PLAN Type 035/039/091/092 Submarine Thread

escobar

Brigadier
Re: PLAN submarines Thread II

Torpedo Firing Exercise on a Type 035 SSK

[video=youtube;4i-i6YZ3d0c]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i-i6YZ3d0c[/video]
 

luhai

Banned Idiot
Re: PLAN submarines Thread II

Can someone translate the article please? What's the CN Rear Admiral, Upper Half, pointing at?

Use google translate, It' basically a bio for accomplished people in China. the guy basically started tackling noise problems starting in 1981, with major achievements in the 1990s to present.
 

Blackstone

Brigadier
Re: PLAN submarines Thread II

Use google translate, It' basically a bio for accomplished people in China. the guy basically started tackling noise problems starting in 1981, with major achievements in the 1990s to present.

The JSDF thinks China's submarines are still very noisy-

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


Run Silent, Run ‘Soviet?’

By James R. Holmes

November 8, 2012

A few years ago I had the pleasure of hoisting a pint with Rear Admiral Sumihiko Kawamura, a retired commander of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s anti-submarine air force. Yesterday Japan Times published an interview with Admiral Kawamura in which he opined that Beijing sees the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands as the northern sentinel guarding a submarine “bastion,” or safe haven, in the South China Sea.

This would be a reprise of how the Soviet Navy worked around Far Eastern geography and U.S.-Japanese naval strategy during the Cold War. JMSDF mariners raised anti-submarine warfare to a high art during the protracted East-West standoff. Japanese boats and aircraft kept watch over the narrow seas through which Soviet nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarines had to pass to reach the broad Pacific. The Kurile straits were favorite JMSDF hunting grounds. Allied ASW assets held Soviet SSBNs at risk whenever they sought to exit the Sea of Okhotsk or other enclosed expanses. Many Soviet skippers chose not to bother. Instead they conducted deterrent patrols within those relatively confined waters, taking advantage of the increasing range and lethality of sea-launched ballistic missiles.

Kawamura argues, in effect, that People’s Liberation Army Navy SSBNs, like their Soviet predecessors, cannot elude detection while passing through the first island chain en route to Pacific patrol grounds. Quieting technologies—silent-running propellers, shock mounting for machinery, hull coatings, and the like—remain too immature for effective concealment. “When navigating,” as he puts it, “Chinese submarines sound like they are pounding a drum or bell.” (An old U.S. Navy joke holds that noisy subs sound like two skeletons, ahem, having carnal knowledge of each other inside a metal garbage can.) The PLA Navy undersea fleet, then, must shelter within the island chain until it corrects these deficiencies and improves its own ASW capacity—bolstering its ability to penetrate or evade allied defenses.

I have no quarrel with the idea that Chinese SSBNs will roam the South China Sea in the coming decades. The submarine base at Sanya, on Hainan Island, is convincing evidence of that. Three points, though. One, the South China Sea may be more than a bastion. It may be an outlet to the Pacific Ocean via the Luzon Strait, which separates the southern tip of Taiwan from the northern Philippines. Stationing SSBNs well to the south allows the PLA Navy to stretch allied ASW defenses. Short of operating from Taiwan or the Philippines—neither a realistic prospect—JMSDF and U.S. Navy ASW forces will find it hard to continuously monitor the strait. That improves Chinese commanders’ chances of slipping into the open sea—as they must until weapons engineers extend the range of PLA Navy SLBMs sufficiently to hold the American mainland at risk from Southeast Asia. Admiral Kawamura may be overselling allied fleets’ capacity to impose blanket coverage along the island chain.

Two, there are good reasons apart from technology for Beijing to keep the fleet closer to home. Western navies are remarkably easygoing about letting captains vanish beneath the waves for weeks on end, taking doomsday weapons with them. Authoritarian regimes like the Soviet Union and Communist China fret about political reliability. As Kawamura predicts, the PLA Navy undersea fleet may operate from the South China Sea, or even from the Bohai Sea, at Beijing’s nautical door, once missile technology permits. But political reasons could account for such relatively restrained deployment patterns. Chinese nuclear strategy need not be a rerun of Soviet strategy—despite the two communist powers’ similar offshore geography and kindred autocratic regimes.

