On Sat, 19 Jan 2008 12:08:05 -0500, Joseph Gwinn
wrote:
In article ,
Ned Simmons wrote:
On Fri, 18 Jan 2008 23:16:52 -0500, "Steve W."
wrote:
WHAT? ANY SUB is long range and ocean going! Never heard of WWII in
which a LOT of German subs (far less capable than the ones that North
Korea and China have now) did a lot of damage and threatened the WORLD.
Maybe you missed that little fact. How about a conventional missile
launched into D.C.! They have that ability NOW. Maybe you don't think
that the U.S. should stop that? How about if they decided to target a
few of the U.S. coastal bases? Think a few torpedoes into Groton might
cause a problem? Maybe another Pearl Harbor attack? All very possible
with the current crop of Diesel/Electrics that Russia has been building
and selling off.
Got any specifics on those claims? All I can find says North Korea's
sub fleet consists of approx 20 1950s technology Romeo class
diesel-electrics with a 9000 mile range, and a similar number of
smaller Sang-O coastal subs with a 1500 mile range - nowhere near
enough to reach Washington DC or Groton.
That 9000 mile range is without refueling, but that's what sub tenders
are for. In WW2, the way the Allies dealt with the Nazi Wolfpacks was
to find and destroy the tenders. Having broken the Enigma codes,
finding the sub tenders was pretty easy.
I poked around quite a bit last night and found no indication that
North Korea has tenders. In fact, they don't appear to have any ships
with a range as great as the subs. And even a later version than the
Korean's Romeo (Type 033 vs. 031) is described as "...generally
regarded as an ageing design, only suitable for coastal defence and
patrol duties. The submarine is very noisy, and incapable of operating
deep oceans far from its homeport..."
http://www.sinodefence.com/navy/sub/type033romeo.asp
So, the way one gets to DC is to preposition a few tenders.
If the Koreans had such a thing, and if they could operate undetected.
Diesel-electric boats running on electric can be damn hard to detect
unless someone has a reason to look in a particular place, and even then
it can be hard.
They can operate for a couple days at very low speeds.
Just because a boat is old doesn't mean it doesn't work.
And no mention of missile launching capability.
I have no idea if these old boats can launch missiles while submerged,
but probably not. If one is willing to surface for a launch, it's
pretty easy to cobble together a solution.
Wild speculation.
The hard part was figuring
out where you were, but GPS has pretty much solved that problem.
And suppose that they cannot reach NYC or DC, so they take Los Angeles
out instead. Is that OK?
With luck, they could presumably reach the west coast on a suicide
torpedo attack. That's a long way from a missile strike on DC. There
may be a legitimate reason to carry on the sonar training, but it
ain't North Korea's sub capability.
--
Ned Simmons