seats, and further the Chinese wouldn't have relented as quickly had their own pilot not been the apparent cause. If you reverse the causation, multiply the equipment loss by ~25, and multiply the loss of life by 60, that's a nice recipe for a heated international incident.

I'm not saying we wouldn't have been in the right, or that this would necessarily even have brought tensions that could have gradually escalated into war, but I do think sinking the thing wouldn't have been worth the damn hassle. We know there's no realistic threat of it opening fire, so there's nothing to gain from sinking it and at least something to lose.

[DinoDoc]

so there's nothing to gain...

The capture of the sub? Interrorgation of any survivors?

[Darius871]

Since they don't have any technology we don't already have, the only intel we could hope to scrape up is current codes, patrol routes, etc., which would of course all be promptly changed and thus rendered useless. So yes, no gain, or at best a tiny short-term gain that by no means outweighs the losses of a diplomatic cluster-f*** that'd take months to iron out.

[Kuciwalker]

Capturing the sub is only useful if it's done Red October-style

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Impaler[WrG]
This is the Tiawan Strait which we have been plowing through it over and over to intimidate the Chinesse, they probably just parked the sub in our usual path with the engines off and wait for the fleet to pass over head and just float to the surface. Theirs no sound to detect what so ever in that kind of senario and its a logical defense if you know your enemy is going to come through a particular piece of water. I'm sure the Chinesse planned all this very carfully and deliberatly to counter-intimidate us or at the least shake our confidence. I don't dout they were prepared to lose the sub in question should we be trigger happy and blow it out of the water just to see how close it got before being blown up.

Dream on.

Canadians in diesel-electrics can get in on US carriers time after time.

The Chinese are putting a lot more resources into this than the Canucks would ever dream of.

[Theben]

Is it just me, or isn't sneaking into strike range what subs were designed to do?

And yes, carriers are useless for modern warfare. They're only good at extending the strike range of aircraft vs. nations w/o the capability of retaliating against it.

[Darius871]

Originally posted by Theben
They're only good at extending the strike range of aircraft vs. nations w/o the capability of retaliating against it.

How then can you call them useless? We don't use them against any nations with the capability of retaliating, nor do we intend to any time in the foreseeable future.