crobatoYup and the model is on board the Minsk too.
crobatoI’m talking about your pic of the two subs that were being assembled in your August 29th post. I don’t think that place is Chinese.
crobatoWolf,
i know you dont like to get caught up in politics, but to ignore them altogether as you have, has created a scenario so removed from reality thats its merits are hard to find.
How do you come to that conclusion? To summarise all that we’ve discussed so far leads us to the conclusion that a small SSN team could operate inside of a 200nm coastal zone from a regional superpower with relative impunity. As a part of a discussion on ASuW that is a very significant conclusion to reach. What would be required for a surface force to survive in those waters long enough to perform an equivalent blockade? 2 CVN’s in each patrol area and, probably, the entire Pacific strength of the USN to back them up?. Do I need say anymore to prove the value of SSN’s in ASuW? No? Well thats my point made then!.
You have proved nothing.
the patro zones you marked leaves a small, but critical whole at the southern most tip of china, beyound hainan island and up to vietnam. thats just clear water for all chinese shipping to pass safely through and then move up and down china’s coast as close as possible.
Good. You have only stopped the outflow of cheap Chinese goods to the rest of the world. How quaint.
The patrol zones are so small it actually makes it easier to hunt down the sub even with limited ASW assets. In other words, you are asking the subs to fight within a cage.
Even from the experience of WWI and WW2, limited blockades near coast areas over a small area DO NOT WORK. That’s the crappiest sub strat I’ve seen. Subs should be loose, indiscriminate, and prowling the ocean water, not confined to a narrow zone IN SHALLOW WATER, NOT NEAR ISLANDS WITH REEFS AND UNDERWATER PEAKS, full of fishing vessels with large trawler nets.
Wolf I hope you know that I hold quite a high opinion of you (in fact I’m in Newcastle on Thursday so if you want to continue this debate over a few beers then – message me!), BUT, this one gave me a real chuckle!. If you are proposing that virtually all China’s merchant traffic be routed along the Vietnam coast and into the Gulf of Tonkin to avoid the RN blockade then, effectively, you’d do a hell of a lot more thorough job of disabling Chinese maritime trade than the SSNs would!.
They don’t really have to. What are you going to do, sink Walmart’s Christmas season inventory?
So you think that, to use an aviation analogy, 20 MiG-21’s could batter down 4 F-22’s?. That is what we are talking of here as an equivalent. The SSN’s can choose the engagements they like the look of and disengage when they dont.
Hardly an analogy. Both SSNs and SSKs are stealth vessels. The very fact that you confined SSNs to a narrow patrol zone in shallow tropical water also removes that advantage of being able to engage and disengage at will. It would make the SSN predictable since the other guys will be waiting for you.
crobatoCrobato will you please stop beating your chest for long enough to realise I dont care about the relative practicalities of the situation!.
OK change the subject. The SSN fleet is now no longer intercepting oil tankers its now, wickedly, targetting all your exports of cheap consumer electronics in an attempt to bolster the flagging British manufacturing sector. It doesnt matter one bit what the ships are carrying!.
You failed to answer me how an underwater sub is able to distinguish Chinese from Japanese or Korean tankers plying the same route, or how you can distinguish Chinese tankers from Chinese freighters as well as that from other nations. You also fail to address the consequences of massive oil spills along the Korean and Japanese coast—reasons enough for their respective governments not to allow you doing blockades within their EEZ.
Likewise it doesnt matter whether some routes to Japan or SK are compromised as other routes to those nations exist. Block the South and East China sea’s and you blockade China nowhere else. Least the way I read a chart it doesnt.
You’re talking about blocking routes that the Chinese DON’T EVEN USE. You’re blocking routes that only the Japanese and Koreans use. How quiant.
As for other routes, the other routes aer for goods to and from the US. Those carrying MIDDLE EAST oil would have to go through the same routes you just posted.
Oh yeah, did I mention the Siberian and Central Asian oil pipelines? Here’s another catch that I did not mention to you is that these pipelines will also serve Japan and Korea in the future. The pipelines will fill tankers at Chinese ports, which will then travel to Japanese and Korean ports. Nice for you to blockade that too.
