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Chinese sub surprises Navy

Hozer said:
Exercises and pretty numbers showing the Commodore all this groovy contact time is great, getting the qual so your crews (most of which are ASW tards) can get their readiness up in hurry so they can get back to the overland business is great too.
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As a former AW (the actual Navy rating, not someone who used to post here ;)), I can tell you that ASW skills atrophy FAST. I spent 18 months going through an aircrew pipeline where ASW was the be-all end-all. My first exercise in the fleet was where I found out exactly how little ASW the LAMPS Mk I was expected to provide. Drop buoys and have the ship do the hard stuff. Just stay handy to drop the torp. ASW is hard and I was happy to be in a platform that didn't have to do it much. Imagine my surprise at test time (for PO3) how little ASW I remembered. Good thing for me the AW (H) test took that into account. When it came time for actual contact with a Soviet sub (my one and only), I was using maybe 30% of what the navy had taught me about ASW.
 
This is not news.

Being a former bubblehead I must confess that you guys never found us. Even our own subs never found us. Its a big ocean and you can only carry so much diesel. When the perverbial poo hits the fan, we should not be as concerned. BTW when a surface contact(ship) has active sonar, how the hell can you not find a sub when you are actually looking for one???
 
SubtoSky said:
Being a former bubblehead I must confess that you guys never found us. Even our own subs never found us. Its a big ocean and you can only carry so much diesel. When the perverbial poo hits the fan, we should not be as concerned. BTW when a surface contact(ship) has active sonar, how the hell can you not find a sub when you are actually looking for one???
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Too much background noise from the rest of the carrier strike group?? /shrug
 
SubtoSky said:
Being a former bubblehead I must confess that you guys never found us. Even our own subs never found us. Its a big ocean and you can only carry so much diesel. When the perverbial poo hits the fan, we should not be as concerned. BTW when a surface contact(ship) has active sonar, how the hell can you not find a sub when you are actually looking for one???
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I have found things that claim to be unfound.

Details are beyond the scope of this forum.

It's not easy, and needs a lot of luck.
 
This certainly looks like the same incident we have heard of before. First or second occurrence, just "how could this happen", as has been asked by the TV talking heads? Not withstanding that DE subs are very difficult to detect and track on batteries and ASW is hardly a top priority any more, here is how it can happen. Chicom sub sits quietly on the CSG PIM for many hours or even days. When the CSG is in range of sensors and ASW assets the Chicoms are detected. After relentless tracking and simulated attacks by the imperialist dogs the Chicom sub is low on batteries and is forced to come to snorkel depth to recharge batteries. This sort of scenario hardly ranks a failure of the Navy subsurface screen. In deed, it is as good as a kill. And don't expect the Navy to defend their reputation by admitting to their ability to detect and track adversarial subs or confirm the volumes of acoustic intel that would have been gathered. Lest you tend to the Navy buffoon theory and discount this scenario as fiction I'd have to admit to living a similar fiction in another life.
 
.... and could it be that is why the story is outthere in the first place, twice at my count, to get a reaction? Or an admission that we had a SSN off their bow plane the whole time?
 
.... and could it be that is why the story is outthere in the first place, twice at my count, to get a reaction? Or an admission that we had a SSN off their bow plane the whole time?
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In deed, it is as good as a kill.
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Come on, Wink! If anyone thinks a CSG CO would knowingly drive a carrier anywhere near the vicinity of a unlocated ssk...there's no way we'd want to provide ACINT data to the bad guys either.

I recall the recent morning briefs to include a USW slide on the location of the other teams assets. That's what the SupPlot intel weenies live for.

Shit, the carrier can hardly predict the next days launch cycle and that's what they live for...

All I'm saying is bfd, the carrier goes wherever it wants to. Flying planes is what the CSG is about, USW is just not a priority right or wrong. To be coy and say maybe we "knew all along" or some Tom Clancy bs while driving a CVN around is insane. My experience with organic SSN's is that they stayed far away too, they see how the OOD drives the flattop.
 
