Threat Axis Log

USNS Able (similiar to Impeccable) on trials

Earlier this week – a story came out that several Chinese vessels had been harassing a US Naval Support ship – USNS Impeccable while it was in international waters.

Now let’s be perfectly clear – USNS Impeccable is not a replenishment ship.  It is SURTASS ship.  SURTASS ships were designed to supplement fixed SOSUS sites to provide sound surveillance of large stretches of the ocean.

Basically – Impeccable is a mobile sonar listening post.  It is very quiet (so it can detect submarines at a great distance).

It feeds its data back to the theater command so that they can track submarines.

Now – back to the Chinese.  Impeccable was 100 miles off shore, in international waters – but within the Chinese declared 200 mile Economic zone.

So we have a very capable submarine surveillance ship operating in waters that the Chinese claim/treat as their own.  I would say the odds are pretty good that the Chinese were in the process of or were about to test a new submarine in that area – and the response was designed to prevent US Navy snoops from gathering info on the new submarine.

I would imagine that the Coast Guard and the Navy would give a similiar ship loitering near either Kings Bay GE, or Bangor WA the same treatment (but would probably draw the line about doing it in their underwear).

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 18:41 UTC and is filed under Global, Sea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.