Simple fact is Crobato that you cannot state comfortably that the PLANs ASW component could mount an effective counter to 5 competent SSN’s wreaking havoc in its extended EEZ. You cannot state this because according to every reasonable public source PLAN hasnt got enough ASW to deal with such a threat. Not enough choppers, too few MPA’s, too few comprehensively-equipped ASW escorts, SSK’s that (barring a handful of newer units) mount sonar fits that are dubiously aged.
That I really don’t know but then again, PLAN is now under a sub man. The new PLA commanders right up to the defence minister (who personally handles negotiations with Russia e.g. Su-30 and S-300 purchases) all seem highly technically oriented rather political compared to their predecessors.
As for sonar fits, even the Ming ones appear to have sonar arrays of recent French design.
A handful of newer units? You have up to 8-9 Songs now, and a new one coming out every few months, plus the four Kilos, and 8 new Kilos joining the fleet. That is still Asia’s largest SSK fleet even if new subs are counted alone. You also have the Yuan, and the USN apparently seems to believe that the Type 093 SSN may already be in the water now. The USN seems to believe that China may have AIP operational on the SSKs.
You know how easy it was to be caught? A USN LA class nuclear sub was detected by an old Taiwan Orion easily. The sub was sitting on the bottom looking for an opportunity to pick up a spent MICA AAMs fired by the ROCAF.
So how many aircraft with an ‘old Orions’ capability does the PLANAF posses? Enough to visually cover all the shallows where an SSN could pounce out from?.
I don’t know that too. But they have Helixes now, and Z-9s for ASW. They also have new corvettes and frigates. How many does it take you to hunt down five subs over a small limited area?
Fair comment on the home waters advantage. As to the rest of it the ‘quieter and more manoverable’ SSK is a myth!. RN SSN’s have stalked Dutch, Scandinavian and Italian SSK’s in deep water and shallow. USN 688’s have stalked Aussie and Japanese SSK’s successfully. It always boils down to tactics and endurance. The quietest SSK is easy meat when it snorts and SSNs, with their hugely more powerful sonars, can creep around for weeks prior to a blockade doing nothing more than logging SSK patrol activity.
The SSK quieter is not a myth. A Ming—yes, an oldie—was successful in stalking US and Japanese fleet exercises right off the Japanese coast. Frankly of all the men in the PLA, the one you really have to worry above all else are their sub commanders.
crobatoThe F-1 in these photos don’t seem suitably camouflaged for an antiship role, doesn’t it?
crobatoCheck it out. Different suorces appear to put JAS-39 with a combat loading (internal fuel plus weapons) at over 9,000kg. But your engine maximum augmented (with AB) thrust is only 8350kg from a single GE F404 engine. The empty weight is 6620kg. That’s been discussed before in this forum many times before. If you want to say the Gripen has a lot of power, you might as well say that the FC-1 also has a lot of power as both aircraft has nearly identical empty weight, power and combat weights. But nobody thinks that the FC-1 has enough power in comparison to an F-16.
I heard that the F-35 alone has a dry thrust that alone is net of its combat weight without afterburner.
crobatoTell me how you can distinguish Chinese flagged tankers over Korean or Japanese ones underwater.
China has over 1700+ cargo vessels (Great Britain has like 270+). A lot of the vessels coming in and out of China are not Chinese vessels. You have a stream of ships from the northern Chinese ports heading and coming from Korean ports and Japanese ports, not to mention from the US. If the US, Japanese and Korean ships stop coming into China and stay ported, the economic damage is alone far greater than any blockade, and that is without shooting a single bullet (the economic damage would go both ways by the way).
Even if you have a blockade, a surface ship based blockade would be far more discriminate and precise. You can simply force Chinese ships to stay ported and reduce lose of life. You can work out all the legalities of interception and boarding of the ships.