And three, it’s unclear to me how occupying the Senkakus would significantly tighten Chinese ASW defenses in southern waters. Admiral Kawamura furnishes few details in Japan Times, so it’s hard to say what he has in mind. It is possible, I suppose, that the islets could supply the eastern terminus for a line of underwater hydrophones, helping PLA Navy ASW forces detect Japanese or American boats transiting north-south along the Asian seaboard. Such an arrangement would hark back to the far more extensive, deep-water SOSUS array NATO strung across the Greenland-Iceland-U.K. gap to impede Soviet access to the Atlantic. Or perhaps a PLA outpost in the Senkakus could guard against adversaries’ attempts to disrupt such a listening array. It’s worth remaining on the lookout for such developments.
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
Re: PLAN submarines Thread II

The JSDF thinks China's submarines are still very noisy-

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Read the first 4 words of your own article. :rolleyes:

Apart from recollecting a conversation he had years ago with an Admiral who may or may not have been cracking wise, the rest of that article is just nothing more than speculation based on a cartoonish idea of how 'insecure' authoritarian governments are supposed to be.

There has never been any evidence or reports about China constructing an underwater SOSUS, and I have it on good authority that the PLAN have no interest in ever bothering with such a fixed and easily identified array because they have serious reservations about just how survivable it would be under wartime conditions.

The kinds of systems the Chinese are working on would make SOSUS look like a dial-up modem if they can get the technology to work.
 

Mysterre

Banned Idiot
Re: PLAN submarines Thread II

Read the first 4 words of your own article. :rolleyes:

Apart from recollecting a conversation he had years ago with an Admiral who may or may not have been cracking wise, the rest of that article is just nothing more than speculation based on a cartoonish idea of how 'insecure' authoritarian governments are supposed to be.

There has never been any evidence or reports about China constructing an underwater SOSUS, and I have it on good authority that the PLAN have no interest in ever bothering with such a fixed and easily identified array because they have serious reservations about just how survivable it would be under wartime conditions.

The kinds of systems the Chinese are working on would make SOSUS look like a dial-up modem if they can get the technology to work.
There have been reports of the Chinese military having deployed SOSUS-like hydrophones at the mouth of the Bohai Sea. The easy solution to survivability is multiple hydrophone arrays. Plus you would know exactly where it was being cut even if it were attacked. In wartime, you might already have fixed-wing ASW in the air waiting for such an event, or at least on standby for rapid deployment. This is assuming you could not detect the approaching sub in the first place. It is SOSUS that prevents the easy deployment of PLAN subs past the first island chain, as I would be utterly shocked if the US did not already have ongoing arrangements with South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the Phillipines, all countries friendly to the US, to deploy SOSUS arrays from their territories in order to monitor submarine traffic in the Western Pacific, especially China's subs. Even as SURTASS has become more prominent in recent years as the SOSUS system has been downgraded since the end of the Cold War, I have no doubt that this region of the globe is of the greatest interest to the USN to monitor, especially given how the ocean geography in the Western Pacific is absolutely perfect for maintaining a series of hydrophone arrays along the island chains. I cannot imagine that the PLAN would fail to recognize the utility of this kind of sensor.
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
Re: PLAN submarines Thread II

There have been reports of the Chinese military having deployed SOSUS-like hydrophones at the mouth of the Bohai Sea. The easy solution to survivability is multiple hydrophone arrays. Plus you would know exactly where it was being cut even if it were attacked. In wartime, you might already have fixed-wing ASW in the air waiting for such an event, or at least on standby for rapid deployment. This is assuming you could not detect the approaching sub in the first place. It is SOSUS that prevents the easy deployment of PLAN subs past the first island chain, as I would be utterly shocked if the US did not already have ongoing arrangements with South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the Phillipines, all countries friendly to the US, to deploy SOSUS arrays from their territories in order to monitor submarine traffic in the Western Pacific, especially China's subs. Even as SURTASS has become more prominent in recent years as the SOSUS system has been downgraded since the end of the Cold War, I have no doubt that this region of the globe is of the greatest interest to the USN to monitor, especially given how the ocean geography in the Western Pacific is absolutely perfect for maintaining a series of hydrophone arrays along the island chains. I cannot imagine that the PLAN would fail to recognize the utility of this kind of sensor.

