The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
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Dirty Little Secrets
Chinese Submariners Are Different
by James Dunnigan
June 14, 2005
Discussion Board on this DLS topic
Chinese submariners are different. In the United States, submarines have crews
that stay with the boat, just like on any other warship. The only exception is
the SSBNs (ballistic missile subs), which have two crews, so that the boat can
spend the maximum amount of time at sea. The Chinese do it differently. Each
class of subs has crews trained for different types of missions, and these crews
are assigned to a sub in order to train in their specialty (mine warfare,
anti-surface warfare, and anti-submarine warfare). Another reason for the
multiple crews (usually two per sub) is also to increase the number of trained
crews ahead of the introduction of many more new subs in the next decade. The
Chinese have recognized, and accepted the fact, that it takes over a decade to
train effective submariners, particularly the Chief Petty Officers (the
“Chiefs”) who really make a boat work. The chiefs were given a big pay raise
five years ago, and made to understand that being a naval NCO was a good, and
lucrative, career choice.
The only flaw in this plan is the poor
condition and reliability of Chinese submarines. Chinese boats are either bad
copies of Russian designs, or even worse attempts to build Chinese designs. But
the Chinese know that just having submarine crews is not enough, you have to get
these guys to sea, as much as possible. Under the old Soviet system, the sub
crews spent most of their time living in barracks, and getting lectured in
classrooms, or doing dry runs while their sub was dockside, motionless. When
Soviet subs did go to sea, it was for a day, and then back to port and the
barracks. By the end of the Cold War, the Russians and the Chinese were
convinced that the Western approach (keep the boats at sea as much as possible)
was ancient wisdom that still applied, and worked.
The Chinese
submariners have to work for their higher pay. Keeping their creaky boats at sea
means a lot more maintenance and repair work in port, and a lot more alertness
and tension at sea. There are more accidents as these boats are pushed beyond
what they were designed for. The Soviet design theory held that you built subs
that spent most of their time in port, and then went to war and maybe survived a
few weeks or months, and maybe got a shot in. This didn’t work for the Soviets
during World War II, but they stuck with the concept during most of the Cold
War. Now China is trying to design and build a new generation of subs on the
Western model (spend lots of time at sea in peace time, and be good enough to
kick ass and survive in wartime.)
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