PLAN Type 035/039/091/092 Submarine Thread

[crobato]

Re: PLAN submarines Thread II

You cant compare china to USSR. USSR was superior to china both qualitivity and most of all quantitivity. USSR had many dozens of SSBN, a very big air-naval arsenal to protect them. Oh and the USSR was strategically better situated then china (much larger coast the china, and much of that coast was ice covered, making it much more dificult to conduct ASW operations. How much ice-covered waters does PLAN have acess to?....


besides, PLAN´s acess to ocean pacific is entirely bottlenecked by japan, ryuku islands, taiwan and philipines, all allies of the USA, and you can believe that there are long range underwater sonars thoughout all over these island chain. And beyond that chain, the USA have more of it...

Having said that, the PLAN is literally surrounded by littoral waters, and littoral waters favor subs a lot more, because its far easier to hide your noise signature within the background. These littoral waters are made worst by heavy merchant traffic conditions that add to the ambient noise, drastic changes in temperature, acidity and salinity, all sorts of water currents that distort sound. Add to that are the unique ecosystems of biologics and so on. Just because you can hear a sound it doesn't end there, you need to differentiate the sound from thousands of other sounds in the environment.

The best analogy to this is listening to the sound of a Toyota Prius and identifying its location in the middle of a busy New York intersection.

Please note that ASW is very environmentally oriented. Like a jungle, the only way to master it is sheer experience. You cannot take the experience of ASW in the cold North Atlantic and suddenly apply it in the tropical South China seas overnight and expect to be good at it without a serious time investment.

 

[Geographer]

Re: PLAN submarines Thread II

I'm not sure littoral waters favor submarines in a head-to-head match against surface warships as much as you say. As hard as it is for surface ships to detect subs against the large and diverse noise background, it's doubly hard for subs to identify military surface ships which are quieter than merchant marine. Sure they have periscopes but they have are very limited in range. To be effective they would receive regular updates on the position of an enemy warship, or be following it after it leaves port or passes through a chokepoint like the Straits of Malacca. As slow as subs are, especially SSKs, compared to surface warships, if they're out of position when the shooting starts it may be all over before they get there. Their slowness also makes it hard to track faster ships.

 

[crobato]

Re: PLAN submarines Thread II

the task at hand is that surface ships, no matter what, are going to be noisier than background ocean noise. Thus the job is concentrated telling military ships from the merchant ones. That kind of burden is less compared to differentiating a sub from background ambient noise. No matter what, there are magnitudes more biologics in the sea than there are merchant ships.

 

[Hendrik_2000]

Re: PLAN submarines Thread II

besides, PLAN´s acess to ocean pacific is entirely bottlenecked by japan, ryuku islands, taiwan and philipines, all allies of the USA, and you can believe that there are long range underwater sonars thoughout all over these island chain. And beyond that chain, the USA have more of it...

Nothing is so straight forward I recall duing the cold war russian sub regularly avoid detection by tail gating merchant ship and as Crobato said south china sea is busy trade route with thousand of ships come and go. Plus it is relatively shallow and noisy with complicated thermal layer

Given a skill skipper I don't think detection is foregone conclusion!

 

[Roger604]

Re: PLAN submarines Thread II

The Americans probably knew that it was a Chinese submarine beforehand, but it appears that the Chinese skipper was just a little too close to be safe.

Mind you, the end for a towed sonar array can be hundreds of metres away from the ship... pretty easy for a ship not being careful following behind or crossing to become ensnared.

That's impressive. The sub must have been following the destroyer all the way to subic bay. It would have been a perfect mission had it not gotten caught up in the towed array sonar.

 

[bladerunner]

Re: PLAN submarines Thread II

Nothing is so straight forward I recall duing the cold war russian sub regularly avoid detection by tail gating merchant ship and as Crobato said south china sea is busy trade route with thousand of ships come and go. Plus it is relatively shallow and noisy with complicated thermal layer

Given a skill skipper I don't think detection is foregone conclusion!

I understand that the Amercians have sonar that can over come tailgating?

 

[bladerunner]

Re: PLAN submarines Thread II

JUST TO BE DIFFICULT

What if the Amercians knew the Chinese were there all the time and just suckered them into making a mistake?

 

[AssassinsMace]

Re: PLAN submarines Thread II

The bigger story would be if they had their sonar array deployed and it didn't detect the submarine.

 

[bladerunner]

Re: PLAN submarines Thread II

The bigger story would be if they had their sonar array deployed and it didn't detect the submarine.

Hmmmm A kitty Hawk incident all over again. I wonder if the Americans will be demanding an apology.

Bit like the rules of the road when driving, if you hit someone from behind your'e in the wrong

 

[williamhou]

Re: PLAN submarines Thread II

The bigger story would be if they had their sonar array deployed and it didn't detect the submarine.

It can be that the DDG have detected the sub and as USN said it is very dangerous for a sub to get close to the sonar array, the DDG attempted to harass/force the sub to surface by hitting it with its sonar array. The sub could be killed this way with no damage on the US DDG apart from a broken sonar array and they can say "we did not mean to damage/kill it, just an accident". The DDG is far more agile than the sub underwater.