During operations off Okinawa back on 26 October, the Navy is saying that a Chinese Song class submarine evidently made a rather close approach to aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63). The Song class boat evidently surfaced within five miles of the carrier.
The Kitty Hawk Strike Group is at sea, presently participating in ANNUALEX 18G -- maneuvers with the Imperial Japanese Navy -- oops, the "Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force" (JMSDF). The JMSDF is probably the second or third most powerful navy on Earth.
Anyway, I find it difficult to get too excited about this: it’s the job of Chinese submarines, and everybody else’s, to get close to US aircraft carriers. (Hopefully the Chinese captains are careful not to run into Russian, North Korean and whatever other submarines might be lurking in the area). Whether the approach of the Song class boat was actually undetected, I beg leave to doubt. In addition to Kitty Hawk, (“the Battle Cat”), with her own air group -- the Kitty Hawk Strike Group includes a couple of cruisers, seven destroyers, and a pair of submarines, plus, most likely, satellites on call; all with a significant amount of submarine detection ability. . .
Probably, it's a good policy to never interrupt an enemy, or a putative enemy when he’s making a mistake, or showing you something interesting.
In any case, this is interesting, but not worth Drudge sirens. I mainly wanted to run the spiffy US Navy photo of Kitty Hawk. Kitty Hawk, the oldest active aircraft carrier, is scheduled to be retired in 2009, when USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), (the tenth and final Nimitz class carrier), enters service.
1 comment:
That is a really cool photo, thanks for the post.
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