If you make a claim like China deploying SOSUS, it would be useful to also provide a link to back it up.

It is also a little naive to think that people would only think about cutting SOSUS lines after hostilities have commenced. I would not be surprised at all if interested parties have not secreted 'presents' at various places along the SOSUS line. Divers, trained dolphins and DSRVs and less publicized methods could all be used to get devices in place without arousing suspicion during peace time and remain harmless until the moment you need the SOSUS array the most.

Having multiple SOSUS lines/networks is not really a defense, it just means the enemy needs to repeat their prep work.

Something to consider is that with the advent and proliferation of cheap commercial GPS navigation devices, drivers have become less capable at map reading, and less adapt at remembering routes and landmarks.

Skills are only retained and sharpened if you constantly hone them with practice. To become overly dependent and used to operating under the comfort and support of advanced systems can be turned into a vulnerability if your opponent has the means to take those advanced systems of yours out of contention.

It is one thing to track subs with a fully functional SOSUS array and friendly MPAs flying unobstructed in peace time, it will be quite another during war time, with your SOSUS array taken out and friendly MPAs pushed back or shot down by enemy air power.

The old saying that no plan survives contact with the enemy is just as valid today as it ever was.
 

Mysterre

Banned Idiot
Re: PLAN submarines Thread II

If you make a claim like China deploying SOSUS, it would be useful to also provide a link to back it up.
Actually if you google "China" and "SOSUS" together you will see multiple links mentioning China's deployment of a SOSUS-type array. It's not exactly a difficult find; if it were, I would provide a source.

It is also a little naive to think that people would only think about cutting SOSUS lines after hostilities have commenced. I would not be surprised at all if interested parties have not secreted 'presents' at various places along the SOSUS line. Divers, trained dolphins and DSRVs and less publicized methods could all be used to get devices in place without arousing suspicion during peace time and remain harmless until the moment you need the SOSUS array the most.

Having multiple SOSUS lines/networks is not really a defense, it just means the enemy needs to repeat their prep work.
It is also a little naive to think that people who deploy SOSUS lines would not routinely maintain them against exactly such predeployed devices, or that such devices deployed over or next to SOSUS arrays would somehow not immediately affect its function and therefore could be detected in the act. Especially given China's alleged limited deployment of SOSUS-type arrays, I have no idea why you think the Chinese military would just leave them there and pray to Buddha that nobody ever tries to mess with them. Also frogmen would have to deploy from submarines, so either way there has to be a sub deployed to the SOSUS array itself in order to disable it. And also, I didn't know dolphins could dive down that low and hold their breath for that long, waiting for hostilities to start.

Something to consider is that with the advent and proliferation of cheap commercial GPS navigation devices, drivers have become less capable at map reading, and less adapt at remembering routes and landmarks.

Skills are only retained and sharpened if you constantly hone them with practice. To become overly dependent and used to operating under the comfort and support of advanced systems can be turned into a vulnerability if your opponent has the means to take those advanced systems of yours out of contention.
This line of reasoning doesn't make sense to me, since "skills" were even more important during the Cold War, yet the USN's deployment of SOSUS arrays was much more intense during that time. There is absolutely no reason both technology and skill couldn't be developed simultaneously.

It is one thing to track subs with a fully functional SOSUS array and friendly MPAs flying unobstructed in peace time, it will be quite another during war time, with your SOSUS array taken out and friendly MPAs pushed back or shot down by enemy air power.

The old saying that no plan survives contact with the enemy is just as valid today as it ever was.
This is just as true of any other asset as it is of SOSUS arrays and ASW aircraft. Since radars are going to get taken out during "contact with the enemy", I'd guess by this reasoning radars shouldn't even be deployed in the first place.
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
Re: PLAN submarines Thread II

Actually if you google "China" and "SOSUS" together you will see multiple links mentioning China's deployment of a SOSUS-type array. It's not exactly a difficult find; if it were, I would provide a source.

To quote someone I know.

