New (not totally) sailless SSN (09X?) thread

[iewgnem]

Hi Sutton, who apparently has access to higher resolution imagery, says that 09X actually does have a small sail, and that the recent Bohai and new JN boats are the same.

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Building two boats at once is in itself unusual, building two identical submarines at exactly the same time in two yards. The Huludao yard on the Bohai Sea is the yard normally associated with nuclear submarine construction, while the JN Yard in Shanghai is completely new to nuclear submarines. First of class submarines typically have more teething problems than their follow-on siblings, and building two exasperates this. And added to this, it complicates supply chains and quality control.

Doing a lot of assumption here:
- Assuming both having been built at the same time, as opposed to simply being spotted at same time
- Assuming it's first of class, and not just first of class to be seen.
- That JN yard built it and not just supporting a previously built but not spotted hull.

 

[para80]

Sorry, I'm a bit behind in keeping up with the discourse. Can anyone post a picture (if available) of this higher resolution pic that we're debating about so we can see this "bigger than expected sail" for ourselves?

Not publicly available yet. If the other example was anything to go by, it may not take long though.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

There was talk some time back of an 09VA. Is that what we're looking at here?

 

[tphuang]

What the intended purpose of the design is remains to be seen. But I'd kindly suggest far more people, incl notional "insiders" are speculating, a lot.

On the other hand, unless you have listened to what certain people have said on the topic of nuclear submarines, I would kindly suggest you to not assume they are all just speculating.

 

[Maikeru]

Not publicly available yet. If the other example was anything to go by, it may not take long though.

Do the images you've seen tell anything about VLS?

 

[para80]

Do the images you've seen tell anything about VLS?

No, nothing definitive. Detail is far too vague.

 

[ACuriousPLAFan]

Posting Sutton's illustration on the 09X SSN here, since nobody bothered to do so:



Just my personal opinion, though the small "conventional" sail does look a bit comical when compared to the relatively massive main body of the submarine lol

 

[hkvaryag]

Posting Sutton's illustration on the 09X SSN here, since nobody bothered to do so:

View attachment 176477

Just my personal opinion, though the small "conventional" sail does look a bit comical when compared to the relatively massive main body of the submarine lol

Seems unlikely. if it has a tail of this size, we should see a shadow at the water. The light comes from the direction of red arrow.

 

[Deino]

Via Foolsball on X:

 

[Tomboy]

My understanding is not that the emergence of this submarine being a sailless one causing the grapevine saying it's new generation etc etc... but rather that the grapevine had known for a while that a new generation submarine of some sort was on the cards (possibly with details known or not known), and when the impression was one of it being sailless they went with that as being a major characteristic of its "new generation-ness".

With whatever revision of its sail actually is, the underlying impression of it still being a new generation submarine would presumably remain the same.

You're giving them too much credit on this, if you've read Xiyazhou's post it'd be pretty obvious he'd been speculating (In fact rather optimistically looking back) much more than he had real information. On the other hand the trios never stated the purpose of the submarine and spent basically a good 40 minutes talking about the sailless design and expected performance because of it which is all now moot because none the design features talked about actually exists. Even if we keep the expectation that this is the next generation submarine, we still need to discard basically all of the performance analysis by the other side because it's all based on erroneous details about the submarine and lower expectation.

Even if we take their opinions at face value, we still don't even have a consensus between these people. Cute Orca after seeing the new depiction seems quite lost and said, "it looks almost like a SSBN but smaller", Ayi said before it was a special mission submarine and Xiyazhou is adamant before the new info that it is the next generation SSN.

IMO, we should wait and see what happens and whether anyone on the Chinese side retracts or changes their claims based on this newly discovered detail.