Another Submarine Story

What's Wrong With This Submarine Story by Bill Gertz?

Submarine ASAT
Pentagon officials are increasingly worried that China's military is advancing its clandestine anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons program by building a submarine-launched direct-ascent missile system. Go ahead, read the full story, it is entertaining.

Let's examine the salient points:

1) Gen. James E. Cartwright, the former U.S. Strategic Command commander and current vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who told Congress last year the U.S. military is prepared to use conventional missile strikes on land-based Chinese ASAT launchers if Beijing began shooting down U.S. satellites. Agree
Ananlysis: Not surprising. Our military is deeply committed to leveraging our strength in satellite and space technologies (communication, reconnaisance, GPS, etc.) to overcome China's vast superiority in soldiers and conventional arms. M.E. clarified this for readers on May 10, 2007: China's Greatest Military Threat is no longer its Submarines If the Chinese can render trillions of dollars worth of communications, positioning, targeting and aquisition satellites useless for pennies on the dollar, countries relying on such military technology would be reduced to (but ill-prepared for) conducting military defense and offense as it had been decades earlier. That would require resources no longer readily available. Obviously, higher numbers of combat troops, ships, etc. had been replaced by technological advances.

2) Pentagon officials are increasingly worried that China's military is advancing its clandestine anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons program by building a submarine-launched direct-ascent missile system. Agree, again, but something obvious is missing ...
Analysis: In 1) above, Gen. Cartwright implies the U.S. military is prepared to preemptively demolish land-based Chinese ASAT launchers if Beijing began shooting down U.S. satellites. So,
why hasn't Admiral Mullen or Gen. Chilton made a similar statement regarding surface or submarine based ASAT missile launches? How do we know they have not made those very statements to China's leaders? - We don't. Did Gertz even ask them what they would do? We should expect a good journalist like Gertz to have asked, but he is not telling that side of the story.

3) Liu Huanyu of China's Dalian Naval Academy, said (2204):
Nuclear submarines are not only well concealed but can sail for a long period of time," Mr. Liu said. "By deploying just a few anti-satellite nuclear submarines in the ocean, one can seriously threaten the entire military space system of the enemy. Not yet...
Analysis: A conceptually serious threat to American culture and defense has been missing from public discourse and U.S. political debate until now. We know our submarine force is shrinking and China's has been expanding. China's submarines, however, have been pratically welded to their piers. Almost any Chinese submarine movement, therefore, attracts U.S. interest and tracking. Were a Chinese sub to launch an ASAT missile resulting in damage or destruction of a U.S. (or ally) satellite resource, we would know the specifics, have the hard, prima facie evidence and suffcient hard targets to discourage more attacks in a most convincing and unhesitating manner.

Gertz's article seems timed to the current election cycle. It magnifies a conceptual threat that is neither new, nor yet real. While I support expenditures for U.S. superiority in defense technology, we must never overreact to foreign saber rattling by writing blank checks to the Pentagon or by being swayed in our elections to support a dubious Commander in Chief.

An obvious motivation for China to rattle its sabers is to see how worried the U.S. gets, and find out why. That is one reason submarines are always silent and strange.