I'm not inclined to take any website's claims as definitive. The only public information source I'm willing to take at face value is the Naval Institute Guide, and even that source is not 100% accurate as far as the PLAN is concerned. Slightly less authoritative are well known online figures like Bill Sweetman, Carlo Kopp, etc. Below that are the 'respectable' websites, at the bottom of which is Strategypage, the National Enquirer of online military forums. Everything else is somewhere in between, and many of them tend to poach each other's information and propagate or inflate each other's misinformation or outright lies

Now, with that in mind, I think you will agree with me that just because you get some hits with a google search, it is no reason you should be treating something as gospel.

Maybe I should rephrase my original question, do you have any credible and authoritative sources to back up your claim that the Chinese are deploying a SOSUS like network?

It is also a little naive to think that people who deploy SOSUS lines would not routinely maintain them against exactly such predeployed devices, or that such devices deployed over or next to SOSUS arrays would somehow not immediately affect its function and therefore could be detected in the act.

Were the Soviets naive or incompetent that they were totally unaware that the Americans had tapped their underwater communications cables and were listening in?

Also, are you aware of where much of these arrays are deployed to think that the USN regularly sends guys to physically inspect every last meter of the route? Even if the USN did sent divers and DSRVs out to eyeball the lines, all one has to do is bury an explosive device near enough to the line that when it is set of, it snaps the line, it does not have to be something you clamp on the cable itself. Cover that with some sand/fiberglass shell that looks like a rock and good luck finding it even if you knew exactly where to look.

I am also curious as to how you think a bag of C4 buried/placed a few feet from the cable will 'immediately affect its function' in any way.

Especially given China's alleged limited deployment of SOSUS-type arrays, I have no idea why you think the Chinese military would just leave them there and pray to Buddha that nobody ever tries to mess with them.

Well, let me draw you a mental picture. Imagine the high voltage electricity network of a large country, like China or the US. Only there are no boarder patrols or customs to control what people are allowed to take in and out of said country. Now imagine another advanced country that wants to sabotage said network. Would it be a very hard thing for them to plant a few explosive devices somewhere along the line to disrupt the whole network if and when they want?

Now imagine that this is all underwater, in an area dozens of times larger, where visibly is often terrible, and accessibility is a massive problem. Just how much confidence do you have that you, or anyone would have much of a chance of comprehensively protecting such a network in such an exposed and hostile environment?

Also frogmen would have to deploy from submarines, so either way there has to be a sub deployed to the SOSUS array itself in order to disable it.

Says who? Frogmen can deploy from fishing boats or any other vessel just as easily. It will taken them longer to get down, but they can run a line to the ship, or use a diving bell to get down and stay underwater for much longer. It doesn't have to be a sub at all.

And also, I didn't know dolphins could dive down that low and hold their breath for that long, waiting for hostilities to start.

That is a flippant and silly remark unworthy of decent debate. Trained dolphins are extremely effective at underwater sabotage and counter sabotage operations and far far more flexible and effective than manned divers or DSRVs under many circumstances/for many missions.

Good luck to any sonar operator trying to decide if a dolphin is just playing round/hunting for prey or laying a bomb from just the sounds it makes.

This line of reasoning doesn't make sense to me, since "skills" were even more important during the Cold War, yet the USN's deployment of SOSUS arrays was much more intense during that time. There is absolutely no reason both technology and skill couldn't be developed simultaneously.

Remind me again when SURTASS was operationally deploy again? Manned surveillance aircraft was also more intensely used during much of the Cold War, does that mean manned surveillance was the be all and end all of intelligence gathering?

Just because something was used a lot does not mean it does not have any flaws or drawbacks.

This is just as true of any other asset as it is of SOSUS arrays and ASW aircraft.

Exactly. ASW in war time would be very different to ASW in peace time, especially against an adversary who can actually hit back.

Since radars are going to get taken out during "contact with the enemy", I'd guess by this reasoning radars shouldn't even be deployed in the first place.

I am sure you meant that as another flippant attempt at humor, but you are forgetting that increasingly, modern combat tactics and doctrine teaches pilots and captains to approach an enemy with his radar switched off and observing strict emissions control in order to avoid detection.

Fighter pilots and navy crews regularly train to fight with their radars tuned off and relying on datalinks or passive sensors because they recognize that in a future war scenario, they might well be forced to work with far less sensor data than they would like or are accustomed to having.

Is is silent service doing the same I wonder?
 
Top