plawolfIts not war that sells weapons, but victories.
You can have a 100-1 numerical superiority with AWACS and EW jets in support of your superior numbers of fighters and it would not matter as long as you got a better then 1-1 kill to loss ratio at the end. That would count as being evidence that your fighters are better then your opponent’s.
plawolfAnd any extremist group or sect that has shown that it will use violence to subjugate others should be eliminated. We can even start in the West, we’ll take out the idiot Imam in England that keeps talking crap.
So…wouldn’t that mean that neo-cons should also be ‘eliminated’? What about the Christian far right who seem to think the end is nigh? :p
Oh, I’m done with the “invade and rebuild” theory. Any issues can be handled by airstrikes, without the need for putting people on the ground. And I am not saying crack down on every madrassa. Just those identified as producing extremists.
When has that ever worked? The Israelis have been doing it for decades and what did they achieve except giving the extremists even more power and alienating the arab moderates?
I think what people in the west really desperately fail to realise is that Islamic terrorism is not led by a handful of wicked charasmatic religious loonies as seem to be the provailing view, but rather it is led by the natural human desires for justice, faith and vengence. The ‘enemy’ you are facing in this ‘war on terror’ might as well be your own reflection if not for the fact that you have B2s while they only have IEDs. It is the pervived hostility of the west towards Islam that is fueling Islamic terrorism, and that feeling is not just felt by the few hardcore religious loons. The strength of emotion has also grown so strong that it would be hard not to sound like an extremist for a great many muslims who are just expressing their own views about world events. Are you going to labble the whole mulsim population as ‘extremists’?
The general muslim population is what paracities like Bin Ladden feed on to survive, and unless you plan to exterminate every last muslim on this planet, then merely being content with attacking the ‘host’ without finding a means to eliminate the root cause will get you nowhere. The only way the west can truely defeat Islamic terrorism is either to go the way of Hitler and start building concentration camps and gass chambers, or follow the example of Britain, and turn the general muslim population against the extremists.
But you cannot achieve the latter with LGBs. Bush made an unfathomably poor decision to invade Iraq, and that has fueled hatred towards the west no end. Now you want to repeat that mistake? 😮
plawolfSo has Islamic extremism. AQ is not and should not be regarded as the only Islamic extremist target or threat.
Extremists off all kinds have been around since as far as history records, Jesus and his lot were also considered as ‘extremists’ in their time IIRC. The likes of Orangemen in N.Ireland and NRA can also be labbled as extremists. Does that mean they should all be exterminated? There is a difference between holding an extremist view and acting upon it with violence.
I never said they should close all of them down. Only the ones identified as recruitment centers and teaching centers for Islamic extremism. If not, treat them for what they are, terrorist training facilities, and take them out with TLAMs.
Its not like religious schools of other faiths have not been used to preach about ‘resistence’ in the past, that has not stopped the west labbling the governments involved as violating human rights to worship when they crack down. Now you are basing your argument for invading another country partically on the basis that it is not cracking down hard enough on religious schools?
Saudia Arabia has taken down a few AQ cells internally, so it could also be stated with an equally straight face that they are contributing as well. The question is one of substantive effort. I didn’t even mention Pakistani crackdown on the extremists conducting attacks in Kashmir and India yet.
I think you would find that the degree of the contribution of the two are somewhat on different levels. In terms of substantive effort, SA doesn’t come close to the contribution Pakistan has made.
I’ve stated before that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia would have made perfectly logical targets after Afghanistan instead of Iraq.
That is you view, and it is fair enough. The last part of my last post was aimed more at those who have singled Pakistan out. I was just pointing out the fact that there are others more ‘deserving’ of American attention.
plawolfReally? They’re actively cracking down on madrassas preaching radical Islam and engaging the extremist camps in Waziristan?
There are more then one way to fight terrorism, just as there is more then one method to tackle pretty much any problem in the world. One can argue about which is the more effective method, but one couldn’t deny that someone is trying to solve a problem just because they are taking a different approach.
