plawolf
Lieutenant General
Re: PLAN submarines Thread II
I think submarine warfare is an area where you really need reliable first hand info/data in order to make any sort of sensible judgement, and that is sadly lacking in the public domain.
From open source info, all we have to do on are the external shape of the subs, but the outer shell is the easiest and best understood aspect of sub design. Almost all modern subs follow a pretty standard tear-drop design hull because that is the most efficient shape to take to minimize water resistance and flow noise generation.
You can look at the drainage holes, but they too are pretty straight forward and well understood. Same with your 7 blade screwed props, at least for nations like China.
There is very little anyone can gleam from looking at pictures of subs, that is why we are reduced to speculation and rumor mongering, and because there is so little concrete info to go with. However, one must be conscious of the source of the vast majority of PLAN sub related rumors out there - they are overwhelmingly from western, and usually American sources.
One only has to look at the massive bias and overt distain westerners, especially the military types, have habitually displayed towards all things PLA related, and how often and badly they tend to be wrong and underestimate the PLA, to realize you need to take a massive grain of salt with anything coming from those circles.
All we can do is look at the circumstantial information that we have at hand to try to form a best guess of the state of affairs under the seas.
We know that China bought Kilos from Russia, but has shown no interest in any more purchases. That would strongly suggest that the Yuan is at least comparable to the Kilo, or else the PLAN would not have bought so many, and would instead have tried to get a Kilo licensing deal as they have done with anything they could buy that was significantly better than what China could make indigenously.
We had the well discussed case where a Song surfaced within torpedo range of the Kitty Hawk. Americans likes to claim or believe that they knew the sub was there and had it covered the whole time; or argue that the Kitty Hawk was heading to the same area to conduct exercises so it was easy to guess her route and position a sub to wait for her.
On the first point, I find it curious that the USN escorts did not do more to respond to the presence of the sub if they knew it was there. What is the point in having escorts if they just lie back to chillax while a sub from another nation gets within torpedo range of their charge with no challenge? Are the USN so relaxed about Russian fighters flying towards their carriers?
If the USN had detected the sub long before it surfaced, it would have been only logical that they would have at least positioned an escort within striking range of the sub to make sure it doesn't get any bright ideas.
Considering the Americans are perpetually worried about the PLAN getting more assertive, making them think they are get within striking range of a carrier undetected would seem a very counter-intuitive way of making the PLAN be less bold. So it seems more likely on balance that the Song was simply not detected by passive sweeps while running slow and on batteries, that should be a good indicating that Chinese SSKs are not as loud as you might think based on western views.
The second point on the carrier's route being well known carries more merit, but I sincerely doubt USN carrier skippers would just make a beeline from port to an exercise area every time. The very act of turning into the wind to conduct regular air ops en route would ensure that a carrier takes a very non-standard path from point A to point B.
It also somewhat misses the point of SSKs in trying to dismiss the encounter out of hand by stressing that SSKs lack the speed and endurance to actively hunt for a CSG. That is faulting an SSK for not being an SSN. SSKs are slow when running on batteries, that is why they will not be used like SSNs, and the key to successful use of SSKs is to position them so as to maximize the odds that a target would come to the SSK, which the PLAN was able to do to position a Song close enough to get within torpedo range of the Kitty Hawk. There are two completely different strategies in using SSKs and SSNs, one is an ambush predator while the other is a roaming hunter.
Something else to consider is the USN's practice of sending Sonar spy ships right to the edge of China's territorial waters to spy on sub bases.
Why would the USN feel the need to do that if the PLAN subs are so noisy they could track them from afar as claimed? Or if USN subs were so quiet they could slip undetected into Chinese waters to snoop for signatures at their leisure?
One of the key weaknesses of older SSKs was their diesel engines. They could not get far or fast without running those noisy diesels. So if an opponent can track the SSKs while they are on diesels from afar using something like the SOSUS or SURTASS ships to when they switched to batteries, then they would be able to effectively guess with a high degree of confidence the maximum operating area of the sub. That would allow them to either task an SSN/surface ship/MPA to fairly close proximity of the sub to hunt for it, or plot danger zones to avoid if they want to bypass the subs or sneak something in without being detected.
With AIP and better and bigger batteries, modern SSKs can somewhat get around that limitation. If the Yuan has AIP, that alone would make it a generation ahead of the kilo even if their signatures are the same.
I think Chinese nuke subs still have some way to go, but it is only a few bottlenecks (mostly to do with the reactor and cooling) that are holding them back instead of something more fundamental, and that if and when those bottlenecks can be breached, Chinese nuke subs will be able to run close to as quite as Chinese SSKs on batteries, which would put them amongst the quietest boats out there.
