Russian Sub Skirts Coast

Most likely it was in international waters, which is a no story really. Although, it makes you wonder if the route was strategically placed to see how detectable a certain model of submarine is. America's MSM airs the "story" and what do you know, russia now knows whether their subs can be detected!

No need to phone washington and ask if any long black rods have been spotted lately...

200 miles is well into international waters, and I'm 100% sure that the US has subs within 200 miles of... Well, every other country in the world. Including allied ones, just in case.

Whats good for the goose, is good for the gander, springs to mind.

reply to post by liejunkie01

Can someone tell me where all of our subs are?

Boomers? Sitting quietly under the ice at the north pole. Their job is to leave port, get "lost" and wait for WWIII. Thats it. They are noisier when they operate so its quieter just to sit. But thats boring as hell for the crews.

Gotta be nuts to fly one of those things anyway, I guess.

I see there's alot of "America has THE BEST SUBS EVER !!!" talk going around.
Ignorance is bliss.
Example 1. An Australian Collins class sub HMAS Rankin achieved it's objective during training drills (photographing the flag ship) by sneaking past a task group undetected.
Not bad for a submarine known to cause alot of racket and commotion when submerged as well as being a death trap.
HMAS Rankin drill

Example 2. 'The uninvited guest, Chinese sub pops up in middle of U.S. Navy exercise, leaving military chiefs red-faced'

The uninvited guest

American military chiefs have been left dumbstruck by an undetected Chinese submarine popping up at the heart of a recent Pacific exercise and close to the vast U.S.S. Kitty Hawk - a 1,000ft supercarrier with 4,500 personnel on board. By the time it surfaced the 160ft Song Class diesel-electric attack submarine is understood to have sailed within viable range for launching torpedoes or missiles at the carrier. According to senior Nato officials the incident caused consternation in the U.S. Navy. The Americans had no idea China's fast-growing submarine fleet had reached such a level of sophistication, or that it posed such a threat.

Makes you really wonder how two of the most basic, low tech, siv leaking subs can achieve such success against a technically superior force.

Just think, the Chinese have started rolling subs in bulk off their production lines (something the Chinese know how to do well). Compared on paper they seem inferior but in reality it seems different.
The Collins Class subs are known as 'duds' in Australia due to constant design issues but a well trained crew is still able to use their tool to the best of it's ability.

Just wait til republicans use this to start whining that we need to spend more on "defense"

Originally posted by crackerjack
Makes you really wonder how two of the most basic, low tech, siv leaking subs can achieve such success against a technically superior force.

Just think, the Chinese have started rolling subs in bulk off their production lines (something the Chinese know how to do well). Compared on paper they seem inferior but in reality it seems different.
The Collins Class subs are known as 'duds' in Australia due to constant design issues but a well trained crew is still able to use their tool to the best of it's ability.

edit on 6-11-2012 by crackerjack because: (no reason given)

edit on 6-11-2012 by crackerjack because: (no reason given)

By hiding on or near the bottom, where there are seamounts to cover them, and popping up as they carrier goes by. If you aren't moving you aren't making nearly as much noise, and the seamount hides your magnetic signature that most ASW aircraft use to make the initial detection.

You don't mass produce subs. If you roll them off in bulk, then you miss things like bad welds, and it ends up on the bottom. As far as any intel source can tell, the Chinese are building a small number of new boats. They currently have 2 Type 093s, and the Type 095 should enter service sometime around 2015 or so. They still have a number of older Sang class in service.

They're just testing our def's as usual. Many times, when stationed in Iceland, they'd send aircraft into Icelandic airspace to test our fighter responses. I'm sure, for the sub thing, they are doing a 2 part test - see how fast we actually see them and how fast it takes for the info (and what info) to reach the media. Just imagine the stuff that doesn't get reported to the media...

Now if we start seeing Chinese subs...

And we do this stuff all the time too.

First off this is a non event. Nobody was surprised by the sierra showing up where it was, except maybe the russian mechanics that last worked on that sierra. THey are probably baffled as to how it travelled so far without sinking, and are probably paying off their bets to the one guy at the shop who played devils advocate and claimed that it could.

Milkyway is probably right. We most likely did count the amount of bubbles the thing has trailed since it left port.

I wouldn't worry about the subs being trailed after the leave base. We have lots of sneaky undisclosed ways of slipping the russians and anyone else trying to pick up our subs trail as they leave port. Heck we can even make the russians chase a fake sub on a wild goose chase if we wanted to. Heck when the Sierra was detected it was probably already getting underhauled by some US ssn. "Hey captain! take a look at this! They still haven't gotten hatch number 27D fixed on their hull since the last time we underhuled them. DO they even know their hatch is open? Should we send them our photos to make them aware of the hatch being open? Nawww."

Personally, I like Char Lee's theory the most. It would be more fun for all of us if we did think the sierra was there to fight the alien threat in the atlantic like the chinese are helping the US fight the alien threat that nobody has detected off San Francisco.

A few years ago a Chinese sub was spotted 90 miles off the coast of our military super base, Guam

The missile fired from a sub off the coast of California pretty recently was even closer. The news said it was fired 30 miles off the Califorrnia coast...but looked much closer than that.

There's always subs really close to us doing operations.

Apparently, Russia didn't get Obama's memo that ships are no longer necessary for a modern military.

Originally posted by Pervius
A few years ago a Chinese sub was spotted 90 miles off the coast of our military super base, Guam

The missile fired from a sub off the coast of California pretty recently was even closer. The news said it was fired 30 miles off the Califorrnia coast...but looked much closer than that.

People still believe that twaddle??