Yes, yes, the madrassas’ have become a major recruiting tool for Islamic fundermentalists. However, madrassas have been around far far longer then Al-Q, and just because some religious nuts are abusing these institutions for their own ends does not make the institution evil. From what I understand, madrassas’ have long been a part of the Islamic culture in one form or another over the centuries. Trying to close them down would be akin to trying to close down all Catholic schools in the west. Which leads on nicely to my next point.
The main reason Pakistan is not shutting down all the madrassas’ is not because they are secretly supporting Islamic terror, but because of the violent reaction a huge proportion of its population would have to such an act. Imagin the carnage if a US president tried to forcably disarm the American population, only about 10 times worse.
Can you deny that Pakistani intellegence has provided western intellegence and security agences with valuable info that directly led to the exposure and destruction of a great many Islamic terror cells? The Pakistani intellegence servive has also been pretty cooperative in terms of extraditing (or not in some cases, so that valuable intell may be extracted) people western security services want.
Like it or not, Pakistan is more then pulling its weight in terms of stopping terrorists, and while some might, rightly, question the sincerity of Pakistan’s actions and whether or not it is doing all it can, surely people cannot dispute the fact that Pakistan IS contributing to the fight against terrorism? Thus, I suggest that the notion of invading Pakistan in the name of fighting terrorism is plainly flawed fundermentally.
Also, I question the reason for people listing Pakistan as the best candidate for invasion when there are others, like Saudi Arabia and Gerogia, that are contributing far less to the global fight against terror, yet seem to have many of the exact same institutions (SA have madrassas’ too if I’m not mistaken, what more, a great many of the Madrassas’ in Pakistan are funded with Saudi oil money) as what Pakistan is being criticised for, and have just as much, if not stronger direct links with Islamic terrorism (Saudi 9/11 connection, Saudi support for Islamic terrorists in Chechneya; Gerogia being an open recuitment, training and recouporation base for Islamic terrorists etc).
plawolfTo have any chance of invading and occupying Pakistan, India must be involved because the US simply don’t have the manpower needed to police such a large and heavily populated country. Hell, the best strategy would probably to cut a deal with India and allow them to annex all of Pakistan under a ‘greater India’ or something similar. That way, the Americans move in to do what they are best at and smash up Pakistan’s conventional military while the Indians send in their milliom-strong army to steamroll over any opposition and mop up.
There will be appauling casaulties, but as long as they are not American, the white house will not have a problem with it if it is seen as helping their crusade against ‘Islamic terror’.
This is of course assuming that the Indians can be so stupid as to agree to such madness. In effect, such a move would shift the focus of Islamic terrorists from the west and the US in particular, to India. They’d all be swarming to Pakistan to fight their crusade against the Indians, just like it is in Iraq and Afganistan, thus they would not have much time to plan and propair for attacks against western interests.
If the US went and invaded Pakistan with only loyal Blair in toll, then that would be one of the stupidest things they could have done. They would destroying a government that is truely trying to fight terrorism and turning all the resources of that government and people into supporting and engaging in anti-American activities, which would inevitably result in the use of terrorst tactics. What more, they would be facing a far better equipped, united and determined foe then the one they are currently having such troubles dealing with in Iraq. It would be a horrible bloodbath that would only serve to strengthen terrorism, thus it would be a meaningless bloodbath.
If the US somehow mamaged to con the Indians into agreeing to clean up the mess for them, then that would only serve to transfer the Islamic terrorism problem from the plate of the Americans to the Indians. It would be pretty much the same result, only it would be happening to someone else.
plawolfI dont give 2 ****s about Oil,
But I dare say some people in high places do. Its just a fact of life.
that why I mentione Strategy in terms of the war on terror. The pakistani security agencys are a joke as is there COIN strategy, just look at Waziristan.
Look at Anbar provance in Iraq, or pretty much anywhere in Iraq and in much of Afgansitan. What makes you think American troops would be able to succeed in Pakistan when they are failing in Iraq?