Here is one reason why you don’t BLOW up a tanker in the water–the MASSIVE environmental effects. Blowing up a Chinese supertanker near the Ryukus for example, would utterly devastate the fishing grounds and the Japanese FOOD supply. Also imagine an oil spill equivalent to ten Exxon Valdez on the Japanese or Korean coasts. This is especially so that the ocean currents run up along the eastern outer island chains like the Ryukus to Japan, then Korea before it heads down to China. The Green Earth people would have a field day.
crobatoMing Class SSKs:
Could well be. However, the word I’ve been hearing is
that they’ve stopped putting “Mings” together eons ago. My speculation
is that, this http://bbs.china.com/images/2004-09-04/1094288355001.jpg instead is
what could be if it’s Chinese. Notice the distinctions? The screw? The implications here
says that it’s either a sneak preview of the 039 or of the newer a 04X.Mings, on the other hand, sports an almost
wedgy U-Boat-like characteristic while the one’s in question here seems
to say that it’s cylindrical or of a cigar shape.However, could these be something others than Chinese???
😮
I’m not sure if that shipyard is Chinese. You already know how the Chinese sub building docks look like from the outside. They can’t be tall enough to get a vantage shot like this.
crobatoCrobato,
Dont you start as well! 🙂
You know quite well I’m not cutting orders to dispatch the fleet here pal!. If at any point I’ve crossed into Japanese or Korean territorial waters (i.e their 12 mile limit) with my rough plan then take it as read that it is simply poor artwork on my part and that, operationally, most skippers would know not to be quite so pedantic about it.
Now the patrol zones in the East certainly intersect with both Korean and Japanese EEZ’s. A countries EEZ is NOT the same as its territorial waters though. Technically speaking they are international waters outside of the 12 mile limit. In this scenario though we’re assuming that all involved parties have given the Royal Navy every permission and clearance necessary to set up their blockade and taken steps to reroute all their maritime traffic clear of the blockade zones.
Huh? Your blockade is right along the Korean and Japanese trade routes. Who are you trying to blockade? China or Japan/Korea?
As to the waters in that area, well, according to the charts I’m looking at nowhere I’ve indicated has a minimum average depth above 300ft save, obviously, for atolls and reefs etc. The Yellow Sea basin is shallow and heavily silted but, even if it does average 150ft depth, it is still navigable by a submerged SSN. Even if its the absolute last place on Earth that an SSN skipper would want to be caught.
No, that would have no tactical advantage over hunter-killer SSKs and would be easier to detect and sunk by airborne ASW assets.
You know how easy it was to be caught? A USN LA class nuclear sub was detected by an old Taiwan Orion easily. The sub was sitting on the bottom looking for an opportunity to pick up a spent MICA AAMs fired by the ROCAF.
You still seem keen on pointing out that politically speaking this blockade is totally impractical – something I have repeatedly said myself of course. Let me turn the tables on you though Crobato do you think, given the state of their ASW today that the PLAN could do much against 5 competent SSN’s operating in the patrol area’s I’ve indicated?.
First we don’t know the state of PLAN’s ASW but we don’t believe it is stagnant. You also would have to be fighting numbers of SSKs which are quieter and more maneuverable than SSNs, and these SSK skippers know their territory much better than your SSN skippers. You’re fighting over unknown territory, while they are fighting in their backyard.
Despite what you say about “rerouting” ships from blockades or so on, you always have to assume chaos theory—that not everyone is going to follow the rules—and that the best laid plans always have things going wrong. What is wrong is that you will sink a noncombatant vessel from other countries.
If you want to make sense about a blockade you’re in the wrong place by hundreds of kilometers. The best place would be in the Indian Ocean before the ships would reach Singapore or the Straits of Malaccas.
crobatoJonesy, all those zones you’re showing? They’re shallow litorral waters. I don’t know what you’re takling about calling those SSN patrol territory. That’s like tuna in beach water. That’s easy SSK patrol territory. Deep water begins BEYOND the Ryukus, the east coast of Taiwan AND the east coasts and islands of the Phillipines. One of your zones there openly violate Japanese territorial waters. I can also see how your zone goes up and violates KOREAN territorial waters.
Offensive mining in the Yellow Sea would also threaten the shipping of Japan and S. Korea. I don’t even think the UN would allow such a thing, There are rules governing action and engagement in international waters, why do you think there are JAG lawyers with each US task force?
