I think this is fair, at least as of 2023. If one were to go back even one decade, however, I think the calculus would've been rather different.
As you pointed out in a previous post, it wasn't for sale at that time anyhow (leaving aside the matter that it isn't for sale now either), so it's largely inconsequential to the current discussion, I think this strand can be left here.
I think the publicly available American discourse is likely a trailing indicator, i.e. reflecting what has already been achieved. If 095 does indeed vault China to the top-ranks of nuclear submarine design, I expect that we will hear about it in the years to come, just as we have encountered American "statements of concern" in relation to China's advancements in surface combatants, hypersonics, VLO technology, unmanned systems, etc. The flip side is that I find the lack of publicly visible concern about existing Chinese SSN capabilities (i.e. up to and including 093B) rather suggestive.
I'll be honest, I really do not put publicly available American discourse as useful for most domains of leading edge PLA watching, let alone their publicly stated indicators in terms of predicting and projecting future PLA capabilities.
Their "statements of concern" are almost always made after said capabilities are already attained.
As for existing PLAN submarines, up to 09IIIA, there are already indicators as to how acoustically competitive those are, which I've shared with a few others that have PM'd me, but let's be honest, how often are we getting regular or up to date "public statements" about Chinese SSN developments from the US mil/intel community? The honest answer is not very often at all -- so do we think that's because the PLAN has not made meaningful progress from the original 09IIIs in the 2000s, or is there something else at play?
... all of which is a long way for me to say I think the publicly available "statements of concern" that the US makes towards the PLA in general are not very useful even for general PLA watching let alone something as specific and secretive as PLAN nuclear submarine developments.
It is certainly true that quality alone will not shift the needle in the near-term, and that quantity is just as important. However, I note that the collapse of the Soviet submarine force in the 1990s and 2000s did not dissuade various knowledgeable US figures from expressing their concern about the capabilities of the later Pr. 971 and 885 submarines, despite their irrelevant numbers and an evaporating industrial base that all but ensured that they would remain irrelevant, as they have. Indeed, it seems to me that public discourse on military matters of all kinds typically has difficulty capturing questions of quantity, maturity, integration, etc. that are important aspects of any holistic assessment. Rather there is a perhaps natural, or at least comprehensible bias towards the new and exciting development, irrespective of how long the road is between said development and genuinely "shifting the needle" in a more holistic sense. The implication of this is that if US experts were actually impressed by 093B as a design, or on a per-submarine basis, I think that assessment would have emerged into the public realm in some form. As it stands, in my reading I have encountered American "expressions of concern" in relation to China's ongoing SSK development, but nothing in relation to SSNs. If such statements exist, I am more than happy to be corrected.
There's a lot in this paragraph to unpack because you've massively expanded the scope of what my previous reply was made to.
To clarify, my previous reply that you quoted, was saying how even if the 09IIIB or 09V were super duper competitive or even superior to existing USN SSNs, we would not necessarily see a massive doubling down of US on expanding its ASW capabilities because even a high qualitatively capable submarine is not very significant if only a small number of the vessels exist... and even then, given the fact that warfare in all domains is increasingly system of systems (including underwater and ASW yes), the individual impact of a single or even handful of highly capable submarines won't yield a huge difference.
As for US figures expressing public concern to Russian submarine like later Pr 971, 885 -- well that's also somewhat to be expected, given those submarines both have been in service much longer and also in the case of 885 boasts a very significant SSGN capability. China's nuclear submarine development and advancements have not only been much more recent, but also much more strategically sensitive.
I again want to reiterate that I think you are greatly overvaluing the significance of "US figures expressing statements of concern" if what you are trying to infer is "qualitative competitiveness/capability of XYZ current or future adversary system".
Those statements are neither a representative sample of US military intelligence assessments, nor are they made in a manner from the perspective of actually judging qualitative competitiveness/capability (instead often done in a way to express concerns of their own warfighting gaps, funding/industry priorities, and so on -- e.g.: see their excessive focus on things like "shipbuilding capacity" or "number of battleforce ships" rather than reflecting on the individual qualitative capability of say 055 or 052D in any meaningful detail aside from being modern warships; and even things like hypersonics more often than not are focused on industry/developmental scale and rarely about the individual qualitative capability of a given type of weapon), nor are they up to date.
Sometimes there are rare statements that can let us infer certain things if we apply effort, but those are far and few between.
That said, I have had the ability to hear some very credible indicators of where the 09IIIAs sits in competitive capability (which can give some indication as to where 09IIIB can be expected to reside), but I won't state those publicly. If you're interested, you can send me a private message.
One of the older, slightly flawed and more public statements that have made the rounds of course is a statement made by Jerry Hendrix, of all places on the national interest, back in 2016, which I'm okay to talk about.
"The 93B is not to be confused with the 93. It is a transition platform between the 93 and the forthcoming 95,” said Jerry Hendrix, director of the Defense Strategies and Assessments Program at the Center for a New American Security—who is also a former U.S. Navy Captain. “It is quieter and it has a new assortment of weapons to include cruise missiles and a vertical launch capability. The 93B is analogous to our LA improved in quietness and their appearance demonstrates that China is learning quickly about how to build a modern fast attack boat.”
I say it is flawed, because obviously back in 2016 the 09IIIB had yet to be launched, so it is overwhelmingly likely that this statement, if it was made on the basis of any kind of actual genuine intelligence, then it likely refers to the 09IIIA.... and it is also flawed because obviously the 09IIIA doesn't have VLS, meaning if this was made on the basis of actual genuine intelligence chances are it was incomplete or interpreted wrongly.
... However, whether by coincidence or due to having some access to a kernel of genuine intelligence, if you replace 09IIIB in that paragraph with 09IIIA, and remove the part about having a VLS, you will happen to reach the right conclusion.
