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Sub hunt risks stirring up China, North Korea
EFL. Let’s play!
The Navy plans to begin testing a new method for hunting hostile submarines this fall off the coast of Japan, and the test will include looking for the real thing: diesel-electric North Korean and Chinese subs prowling in the Sea of Japan.
Ping! If this was the real deal, you’d all be dead!
The Navy says the tests are not intended to be hostile and technically involve hunting only for submarines from allies such as Japan. But Navy officials acknowledge that the tests will also be watching for North Korean and Chinese subs because they frequent the areas where the tests will take place.
Funny how that worked out, isn’t it?
The tests, as well as similar trials off Hawaii, are scheduled to begin in about two months. They are intended to try out the prototype of a detection device that analyzes underwater color patterns and detects color gradations too faint for the human eye to notice. Early versions of the device called the Littoral Airborne Sensor Hyperspectral, or LASH have spotted whales and submarines below the surface. Current detection methods used by the Navy rely on sonar and other methods to "hear" the location of enemy submarines. The LASH system is designed to permit the Navy to see where submarines are.
See them instead of hear them? Nice, if it works. Sayonara, People’s Submariners.
Analysts fear the tests will provoke an angry reaction from North Korea, which has responded belligerently to any U.S. military moves it perceives are directed against it, such as military exercises in South Korea. The tests come at a time when the United States and North Korea are already locked in a tense standoff over U.S. demands that North Korea give up its nuclear-bomb-making effort. Talks are scheduled to begin on that and other matters in Beijing next week. "No matter what the U.S. military says, you are going to get an adverse reaction from the North Koreans," says Charles Ferguson, a former submariner and a Korea expert at the State Department from 2000 to 2002. "I think the Pentagon is willing to live with that."
Their "dignity" will be offended, as usual.
Ferguson adds that the North Koreans "will say, ’If you can reliably detect our submarines and sink our sub fleet before we have a chance to defend our coast, that is further justification to pursue weapons of mass destruction.’
I think we can probably do that already. They don’t need an excuse.
The new surveillance system, which was developed by Hawaii-based Science & Technology International (STI), is useful only during daylight hours because it relies on reflected sunlight to illuminate a target. Special sensors relay the images to computers, where LASH technology is able to distinguish shades of color in underwater objects that look identical to the human eye.
Maybe they can sell it to the Swedish navy now that they’ve gone to 9 to 5.
Defense experts say they’re not surprised that the Navy chose to test the system in the Sea of Japan, where Chinese and North Korean submarines patrol. The Navy "is quite obsessed with North Korea and the Red Chinese. They are the navies that the U.S. is most likely to fight, and (their submarines) are not that easy to find," says John Pike, an analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, a defense research group in Alexandria, Va.
Pike says there is a real danger that the tests will ratchet up North Korean anxiety and possibly cause a clash. "They are already pegged at 11 on a scale of 10," Pike says of the North Koreans. "They are locked and loaded."
This is news? I’m sure glad there’s experts around to tell me this.
Military officials say that although many or most Chinese and North Korean submarines rely on technology that originated in World War II, advances in propellers, engines and electronics make these subs extremely quiet. Adding to detection challenges: The relatively shallow ocean waters over the continental shelf are so noisy that it’s difficult to hear submarines there."Sound waves are diffused and distorted in this coastal zone, and you have a huge number of vessels, motorboats, even whales making noise," says Jonathan Gradie, chief technology officer for STI. "There is a cacophony of noise that reduces the effectiveness of acoustic systems."
The tests will be conducted by Navy P-3 Orion sub-hunter aircraft and SH-60 Seahawk helicopters.
I know who I’m betting on.
Posted by: tu3031 2003-08-20
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=17823