Second there is no stopping from Chinese ships from flying flags of other countries or other countries ships trying to stop from entering a Chinese port. The problem of a blockades is that there is a very high chance you will shoot or sink, a third party merchant ship (not all ships follow a strict path—you have to account for chaos factor) and that will quickly set international opinion against you. Ships would have to be visually identified, for submarines that means periscope depth and approaching the merchant vessel for identification. Subs are not good selective blockade ships; its either you sink everything that passes or not at all.
crobatoSens
At that speed the g limit is less (for the flogger)
Arthur
Man your drunk…..
No his correct. The G stands for Gravity. At 9G, the aircraft is being subjected to centrifugal forces equivalent to 9X of gravity.
crobatoIf you take a look at the F-1 and the Jaguar there are structural similarities. You can impose the line drawing of one plane over the another, both from sideways and from above. You can’t do the same on the YE-152A and the J-8 both sideways and from above. Structurally the YE-152 is intended to use the R-15 engine as the final engine, and the twin R-11s were more of a temporary measure, so the YE-152 fuselage was made in consideration for the R-15 rather than the twin R-11s.
crobatoWhoops, got side-tracked there sorry Crobato. Trying to do to many things at once at the moment. But I have no doubts as to what the American lobby groups can do to an administration. But I also have no doubts about what an administration will do to assure continued support from those parties. 🙂 Again, think Iraq last year.
American business has no interest in Saddam’s Iraq, but they see a potential in postwar Iraq. In that sense, Iraq was expendable. There is no big US investment there. Rather, taking out Saddam was a way to HELP bring investment there. Think Halliburton.
America is still ruled more by business interests more than ideological interests. Like they say, the Golden Rule is whoever has the gold makes the rules.
crobatoGDL, we are talking about the RN here, not the US. The Brits are very unlikely to go to war against China regardless of their alliance with the US because of their massive business interests with China. Tony Blair is the guy who signed the paper allowing the export of Spey engines to China by the way, which now equips JH-7s fighter bombers with long range antiship missiles.
China is a different matter from Iraq because unlike Iraq, China has an exponentially far greater effect on the world economy. There will be massive domino-ripple effects on the Asian economies from Korea to Japan to Indonesia to Malaysia and Singapore. Affecting their economies will arise a major hivestorm of public opinion that will make what you see with Iraq, twiddlewinks. You think ANZUS will bother? Your prime minister already said NO to Pres. Bush about support to revaluate the Yuan. After all, Australia is supplying 11 billion dollars worth of natural gas to China.
The funny thing about the US Republicans and people like Bush is that they’re supported by corporations and rich Americans who have deep fundamental business interests in China to make money. Like Boeing, IBM, Microsoft, Dell, etc,. You really underestimate what the business wing of the Republican and Democrat parties can do to any election campaign.
I doubt that even the RN would be involved in situations with Taiwan (ANZUS certainly won’t). If anything
crobatoUnless of course, they actually helped. 🙂
Unless you want Russia to get involved and start bombing the **** out of you.
Jonesy,
Japan builds deeper boats because pretty much what it faces from its east coast is deep water. Towards the Asian side it’s not. In fact, its pretty shallow. Go check the ocean floor maps.
China had been self sufficient with oil until the economy expanded greatly. Oil from tankers is basically a peacetime route. Why do you think they’re building pipelines to Siberia and Central Asian states like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan?
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jan2001/oil-j03.shtml
http://bakerinstitute.org/Pubs/studies/xuchina/xuchina.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/china/stories/oil.htm
http://www.cornellcaspian.com/pub/19_0108Kazakh-China.htm
Not to mention lots of local reserves
http://www.uyghuramerican.org/economy/xinhuadec7.html
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jan2001/oil-j03.shtml
http://www.indexmundi.com/china/oil_proved_reserves.html
By the way, you cannot impose a blockade on international waters or attempt to enforce a blockade on some other nation’s territorial waters without studying the legalities of such according to the UN charter and the laws of the nation involved, e.g. Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore which has close ties to China. Get this warm and comfy feeling that at least three members of the Security Council will block you—Russia, France and China of course.
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