I think submarine warfare is an area where you really need reliable first hand info/data in order to make any sort of sensible judgement, and that is sadly lacking in the public domain.
From open source info, all we have to do on are the external shape of the subs, but the outer shell is the easiest and best understood aspect of sub design. Almost all modern subs follow a pretty standard tear-drop design hull because that is the most efficient shape to take to minimize water resistance and flow noise generation.
You can look at the drainage holes, but they too are pretty straight forward and well understood. Same with your 7 blade screwed props, at least for nations like China.
There is very little anyone can gleam from looking at pictures of subs, that is why we are reduced to speculation and rumor mongering, and because there is so little concrete info to go with. However, one must be conscious of the source of the vast majority of PLAN sub related rumors out there - they are overwhelmingly from western, and usually American sources.
One only has to look at the massive bias and overt distain westerners, especially the military types, have habitually displayed towards all things PLA related, and how often and badly they tend to be wrong and underestimate the PLA, to realize you need to take a massive grain of salt with anything coming from those circles.
All we can do is look at the circumstantial information that we have at hand to try to form a best guess of the state of affairs under the seas.
We know that China bought Kilos from Russia, but has shown no interest in any more purchases. That would strongly suggest that the Yuan is at least comparable to the Kilo, or else the PLAN would not have bought so many, and would instead have tried to get a Kilo licensing deal as they have done with anything they could buy that was significantly better than what China could make indigenously.
We had the well discussed case where a Song surfaced within torpedo range of the Kitty Hawk. Americans likes to claim or believe that they knew the sub was there and had it covered the whole time; or argue that the Kitty Hawk was heading to the same area to conduct exercises so it was easy to guess her route and position a sub to wait for her.
On the first point, I find it curious that the USN escorts did not do more to respond to the presence of the sub if they knew it was there. What is the point in having escorts if they just lie back to chillax while a sub from another nation gets within torpedo range of their charge with no challenge? Are the USN so relaxed about Russian fighters flying towards their carriers?
If the USN had detected the sub long before it surfaced, it would have been only logical that they would have at least positioned an escort within striking range of the sub to make sure it doesn't get any bright ideas.
Considering the Americans are perpetually worried about the PLAN getting more assertive, making them think they are get within striking range of a carrier undetected would seem a very counter-intuitive way of making the PLAN be less bold. So it seems more likely on balance that the Song was simply not detected by passive sweeps while running slow and on batteries, that should be a good indicating that Chinese SSKs are not as loud as you might think based on western views.
The second point on the carrier's route being well known carries more merit, but I sincerely doubt USN carrier skippers would just make a beeline from port to an exercise area every time. The very act of turning into the wind to conduct regular air ops en route would ensure that a carrier takes a very non-standard path from point A to point B.
It also somewhat misses the point of SSKs in trying to dismiss the encounter out of hand by stressing that SSKs lack the speed and endurance to actively hunt for a CSG. That is faulting an SSK for not being an SSN. SSKs are slow when running on batteries, that is why they will not be used like SSNs, and the key to successful use of SSKs is to position them so as to maximize the odds that a target would come to the SSK, which the PLAN was able to do to position a Song close enough to get within torpedo range of the Kitty Hawk. There are two completely different strategies in using SSKs and SSNs, one is an ambush predator while the other is a roaming hunter.
Something else to consider is the USN's practice of sending Sonar spy ships right to the edge of China's territorial waters to spy on sub bases.
Why would the USN feel the need to do that if the PLAN subs are so noisy they could track them from afar as claimed? Or if USN subs were so quiet they could slip undetected into Chinese waters to snoop for signatures at their leisure?
One of the key weaknesses of older SSKs was their diesel engines. They could not get far or fast without running those noisy diesels. So if an opponent can track the SSKs while they are on diesels from afar using something like the SOSUS or SURTASS ships to when they switched to batteries, then they would be able to effectively guess with a high degree of confidence the maximum operating area of the sub. That would allow them to either task an SSN/surface ship/MPA to fairly close proximity of the sub to hunt for it, or plot danger zones to avoid if they want to bypass the subs or sneak something in without being detected.
With AIP and better and bigger batteries, modern SSKs can somewhat get around that limitation. If the Yuan has AIP, that alone would make it a generation ahead of the kilo even if their signatures are the same.
I think Chinese nuke subs still have some way to go, but it is only a few bottlenecks (mostly to do with the reactor and cooling) that are holding them back instead of something more fundamental, and that if and when those bottlenecks can be breached, Chinese nuke subs will be able to run close to as quite as Chinese SSKs on batteries, which would put them amongst the quietest boats out there.