Deny ignorance

Originally posted by navy_vet_stg3
Apparently, Russia didn't get Obama's memo that ships are no longer necessary for a modern military.

apparently the USN didn't either - fleet at its smallest since 19th century in 2007...and is set to keep increasing for a bit .

reply to post by crackerjack


Good job to the crew of the HMAS Rankin!

In fairness, I would counter that a littoral scenario like the exercise depicted is the optimal environment for a diesel electric sub to operate .If it were a shooting war while the Rankin got a clean shot it is still not a guaranteed kill depending on the breaks with passive and active countermeasure employed by the frigate. (Oliver Hazard Perry-class?)

Sneaking in and snapping reconnaissance photo's is one thing, to have launched a weapon and gotten away is something else altogether. Torpedo's make noise so what are their odds once spotted in shallow water with 4 ASW ships, an SSN and an aircraft in close proximity?

Part of the strength of the USN is its ability to absorb damage and still remain coherent. Even if the frigate were sunk, the sub has compromised its stealth to a large, alert force and is just as likely to be destroyed.

The USN can keep replacing relatively cheap Frigates one for one a long time after Australia or China or anybody ran out of relatively expensive submarines.

Do you think that a USN Virginia class SSN could manage a similar feat against the Royal Australian Navy?

The popular retelling of the Type 039 surfacing in the middle of the CV-63 battlegroup as some sign of eroding USN superiority is flawed as well and here is why..

What gets left out is the part where the Kittyhawk battlegroup had concluded well published naval maneuvers near Okinawa and were sailing in a predictable straight course in a relaxed posture to their home port of Yokosuka.

Knowing that Carrier battle group's cruise at 10 knots faster than the maximum speed of the Song class sub it's clear that the Chinese captain got clever and waited along the shipping lanes and caught them going by.

Good job to the PLAN sub captain, however in a wartime environment the CVBG isn't going to be announcing its itinerary or travelling in a straight line. P-3's and Vikings would set up a sonobuoy pickett for 200 hundred miles and U.S.N. SSN's would team with Seahawk's to kill anything deemed hostile.

I have also read a rumor that the Type 039 was tracked for 45 minutes by a USN 688i SSN which wasn't mentioned in the press for not violate OPSEC and tip our cards regarding PLAN ASW . Allegedly, it was made to be a bigger deal than it really was to generate congressional sympathy for the Dept.of the Navy LCS program.

Lastly even if it were to have launched a weapon, just as with HMAS Rankin's attack, U.S. countermeasures are getting extremely sophisticated and have performed consistently well against known Chinese anti shipping threats.

I don't see any great embarrassment for the USN in either the youtube video or the retelling of the Type 039/CV-63 story.

The fact is the U.S. and Australia are close allies and China has a long way to go to challenge U.S. Naval supremacy.

Originally posted by intrptr
reply to post by liejunkie01

 

Can someone tell me where all of our subs are?

Boomers? Sitting quietly under the ice at the north pole. Their job is to leave port, get "lost" and wait for WWIII. Thats it. They are noisier when they operate so its quieter just to sit. But thats boring as hell for the crews.

Gotta be nuts to fly one of those things anyway, I guess.

Sitting under the ice? No, not really... More often than not, we were doing circles in the Pacific - very rarely were we ever sitting still.
I can only remember rigging for ultra quiet a couple of times and that was for training. The rest of the time, everything was always running. We had treadmills, clothes washers/dryers, tons of pumps and motors, radios, movies, Playstation, and even a good sized lathe in the Engine Room.

During a weapons readiness exercise, the other boats were trying to find us - they couldn't... So to make sure the exercise wasn't a total waste of time, we were ordered to make some noise so they could track us. This was in the late 90's, on an Ohio Class SSBN built in the late 70's which was based on 60's technology... Imagine how much better/quieter our boats are now...

Nuts? Naw, the psych eval weeded out most of those guys... lol
We did have one guy that had to be airlifted off the boat by a chopper because he "lost it" and was on a suicide watch.
I found most of sub guys I worked with to be of a higher caliber than most of the surface fleet people I ran into - but there were always exceptions on both sides.

I am not sure if U.S. is completely capable of defending against Russia, because Russian power is anonymous.

Nothing scares the US more than foreign nations standing up to their decades long campaign against the rest of the world. Good on Russia.

reply to post by CommandoJoe

Thanks for setting me straight on peace time operations of the boomer fleet. To a point. Staying "off the grid" is their job. They egress port at night in secret and follow routines that help lose any tails (like attack subs), then once "lost" they may lighten up a bit during "routine" operations.

I guarantee you there is at least one up under the ice as we speak. Not all, not all the time of course.

And by nuts, and I say this carefully for I respect your experience and patriotism. By "nuts" I mean me Personally, I would think it crazy to be part of any active unit who's responsibility may one day be to burn millions with nuclear fire. That kind of "nuts".

Thank you for your reply and sharing your experience.

Since I know you are into this kind of thing, I thought you might like to view this.

reply to post by intrptr


It's a very interesting dichotomy. A boomer skipper has to be incredibly smart, and well educated, but has to also have the ability to fire a missile that he knows beyond a doubt is going to kill millions of people depending on where he is shooting at. There aren't many who can do that, that wouldn't be classified as somewhat psychotic.

reply to post by Zaphod58

One definition of Catch-22.

"You mean there's a catch?"

"Sure there's a catch", Doc Daneeka replied. "Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."

Therefore you won't be excused from duty because you aren't really crazy . But its crazy to drop bombs on people. Of course it is. Thats the dichotomy. And thats why you have to go.

And thats nuts.

reply to post by intrptr


That it is. But no one ever said this was a sane world we live in.