PLAN submarines Thread II

[kroko]

That was at the height of the cold war. In those days USN warships openly intruded soviet territory water and I don't see it happening today.

Just because you dont see, doesnt mean it doesnt happen. I dont think that the chinese sub detection tech is much advanced

[schlieffen]

When I said 'openly intruded' I was refering to surface ships, notably the 1988 incident at black sea. Obviously one does not need advanced ASW sensors to see if that was happenning post-cold war.

During the cold war, if a US ship was strand or somehow runing into trouble near the soviet coast, that's not really a big deal. A small crisis maybe but those days we saw worse crisis every year. It would be a different story today.

Technically, within the EEZ of China the average depth is 100m or so and traffic/fishery is extremely busy, the best technology on the earth cannot guarantee the subs could operate undetected or problem-free forever, especially if the operation is kept in high tempo round the clock. If you sail along the coast during fishery seasons, it wouldn't be difficult to realize that evading the nets and boats alone would be a big headache and severely hinders the maneuverability of any submarines. Often periscope depth is the furthest you can dive, and you probably won’t come across a safe diving depth for hours. Not the best battlefield for submarines of either sides. It's not about stealth or sensor suit, it's about physics.

Occasional intrusions for intel collect etc. are perfectly possible, especially under the cover of bad weather. Routine operation too close to Chinese shore is an unnessicary aggressiveness and the return is poor compared to both operational and political risk.

[Jeff Head]

You're right on the Virginia class. But the Sea Wolfs are not designed with littoral operations in mind and I'm not sure if they are better optimised for these missions than legacy 688Is.

As to tagging Chinese SSBNs, I think it really depends on how far the chinese boomers will come out of home water. When I said close to shore, I meant less than 200 n.miles where average depth is less than 400 feets. Operating in these environments would be a challenge even for the Virginia class, and is also too politically risky IMO.

I agree. It depends on where the new PLAN SSBNs conduct their patrols. If they stay relatively close in to shore in shallow waters under the umrella of strong ASW air, surface and sub-surface protection, the US will be extremely limited and careful in what they try to do.

If they come out further and in deeper waters, then the opportunities change.

But they do not have to go too far for the US to acquire them, either with the subs, intelligence ships or other devices. Right now the Chinese subs simply are not quiet enough.

My guesss is that the US has used other means (meaning SEAL spec ops, etc) to install various types of listening, signature, and acquisition devices where-ever it can to help them tag, record, keep a record of and do intelligence work on China's sub fleet.

[tphuang]

The current chinese nuclear fleet really are extremely noisy compared to western counterpart. Any time they get out and do a patrol, they get followed. How else do you think oni can post yearly report on how many patrols chinese submarine go on? That does not mean they should not go out. They should continue to do so to gain more operational experience so that the next generational submarine becomes quieter and more speaker for blue water operations. What is the point of building them if you keep them hidden in these large barbour? All those alarmist report about the hainan base was completely stupid. They are certainly under a lot more protection when they are protected by chinese land based asw assets. But if they get away from that, they are pretty much sitting ducks. The conventional subs certainly can't protect them. That is why you need to continue to invest in nuclear submarines. To me, the american nuclear submarine force is even more formidable blue water force than its aircraft carriers.

And another thing, if plan is that concerned about usn surveillance ships picking up the acoustic signature of chinese submarines, then just get fishing ships make really loud noises all around the american ship. It is in south china sea after all. It has many tools at disposal to make things difficult for usn efforts without creating international incidents.

[Jeff Head]

While I have no concrete proof I am also quite certain the US already has a hypersonic plane operational.

There is a lot of indication that the US has tested and may have operational a few very exotic technology aircraft. The Aurora project is one of these. The TR-3B is another.

There are some things flying around out there that people have seen and videoed. Weird sonic booms and aircraft noises have been heard in conjunction with some of this in California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah.

Who knows. The US skunk works at Area 51 and other places is still operating. Some day (like with the F-117A and the B-2, and the SR-71) we will find some of this out officially.

Though the US is pretty open about a lot of its military stuff, some of the very cutting edge, advanced prototype technology is extremely secretive, and some of it gets advanced to low level production of relatively small numbers of units (like 8-12, or maybe even 20) operating for years before the public is ever made aware of it, other than the rumor of people hearing, seeing and even videoing the strange aircraft.

