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| Type 094 "Jin" class Ballistic Missile Submarine (Wiki) |
By James R. Holmes
A few years ago I had the pleasure of hoisting a pint with Rear Admiral Sumihiko Kawamura, a retired commander of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s anti-submarine air force. Yesterday Japan Times published an interview with Admiral Kawamura in which he opined that Beijing sees the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands as the northern sentinel guarding a submarine “bastion,” or safe haven, in the South China Sea.
This would be a reprise of how the Soviet Navy worked around Far Eastern geography and U.S.-Japanese naval strategy during the Cold War. JMSDF mariners raised anti-submarine warfare to a high art during the protracted East-West standoff. Japanese boats and aircraft kept watch over the narrow seas through which Soviet nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarines had to pass to reach the broad Pacific. The Kurile straits were favorite JMSDF hunting grounds. Allied ASW assets held Soviet SSBNs at risk whenever they sought to exit the Sea of Okhotsk or other enclosed expanses. Many Soviet skippers chose not to bother. Instead they conducted deterrent patrols within those relatively confined waters, taking advantage of the increasing range and lethality of sea-launched ballistic missiles.
Read the full story at The Diplomat