By David Axe
Beijing’s submarine fleet is not as big or powerful as US military planners once feared. Have its blue-water ambitions been overstated?
It was the US Navy’s biggest jolt in years. On October 26, 2006, a Chinese Song-class attack submarine quietly surfaced within nine miles of the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk as the 80,000-ton-diplacement vessel sailed on a training exercise in the East China Sea between Japan and Taiwan.
The Song-class vessel, displacing 2,200 tons, was close enough to hit the Kitty Hawk with one of its 18 homing torpedoes. None of the carrier’s roughly dozen escorting warships detected the Song until it breached the surface.
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