Some of the videos are believable, othes are just so exotic that they are hard to believe, and then you have obvious frauds.

But...this is way off topic for PLAN submarines. Maybe some day we can have a really good, black project, exotic military technology thread.

[schlieffen]

The signiture level of 094 is between Delta II and Delta III according to US intel, I don't think this could guarantee a hostile SSN detect them at long range, especially if the boomers are running at low speed. If they are kept close to chinese shore there is no need to go faster than, let's say 10 knots throughout the voyage.

Concerning that annual report, I think acoustic surveillance is not the sole source of intelligence. When they said 'patrol', it's operational deployment by US standards and most likely excluded training, ferry and test etc. Or does anyone seriously believed the 50+ sub fleet only set sail (everything acounted) for less than 20 times a year? That's not even enough to keep the crew operational. It was even much less just a few years ago. I myself have eyewitnessed multiple Chinese diesel submarines at sea within a month. So how does SOSUS or other acoustic sensors tell the nature of the target's mission every time a Chineses submarine come out of habour? Either they have some sort of criterion that only count it as a potential patrol when certain conditions are met, i.e., go beyond a certain distance offshore or leave/enter certain areas, or there are other sources to supplement the passive sonars. Electronic intel, satellite imagery even human intel, I believe they have access to all of them.

[Engineer]

Actually, I think the ONI report just conviently not talk about the submarine activities that were not detected.

[i.e.]

you can keep tabs on how many subs went on patrol by various means, one is just sitting at the harbor and count which ones are going out.

get tracked and spotted one time doesn't mean it is getting tracked 100, 90 or even 50% of the time it is on patrol.

If a diesel sub turns off its engines and just sit there in the murky waters off pearl river deltas.
how the hell do you see it unless you have active sonar pinging it short range?

[navyreco]

Chinese Navy Building Up its Submarine Fleet

The Chinese Navy is expected to procure 30 more submarines by 2020 and bring the total from the current 62 to 100 by 2030, Hong Kong's Ming Pao daily reported on Tuesday. According to the paper, the U.S. has 75 subs, 26 of them deployed in the Asia-Pacific region. China is building up its Navy, including retrofitting its first aircraft carrier.

Bloomberg News quoted experts as predicting that Asia-Pacific nations will have up to 86 more subs by 2020.

[navyreco]

This large number has to include old Romeo class training sub

[sealordlawrence]

That article is complete nonsense and makes the ridiculous assumption that China will not retire any subs, which of course it will, franco-russe has done some excellent work tracking the Chinese inventory and force structure and it is apparent from that that we are witnessing modernisation and not numerical growth.

[franco-russe]

Thanks for the kind words. I do actually think that there will be a slight increase in PLAN’s operational submarine strength.

I believe it is possible that will form two new submarine flotillas, raising their number from the present six to eight, or 64 submarines. They would be formed from the 16 YUAN I/II on order. I guess one could be at Daxiedao, branching off the YUAN’s now with 22 Submarine Flotilla, the second at Xiaopingdao, the present 62 Submarine Flotilla (tests/experiments).

On paper, the stregth of the PLAN SSK will probably remain the same as today, only the few remaining ROMEO’s that are never seen at sea will be retired as YUAN’s enter service.

[sealordlawrence]

Thank you for the response franco-russe, your comment is the reason for my kind words, sensible and rational analysis founded in force structure analysis. I would also point out that even 64 is a long way of 100. I am more conservative for the time being, I actually expect to see most of Ming's and possibly even some of the early Song's drift out of sight in the coming years- though of course time will tell.

[franco-russe]

I could easily see the four oldest MING's (342, 352-354) which were built in the 80's, being soon replaced by YUAN (perhaps that is why they also ordered a batch of YUAN's from Jiangnan?), but the last MING, 312, was built as late as 2001 and will not be replaced any time soon.

[sealordlawrence]

The last Ming may be young, but I think we need to be careful about assuming that means that it will enjoy a long and happy life of front-line service. The class is clearly obsolete and will only become more so as advanced SSKs proliferate throughout the region. I maintain that there is a strong possibility that instead we will see them have quite short lives and soon be relegated to training and testing roles.