I also am not that fussed about casualtys, invading pakistan would have done far more damage to the ability of Muslims to carry out terrorist attacks against the west than invading Iraq has or ever will.
Give me one example where there has been direct evidence of offical Pakistani involvement or lack of which which resulted in a terrorist attack in the west. I can’t think of any. On the other hand, I can think of plenty of high profile terror plots that were alleged to have been foiled with Pakistani help.
Pakistan has got a serious problem with Islamic terrorism, and much of that is of their own making. But it is trying hard to deal with it, and I see no reason why that problem is likely to get any better by invading Pakistan. One can make a much more convincing case for military action against Saudi Arabia or Georga then pakistan on the grounds of fighting Islamic fundermentalist terror, and based on your logic, surely they should therefore have higher priority in your ‘countries to really fcuk up in the name of fighting islamic terror’ list.
plawolfPakistan doesn’t have any oil other then what they import. Besides, Pakistan would almost certainly be a far tougher fight then Iraq, both to invade and occupy. That means higher American casaulties, which makes it less likely America would want a piece of that action.
As of now, much of the Pakistani military and security apparatus is being used to counter islamic terrorists. People can argue about just how much effort the Pakistani authorities really are putting into anti-terror missions, but surely no-one can dispute that they are doing quite a bit. Just read up on past major terror busts and more often then not, it is intel from Pakistan that helped to expose the cells involved. Now, if the US attacked Pakistan, all the effort currently being put into counter terrorism by Pakistan would be used to attack US occupation troops in Pakistan and possibly civilian targets in the US mainland and europe.
Just doesn’t make sense.
You’d make a far better case for invading the Saudis, they got plenty of oil; is the birthplace of Bin Ladden; supplied the vast majority of the hijackers for 9/11; is a very unpleasent religious fundermentalist tyranny… Seems you got the reasons for invading Afganistan and Iraq rolled into one neat package. :rolleyes:
plawolfAbsolutely not!. SOP’s will not necessarily see a sonar watch set if the ship is not in defence watches. I’d be utterly amazed if any active sonars where transmitting as the ships were not steaming at that readiness condition and active sonar is the best way to catch an SSK making steerageway.
Noticed how I said ‘passive’ in my last post? The carrier had ASW cruisers/destroyers and at least one SSN with it. Depending on the speed the force was moving at, the passive sonar on the surface ships could be affected, but not the sonar on the SSN.
Also, even in wartime, carriers would not be pinning the hell out of every square inch of water for 20 miles in every direction around them, most of the time, it would be a bad idea to use active sonar at all since thats about the best way an oppenent with the right kit could hope for to pinpoint the carrier and organise an attack.
No, again, using the same waters repeatedly is a common practise for most navies as it allows for a known-environment benchmark to judge crew and equipment performance against. Soviets did this, we do it (every Thursday actually!) and the Yanks do the same…as demonstrated here.
The ‘same waters’ could be one huge area and almost always is. Also, the first artical said that this incident occured which the Kitty Hawk as on transit to the excerise area, which would throw the boadries out even further.
Quite true…..but then I wasnt the one stating that this was indicative of China’s all-conquering submarine capability or that this would send a clear message to the yankee pigdogs! (my own exaggeration to make the point!).
And who was? :confused:
I just made the point that this was a very poor choice of position if the intent was to send the message to the USN fleet that a threat existed to them. I rechecked my figures on the torpedo solution btw and using the published speed and range characteristics for the Russian 53-65 wake-homer (10.3nm range @ 45knts) if the carrier steamed on opposite bearing at 25knts the torpedo would run out of juice 2 minutes before impact.
Purhaps that is the reason they chose 5nm, so its not too overt a threat. Remember China and the US are not in a cold war, so it pays not to be too blunt.
The point about the AShM is valid but how many AShM’s does a Song class carry? 2 maybe 4 perhaps?. What damage do you think 4 medium sized missiles will do to a CVN even if they could be fired within that close a range?. Seems a slightly suicidal attack plan to sacrifice a sub just to scratch a carriers paintwork a bit!
