I got to ask this question, Germany was big into Submarines for WWII and they didn't really prove to be much of a force. ARGH! Twice in twenty years Gernamy brought Great Britain to her knees with Submarine Blockades!So why the current love with Subs by so many countries including China. It seems China is expanding their fleet greatly here, is it just b/c they are harder to detect so they stand a chance? China hopes to deploy enough high quality SSK & SSN boats to drive the US Pacific fleet away from Taiwan in the openning days of a shooting match. Used as part of an integrated force of ballistic missiles,Attack Subs, Ballistic Nuclear Missile Subs, asymetric warfare, economic warfare. & a threat of large scale invasions they hope to drive the Taiwanese political environment to concede their freedom and fall under communist slavery. Failing political blackmail, the Chinese hope to have a credable force to actually carry out the attacks (with a little help from a liberal Democrat party in the US). Their long term "asian" view of this is inscrudible.

If the PAC RIM allies hang tough (AUS,JPN,US,TAI,SK,NZ) the chinese will not succeed in this.

To me it's just an attempt to get a first strike capability and who cares there after. The Taiwanese.

Thoughts

Subs are a great value.

Check Six

 

Rocky

While I am ranting about Taiwan, it is a crime that the western world powers have not allowed the Taiwanese to update and expand their submarine force to counter China's open and unabashed aggression against a peaceful western partner.

 

They have offered to pay for their own boats from any western source that will provide them and China has been allowed to block that at all corners. The United States, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, and all other boat makers should be ashamed of themselves for allowing China to do that while China is buying Kilo's by the dozen in order to place a hangman's noose around an free island nation. Even the Israeli's get new German boats subsidized by the German consciences. At least Taiwan is willing to pay its own way!

 

Let them defend themselves!

 

Check Six

 

Rocky

Subs are the only platform to carry attack with some chance agaisnt a more powerfull navy opponent outside the range of ground aviation.

A sub is a stealthy platform.

A surface fleet has no chance outside shallow water agaisnt an other surface fleet including a real carrier.

A single carrier assuming it is carrying a good stock of antiship missile, with only half of dozen of frigates in protection, is stronguer than a fleet of 50 high tech frigates without a carrier since the long range of aircraft, allow them to strike unpunished the frigate fleet several times.

A navy has no value, except to check fishers and smugglers,  outside carrier and subs and more particularly its SSN.

 

Germany also used powerful surface raiders with good success against convoys et al, not just U boats.

 

In the context of "Sink the Bismark!", today, with Germany replaced by China, and the Bismark replaced with (a fully functioning) Kirov class battlecruiser - would this be a major threat?

 

Of course surface ships are very vulnerable to air-attack and submarines.  But then the Kirov does have upwards of four organic ASW choppers, and a very powerful SAM armament (with the missiles in the hundreds, with something like four tiers).

 

In my opinion, the only true weakness that a sub has is a political weakness. They do not possess a true "Fleet in Being" intimidation factor, nor  a way to ramp up aggression. Take, for example an CBG. Enemy nation starts talking smack, we park a CVN off thier coast to show them we're paying attention. They continue thier acts of aggression, the CBG starts up some wargames to show them that we mean business. They start acting all hostile like, and carrier aircraft run a few reconassaince runs to remind them that thier airspace isn't sacrosanct, and that camera pods can be switched to PGMs quite easily.

 

A sub can't do anything like that. It lurks, it hides,and when it takes action, it goes either totally unnoticed, or it is a fullblown act of war. Enemy Captains realize the threat, and remember the General Belgrano, but enemy politicians have a harder time understanding the implications.

 

Otherwise, subs are the best bundle of cash a navy can buy.