Homeland Security Network Blog
How China Will Try To Unmask U.S. Submarines In The Western Pacific
Forbes
How China Will Try To Unmask U.S. Submarines In The Western Pacific
by Loren Thompson
Aerospace & Defense
In mid-July, the latest in a series of classified seminars will be held at the Charles Stark Draper Lab adjacent to MIT’s campus to educate naval personnel and contractors about how to hide U.S. warships from the prying eyes of enemies.
You can’t attend unless you have a secret clearance and a need to know, because methods for masking the telltale “signatures” of American warships are a very touchy subject.
That’s especially true in the case of submarines, which would be of little use in wartime if they could be reliably tracked and targeted.
Submarines are the stealthiest warfighting systems ever devised, and the U.S. Navy aims to keep it that way.
But one subject that likely will bulk large in the July seminar is how to cope with rapidly growing efforts by the Chinese Navy to find, fix and defeat undersea warships in its marginal seas.
China’s geographical circumstances dictate that if is to expand the reach of its military power, the movement, at least initially, will need to be eastward—into the Pacific Ocean.
That inevitably means a confrontation with the U.S. Navy, which has dominated the Western Pacific since World War Two but is gradually losing ground as China outpaces America in naval shipbuilding.
China has major advantages in this competition, because it is operating close to home and, at least for now, is focused primarily on local maritime supremacy.
The U.S. Navy, on the other hand, has to cover the whole world with a smaller fleet—albeit one that is better trained and equipped.
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