What makes you think there will only be one sub in war time? Besides, even with just one boat, 4 165kg semi armour pericing HE warheads is nothing to snear at, especially if they all have a near 100% hit probablity.
So again the rhetorical question would be what value is there in surfacing the submarine in this, non-threatening, position?
To show the USN that one of the PLAN’s older sub types can get under its guard into a striking position purhaps? Also, being the USN commander, can you take the chance in assuming that PLAN SSKs can’t get even a little bit closer to your carriers next time? Thus you would need to adjust your strategy and loss assessments accordingly.
plawolfIn that case why have a navy? In war you risk losing assets, if you are not prepared to lose a warship then it has zero value. In 1982 the RN lost a load of ships but got the job done, ships can be replaced. The Argentine carrier attempted a two pronged attack on the task force with a group led by Belgrano the Southern arm of the attack, they knew the risks of RN SSN’s but took a risk on two counts;
-Most importantly they appear to have been under the false impression, shared by many British critics of the war then and now, that the British exclusion zone was a boundary of operations and that outside the zone they would be safe. If anybody ever bothered to read the exclusion zone announcement they would see it was very specific in not limiting attacks on Argentine forces to the exclusion zone.
-they made a judgement that the risks were acceptable when balanced against the possible gains from a successful strike.
After the loss of the Belgrano their navy changed this policy, but they were fully aware of the threat of SSN’s right through the period leading up to the war and the war itself. If you’re interested I’d suggest reading up on the history of the Falklands issue, not just the war but the decade leading up to war when RN SSN’s appear time and time again as a key factor in the strategic thinking of both sides.
The Argentine navy was not aimed just at the British. Hell, it was not even aim primarily at the British, but rather its other neighbours, against whom the Belgrano and De Mayo would have been quite formidable. However, the RN was in a totally different league, and thus the Argentine navy would have been less then unless against them. Had the Argentines realised that, the Belgrano would have stayed home and hundreds of lives would not have been lost so unnecessarily.
The notion of basing major tactical decisions on a simple inability to read and understand is quite frankly, rediculous when applied to an institution with the resources and prestege as the navy of a major nation. Even if that was to be the real reason, then what makes you think an organisation that makes such gross base errors could make an accurate assessment of the RN’s true SSN threat, which by any measure is a far more complicated and difficult venture?
plawolf….and his utter guesswork is thrown into sharp relief by the below statement from bring it ons article:
Mullen’s comments come after the head of U.S. Pacific Command responded to the initial Washington Times story earlier in the week by saying the incident could have escalated into “something that was very unforeseen” if the Kitty Hawk had been conducting anti-submarine warfare operations at the time.
So we have from the initial article this statement:
The Kitty Hawk and several other warships were deployed in ocean waters near Okinawa at the time, as part of a routine fall deployment program.
Indicating that its not uncommon for the USN to be exercising in those particular waters at this time of year…that there is confirmation that no ASW was being undertaken and still the best that this amazing Chinese sub could manage was to surface 5 miles astern of its ‘target’ and decidedly out of position!!!.
Thats an interesting way of interpreting things. Even when not running war time levels of ASuW as would be case in an ASuW oriented excerise, a carrier battlegroup would still have pretty decent level of passive ASuW operations running as a matter of standard operating procedures. So to say that ‘no ASW was being undertaken’ at the time would seem a little…unrealistic.
It would also be a remarkably idiotic thing to do for the USN to have its carrier use the same rout time and again when on routine redeployments don’t you think? After all, its not like there are well marked lanes all ships, or rather, warships, have to stay in when they want to move around in international waters.
It may be well known that the carrier would be moving from A to B, but how it gets from one place to the other should not be so predictable.
