Henri K take on recent Chinese sub sailing in the contiguous sea around Diaoyutai
Look like showing the flag to me Start from Miyako which they know is heavily seeded with under water sensor. They then surface and hoist the flag according to protocol. As they approach the island type 54 come in. I know of only another encounter between Chinese Sub and Japanese JMSDF
When a Han sub was detected but refuse to surface since it is in international water. Take evasive action and sail toward China. So from the sample it is too few event to draw conclusion that JMSDF is at the top of the world
Chinese ANS Type 09IIIB Surfaceed Near Sensaku / Diaoyutai Islands
The eight islands and uninhabited rocks of the Sensaku archipelago (尖 閣 諸島 in Japanese), or Diaoyutai (钓鱼台 群岛) in Chinese, have once again been under the spotlight of the media and at the heart of a new diplomatic tension between the two rivals history that are China and Japan.
And for good reason,
surfaced in the vicinity of the archipelago, with a Chinese flag hoisted at the top of its massif, in the presence of two navy destroyers Japanese.
It goes without saying that the event provoked very strong media and governmental reactions on both sides, often with misinformation, vulgarizations and fantasies speculative on both sides.
If one lets oneself be carried away by the media judgments with the cookie-cutter approach, which often have for the objective to direct the public opinion, or by the feeling of wanting to find absolutely the "villain" and also the "good guy" in history, which obviously do not exist in the bilateral relations between two countries in the strict sense of the term, we will soon find ourselves drowning in the mass of information already interpreted but which are far from impartial for the mostly.
The purpose of this post is therefore not to attempt to analyze the event or to provide yet another additional interpretation, but to present the "facts" - at least in the institutional sense of the term on both sides - and to pose a number of questions to help thinking.
According to
, the destroyer JDS
Onami class
Takanami and a patrol plane paritime
P-3C Japanese forces confirmed the presence of a submarine immersion in the East-North-East of the contiguous zone of the Miyako Islands, located near a main exit of the first chain of islands in the Pacific Ocean, Wednesday, January 10 in the afternoon.
The submarine, hitherto unidentified, was heading for the East China Sea, so to the east coast of China. He then left the area around the Miyako Islands on the morning of 11 January and entered the contiguous zone of Taisho Island (大 正 島 in Japanese), also known as Chiwei Yu (赤 尾 屿) in Chinese, which is part of the Senkaku Islands. / Diaoyutai.
A photo of what it could be the new Chinese nuclear attack submarine Type 09IIIB (Photo: Chinese Army)
Chinese submarine photographed by Japanese forces (Photo: 防衛 省)
On the same day in the morning, another Japanese destroyer JDS
Oyodo from
Abukumaclass and JDS
Onami confirmed that a Chinese
Type 054A frigate was entering the contiguous area of Taisho Island / Chiwei Yu, before leaving the area then go back again.
The next day, Friday, January 12, the two Japanese destroyers cited above had visual contact with the submarine that had crossed underwater the contiguous area of the Miyako first and Senkaku / Diaoyutai then the two previous days . It is actually a Chinese submarine because the ship surfaced in the international waters northeast of the Senkaku / Diaoyutai Islands, with a red flag of the People's Republic of China at the top of its massif.
.
For its part, spokesman
that two Japanese buildings entered the contiguous area of Taisho Island / Chiwei Yu on January 11 in the morning. The 548
Yiyang frigate (Type 054A) who was on patrol in the area then entered the same area to monitor the movement of Japanese ships. At the time of the release, the two Japanese ships have already left the area.
Illustrative diagram of the event (Image: Yahoo Japan, Translation: East Pendulum)
The very characteristic form of this submarine sighted by the Japanese outside the contiguous Senkaku / Diaoyutai Islands zone, with a small "bump" behind the massif, suggests that it is a variant of the sub Chinese nuclear attack type 09III, known as Type 09IIIB.
It is assumed that the elevated structure of the building houses a number of vertical launch systems, including
YJ-18B anti-ship cruise missiles and long-range ground strike missiles.
Apart from this "technical" aspect of the submarine concerned, it is also necessary to revise the exact definition of the "contiguous zone", which is in no way territorial waters as some media imply.
Indeed, the legal scope of the so-called "contiguous zone" is clearly defined in
Sea (UNCLOS
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea ), already ratified by China and Japan. The text states that:
Article 33 of UNCLOS on the definition of "contiguous zone"
For the moment, the exact motive behind the movements of the Chinese submarine is unknown, be it crossing two contiguous zones before or the gesture of showing the Chinese flag on the surface in international waters afterwards. On the other hand, we can always ask ourselves several questions:
- If the Japanese forces could follow Mikayo's Chinese submarine to Senkaku / Diaoyutai, on the way back from the Chinese submarine, did they already detect it when it came out the same way? place, assuming that is the case?
- Assuming that the pattern provided by the Japanese media is representative, then the Chinese submarine traveled very roughly 128 nautical miles in 24 hours, an average speed of 5 knots, ie the speed of a cruise mode. silencer of a submarine in general. If Japanese planes and ships were able to follow the Chinese submarine for two days in a row, is the event significant to infer the sound level of the new Chinese nuclear submarine?
- Were Japanese and / or American anti-submarine forces able to recover good quality data with a good signal-to-noise ratio?
- Despite being pursued by the Japanese anti-submarine warfare forces, the Type 09IIIB seems to have kept the same route, still according to the Japanese media scheme. So what is the message to be passed behind this maneuver of the nuclear submarine, and, also, why the intervention of the Chinese frigate at a specific moment?
The area of the new Sino-Japanese incident around the Senkaku / Diaoyutai Islands (Image: East Pendlum)
Other questions are of course possible, other interpretations too. Which one are yours ?
Henri K.