Hozer said:
Come on, Wink! If anyone thinks a CSG CO would knowingly drive a carrier anywhere near the vicinity of a unlocated ssk...there's no way we'd want to provide ACINT data to the bad guys either.
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I didn't say the CSG would knowingly drive over a SSK. That is what a screen is for, finding the unknown out ahead of the CSG. And for ASW assets to work a contact doesn't require the CV to hang around and be a target. Surface weenies that want to play are detached and the aviation assets can fly hundreds of miles to prosecute while mother runs the opposite direction launching fighters to go play with themselves. Maybe I was too coy before. But I have seen this. I flew it. I don't know how things are done now. But when there were real blue water threats, and the peace was less then stable, we were more then happy to trade minimal ACINTEL for a chance to pound the living sh!t out of bad guys and collect far more valuable intel on them then they could hope to get on any of our surface guys. We just didn't brag about it in the morning papers. How the hell do you guys conduct inner and mid zone (I'm sure it isn't called that any more) ASW anymore if you are afraid of providing ACINTEL (rhetorical question I guess given OPSEC)? You have to break an egg to make an omelet. If I were listening to you without any other insight I would say there is no reason to be training for tactical ASW. It is either a lost cause to begin with or not worth the chance intel loss to use in real life. Is it that bad out there?
 
Hozer said:
USW is just not a priority right or wrong.
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This is spot on. My current job has me planning, coordinating and scheduling all ASW exercises for a P-3 Wing. Subs on a rail, re-gen points, spoon feeding the crews ??? Yep, we do it all. Why? Because the Training & Readiness Gods say we have to have an ASW Qual (Passively detect, classify, track and attack) every so often. If we (as a Wing) don't get the squadrons these opportunities, readiness suffers, SORTS looks bad, blah, blah. ASW scenarios don't fit into CSG & ESG exercises because they don't have neat & tidy timelines which have definitive start and stop times. Most ASW evolutions impact only a single "watch" section on a submarine. Real ASW will take days and weeks not hours.
 
robav8r said:
Real ASW will take days and weeks not hours.
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The good old days flying OOAs from Moffett. We used to search for days and sometimes weeks for those pesky Russians. Nothing like the satisfaction of searching an ambiguous SOSUS SPA, getting an initial 3 CZ detection on a Soviet boomer, and localizing to a CK. These young pups have no idea of what real ASW is or takes. We routinely had to make the hard MC decisions, either becoming the hero of the prosecution effort or the goat who just blew days of flying by all the squadrons on base. Even our ASW exercises in Socal were no where near as "canned" as I saw latter during my DH tour. During my first tour, these too last for days including large area searches taking many flights just to get the initial contact.

Shit...I once tracked 4 different Soviet SSNs on the same flight when they did an anti-boomer exercise of their own off Washington State. Today's P-3 Taccos are lucky if they see 1 in their career.
 
HAL Pilot said:
The good old days flying OOAs from Moffett. We used to search for days and sometimes weeks for those pesky Russians. Nothing like the satisfaction of searching an ambiguous SOSUS SPA, getting an initial 3 CZ detection on a Soviet boomer, and localizing to a CK. These young pups have no idea of what real ASW is or takes. We routinely had to make the hard MC decisions, either becoming the hero of the prosecution effort or the goat who just blew days of flying by all the squadrons on base. Even our ASW exercises in Socal were no where near as "canned" as I saw latter during my DH tour. During my first tour, these too last for days including large area searches taking many flights just to get the initial contact.

Shit...I once tracked 4 different Soviet SSNs on the same flight when they did an anti-boomer exercise of their own off Washington State. Today's P-3 Taccos are lucky if they see 1 in their career.
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Pour us some prune juice and grab that TACMAN while I wipe the drool from my chin and plot this DIFAR drop.;)
 
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