As for the 5nm distance, well I think you are reading way too much into it. There are any number of reason why the sub might have surface at that distance, and all of them are just as likely to be true as your theory given the limited info we have right now. Anyways, you chose to take that as the closest the sub could have got, but there is nothing that rules out in being a concious choice on the part of the PLAN so as to not be interpeted as a major provocation or cause a major international incident. Because as Mullen says, the ships were in international waters, and there are ‘international regulations about how ships approach each other’ in international waters.
Anyways, the issue is moot since the Song’s C802 AShMs could have been fired effectively from a far greater distance even without additional offboard target info. Hell, at 5nm, it might even be a bit too close to use those missiles effectively, and even if fired from 10nm, it would have given the carrier and its escorts pretty much no chance of intercepting the missiles.
plawolfI don’t know exactly where you got your info, but 25 de Mayo was at sea during the operations that saw the General Belgrano sunk.
She was located to the North-west of the RN task force and was preparing to launch a strike, however local conditions were highly atypical of the South Atlantic in winter, being almost completely windless that day.
De Mayo could not generate enough wind over the deck to allow her aged steam catapult to launch her fully laden A4s on the strike, and the attack was postponed till the following day when winds were expected to be high enough to allow a launch to take place.
The loss of the General Belgrano had a salutary lesson on the Argentinian Navy, the De Mayo was pulled right back to port and she remained there for the rest of the campaign.
Unicorn
It was quite some time since I first looked at the Falklands conflict in much detail, and I no longer have the reference material at hand, so excuse me if my memory is a bit hazy. I wasn’t sure if the De Mayo was at sea or not at the time when the Belgrano was sunk, so I erred on the side of caution and assumed it wasn’t. Had she also been at sea, then it would further strengthen my argument regarding the stark difference between the threat RN SSNs really posed compared to what the Argentine navy thought they posed, as one does not send one’s carrier out to sea if one feels the carrier could be sunk at almost any time by hostile SSNs.
Regardless, it is only a passing example, and it has taken up much more bandwith then I originally intended, so I think we should drop the Falklands from this discussion.
plawolfNo they didn’t, the one thing they didn’t under estimate was the capability of the RN SSN’s, lnowledge of these capabilities coloured Argentine policy from day one. The mistake Argentina made was not concerned with light carriers, harriers or submarines, it was the British will to fight, it appears to have crossed nobody in Argentina’s mind that the British would fight a war over the Falklands. Once a military response was decided on Argentina was under no illusions of what they were facing, in fact if anything it was British under estimation of the Argentine AF and Naval A/F that was a feature of that war.
I beg to differ. From my readings and other research, the Argentine navy was supposed to play a big role in fighting the British at the start, with the Belgrano leading a small task force that was trying to engage the RN surface fleet. Had the Argintine carrier not been on the fritz at the time, it would undoubtably have been send out as well. But regardless, the Argintine navy was out and about at the start of the war, but after the Belgrano was sunk, they all went back to port and stayed there for the rest of the war. Had the Argintines had an accurate assessment of the RN SSN threat, none of their warships would have been out of base at all.
As for the British light carriers, well they and the harriers they carried were not considered to be of any major threat by anyone else before the Falklands. It was the British decision to scrap their heavy carriers and the loose of the F4 fleet that directly resulted in the Argentine conclusion that the British would not fight, because it was thought that they would not be able to successful wage war so far from friendly bases without the support of its heavy carriers.
This view that the harriers were harmless was further demonstrated during the course of the war, when Argentine Mirages were never tasked with engaging them, and were instead loadened with bombs to be used to attack the surface ships. Have the Argentines considered the harriers to be a major threat, they would have to be stupid not to send dedicated CAP fighters to engage them. But the view of the day was that the subsonic harriers were no match against the fast and agile Mirages and A4s the Argentines possessed.
As for the British, well I can’t think of many instances where they were caught out because they underestimated the Argentines, many of their major losses were due to ineffective equipment as opposed to people not taking the right procautions.
Anyways, I fear we are drifting off topic, so I will not go into too much detail.
plawolf10 Yards?. I wrote 10k yards i.e 10,000 yards i.e 5nm.
