

Serious geopolitical change -- China's submarine shadowed the U.S. fleet - maurycy
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=492804&in_page_id=1811

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hugh
Reasons why this may not be such a big deal:

1\. Diesel-electric submarines from various countries (including, I think,
Germany and Australia) have been known to lurk near US aircraft carriers
before. It's not that surprising that a Chinese one managed it too.

2\. We don't know whether the submarine actually managed to sneak up on the
carrier, or whether it just lurked at the bottom and waited for it to
approach.

3\. The Kittyhawk is an old carrier and doesn't have all the anti-submarine
warfare capabilities of the newer ones.

4\. For all we know, the carrier might have detected the submarine anyway and
decided to pretend it didn't, so they can avoid giving away how good their
sonar actually is.

Regardless of what the British tabloids might think, I don't necessarily think
this represents a "serious geopolitical change".

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byteCoder
A diesel-electric submarine based on 50+ year old technology (i.e., small and
quiet) sneaks up on America's high tech fleet in the middle of a war game.

Serious geopolitical change? I'm sorry, no. (Please don't sensationalize such
headlines ala reddit.)

Problems in the high tech detection systems of the American military? Yes,
that's the ticket.

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run4yourlives
Are we going to need a politics.ycombinator.com too?

Please, tell me this isn't so!

~~~
andyn
There seems to be a group of people intent on submitting everything that
appears on reddit or digg and it's sad.

Can't we get more unique links rather than this whole sloshing around of
whatever's going around as email attachments?

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tptacek
Other Navies have apparently routinely snapped periscope-depth/range pictures
of US warships. This isn't news. It's not even evidence that the Chinese were
undetected.

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DanielBMarkham
Wonder why they are building a deep water navy and starting up this cold war
kind of gamesmanship? I don't see them in a lot of peacekeeping or
international aide missions. They certainly make a lot of threats towards
Taiwan, though.

~~~
jadams
They have regional interests, and they need to make sure they can counter any
hegemonist's power-projection in the their region.