It was late when I replied, but my bad nonetheless. 😮
As stated you need top notch fish to catch a surface fleet IF you get a stern shot at all. The best way to shoot at such a target is from right in the bows!. Everyone knows this so an SSK in position AHEAD of the target fleet is always going to make for a much more direct message than one you’ve already left in your wake!.
The exact specs of PLAN fish is rather blurry, but even if we take the rather low 30nts speed, fish might not be effective at 5nm, but the C802s the Song carriers most certainly are. At that range, the sub can launch them without needing any additional target info while submerged as the missiles seeker would be able to lock onto the target from the moment it goes active.
As I has said before, the idea would most likely be to send a message, not to try and provock some sort of reaction.
A skipper that doesnt have authority to surface the boat he commands?. You are joking arent you Wolf?.
Not when he is on a top secret tailing mission, and certainly not without some damn good reason (something like, we need to get some air in or we all die), or did USN SSNs have a habit of surfacing in the middle of tailing a soviet SSBN just for poops and giggles that I am not aware off?
I’m afraid it sounds civillian and contrived to me mate. The point of shooting torpedoes is to kill ships, the men on them are a secondary issue, submarines are designed to shoot torpedoes at enemy vessels it really is that simple. You can train a sub crew to perform other missions like ELINT or SF insertion but primarily the submarines job will always be to kill other ships in the stealthiest way possible.
Spoken like a typical ‘the queen points and we obey’ ask no questions kind of soilder mate. But generals need to think about more then merely killing things. There are any number of examples in all wars where far more had been achieved with clever strategy instead of the ‘action man’ approach.
I also fail to see what you are trying to get at with training. The crew of that Song was not trained just to get close to a carrier and surface. It is their training and skill and probably a little luck that got them that close to the carrier. That was the hard part, and if they really did manage that without being detected, then getting away again without being noticed is about the simplist thing there is in sub operations. All they would need to do is slow to a crawl and just let the carrier fleet sail away.
All incidental to the real point of the game ‘Wolf. Getting in the other guy’s face to see if you can provoke a reaction is advantageous because it shows you all sorts of useful things – how fast the reaction is, how skilful was the use of tactics and systems employment….exactly the kinds of things that you would most definitely NOT want an opponent to get a good feel for. You dont want them to be able to gauge your response because it helps them kill you if the shooting turns real.
At 5 nm, all the sub could test is how good the carrier’s CIWS is, but then they can only guage that if they shot a real missile or two at it. The test was to get throw the carrier’s ASuW screen.
However, something just occured to me. It could very well be that the decision for the Song to surface WAS to provoke exactly the kind of reaction you are talking about.
Think about it. The carrier group’s ASuW defences are bound to be laxer in peace time and when there is no apparent danger in sight. However, if a Song suddenly appeared 5nm away, the entire battle group would be springing into full combat readiness stage, what better way for the PLAN to guage the likely combat effectiveness of the fleet?
The situation would also be a far better simulation of an actual attack then merely slipping in and sneaking out again without anyone on the surface ever knowing you were there. After all, the sub’s position would be pretty damn obvious in real combat if it just fired some fish and AShMs don’t you think?
If the PLAN is really confident about their abilities, then this might just be a test to see what the chances are of one of their SSKs being able to get away after an attack.
In the Falklands they new our primary naval area AAW system because they had it and we knew their primary AShM because we had it!. How can that be considered as not knowing your enemies weapons capability!.
The Argintines seriously underestimated the capabilities of the RN’s light carriers and harriers, thinking them not to be a threat. They also seriously underestimated the RN’s SSN threat, and had a rude awakening after the Belgrano was sunk. That realisation completely change the entire dynamics of the war as the Argintine navy suddenly became irrelevent and their ground forces were not able to get the supplies and reinforcements they needed partically because of it.
How much of that was due to deliberate UK secrecy measures might be questionable, but what is beyound doubt was that the Argintinians made a gross underestimation of the UK ability to respond to the invasion, and that directly led to the decision to launch the invasion in the first place. Had the Argintinians knew the full potential of the RN’s light carrier+harrier combo and the effectiveness of the RN SSN fleet, the war might never have been.
The way you describe this is amazingly civillian in outlook!. You strive to DENY your opponent any information about your capabilities so he is more scared of you as he doesnt know what you could be capable of!.
What you are failing to do is distinguish between strategic and tactical level decision making.
Strategically, sometimes you would want your opponent get a blurry but inflated idea of your capabilities. That why, when they start doing their calculations about how likely they are to beat you in war, they underestimate their own chances of victory and thus are more likely to back down and less likely to seek confrontation. There is a very fine balance, because you want to give your opponent enough info to get scared, but not have enough to be able to formulate an effective counter to your own capabilities.
Take the US example of stealth. The US military have deliberately created an inflated view of how effective stealth planes are, yet have not release enough information for people to be able to effectively counter their stealth technology. Its not to create advertisment and sell weapons as might be argued with other conventional arms. It is to partially reinforce the notion that the US is far superior in the minds of potential enemies, so their moral is compramised even before a single shot is fired (another tactic derived from the Art of War), partially to scare them into being more willing to compramise to US demands without needing to resort to force (Art of War), and partially to get your potential opponents to overpropare and sink a great deal of money into hardware that might otherwise had been spent on R&D, which would weaken them in the medium and long term (Art of War, and used to amazing effect by the US and the west in the Cold War against the Soviets).
Also, you ‘example’ is not applicable if your opponent has a major underestimation of your capabilities. How can they be scared of you when they mistakenly thinks they are much more powerful they you? Classic example being the schoolyard bully. He thinks he is hard as nails and can take everyone on, if you hide your strengths from him, he would merely take that as a sign of weakness. The only way of convincing him otherwise is to demonstrate your own strengths in an indirect way or have a fight to resolve the issue beyound doubt. However, since wars between states carry rather graver consequences then a ticking off from a teacher, indirect demonstrations of power would seem to be the preferable method of demonstrating military power don’t you think?
Without that ability to quantify your opponent how do you go about calculating a counter for him?. If I remember the Art of War, read very long time ago, that would fall under the whole ‘know your enemy’ thing…if he helps you know his capability how stupid is he?.
It takes very detailed knowledge to be able to develop specific counters. Merely knowing that your opponent has the ability to nuke all your cities or be able to sink your carriers does not, by itself, tell you how to counter those abilities.
What benefits come from showing your hand?. As you’ve seen just on this thread those who know a little about the subject can see through the charade – if enthusiastic amateurs do that what reaction do you think the professionals are seriously having?. As for cursory looks I think I’ve explained my opinion reasonably enough?.
Come on, surely you would have enough sense to realise that they world is not that one dimentional. There are a great many issues to consider, on tactical, strategic and political levels, as well as weighing the short and long term cost/benefits.
And I really find it hard to take the conclusions of someone seriously if the person in question is basing that conclusion on the unfounded assumption that highly trained professionals are ‘stupid’ or know less about the field they devoted their lives to then armchair amateur commentators. I find it equally distasteful for people to go, ‘oh, I can’t see a good reason for this (after spending all of 2 minutes thinking about it in the vast majority of cases), so the guy making this decision must be stupid…’
I know you are better then that.
plawolfWhy show your hand? If, Chinese Sub did indeed track the Kitty Hawk undetected for days. Now the US will double it efforts to counter Chinese these Subs……………… :rolleyes:
First off, its pretty unlikely that an SSK would have the endurance to shadow a carrier for any length of time. Secondly, read above for the answer to ‘why’.
Further, do we know in a USN SSN was with the Kitty Hawk Battle Group?
I think if you read the original artical, it says that an SSN was with the fleet at the time.
plawolfNonsense. If that was the case the PLAN SSK surfaces IN FRONT of the US CVSG. 10k yards astern is hardly firing position for torpedoes!. Without a pretty high-end HWT aboard theres a good chance a surface unit could simply outrun a stern-chasing torp from that range. If the SSK was trying to transmit the message you state then someone in the PLAN command chain really IS a muppet!.
Are we reading the same article here? Where did this ’10 yards’ come from? :confused:
I would also like to see your workings out to suggest that a carrier has a reasonable chance of outrunning a fish at 5 miles, and thats not factoring in the sub launched AShMs the Song carries.
As for surfacing in front of the carrier. Well SSKs are not known for their endurance and speed when operating with batteries. It would have most likely taken a great deal of skill and probably just as much luck to get as close to the carrier as it did. Trying to chase the thing down and overtake is a really silly thing to do for an SSK, and would most likely result in it being detected or simply run over by the carrier or one of its escorts. Getting in the way of the carrier is also a much more aggressive and procative act then merely surfacing near it.
Well scope shots usually do for most. The most likely explanation is probably some variation of the ‘Sukhoi Effect’ when Kitty was buzzed by those two Russian jets. That got media attention – a submarine surfacing, dramatically, just off a US carrier would be anticipated to do at least as well dont you think?. As to the captain being ordered to do it – for his sake I sincerely hope he was and kept a very clear message log of the receipt of that order because it wasnt very smart!
Fair point, but I seriously doubt the skipper of a PLAN SSK would have the authority to surface his boat so close to a USN carrier on his own.
Hmmm yes my vote would definitely be somewhere close to the ‘brainless moron’ end of the spectrum here for someone in this ships extended chain of command!. I dont care what anyone says about sending messages I’m afraid a combat crew trains for war. That is gaining position by stealth, firing sufficient weapons to complete your mission goals and clearing the datum through stealth to go home, thank whatever protected you that time out and prepare to go again. Doing anything else – unless you have a massive technical overmatch on your opponent – is stupidity of the highest magnitude!.
Well I’m afraid I have to disagree on that point. Chinese military thinking is still influenced greatly by the Art of War, which sets the ultimate goal of the military as to be able to win without having to fight, and that makes damn good sense to me.
Hell, what you are suggesting flies in the face of decades of military interation between pretty much all of the world’s major militaries. The cat and mouse games played by soviet and western subs in the cold war; the cross pacific/atlantic ‘recon’ sorties and intercepts; the showing off of each other’s strategic nuclear power; the routine tailing of subs and surface ships by subs of all nationality with ‘leaked’ reports and scope shots etc.
What you have stated is a less effective way of using one’s military. Unless you have a significant technological and/or quantative advantage over your potental opponent, then war is going to be a bloody and costly affair for both sides (it often is even if you do enjoy such advanatges). By hiding your true power, you may gain a significant advantage in battle, but in order to maximise that advanatge (or have it at all), you have to keep it secret and thus your opponent will only know of it after war has been decleared. The classic example of the stupidity of such a strategy is the needless war in the Flaklands, and the best counter example where military ‘transparency’ has most likely prevented war is the cold war, where only certain knowledge of the consequences of war kept the peace.
Usually, if the two sides do not have fundermental clashes of interest or ideology, the decision to go to war or back down is often decided with cold calculation of one’s probablity of victory and the likely cost of that victory. In that respect, it is often advantagous to let your opponent get an inflated idea of your capabilities as that would deminish their chances of victory and increase the cost of victory and defeat for them, and that is exactly the ‘game’ the US and PRC are playing. The US wants the PRC to think that it will not be able to have a very good chance to taking Taiwan by force, while the PRC wants the US to think it has a very high probability of suffering unacceptable casaulties if it got involved with a war in the straits. As such, it makes pretty damn good sense for the PLAN to let the USN know that it can get its newer SSKs within weapons range of their carriers.
Such a move will carry likely long term costs, such as gulvanising US efforts to counter SSKs. However, it also carries significant benefits, and branding such an act as ‘stupid’ without even taking a cursery look at the costs and benefits of this act is rather rash and illogical in my view.
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