McCain's "inadvertent encounter"Follow

"However, the Navy does not believe this was a deliberate incident of Chinese harassment, as it would have been extremely dangerous had the array gotten caught in the submarine's propellers."

I'm guessing you do not know what an Sonar Array is.

My father was a captain on a naval submarine. The idea of trying to grab and rip off of a ship what is essentially a rope a few inches thick that is several miles long with your submarine is absolutely suicidal.

I'm pretty sure the people who were inside that chinese submarine are thanking their god that they did not get killed in that incident.

Now, I'm sure that they were probably intending to harass the ship, but they were most definitely not intending to get tangled in a sonar array.

Karelyn,

Your comments make no sense with what you quoted.

Timelord meant "How do you hit such a thing while piloting your submarine, equipped with Sonar that is constantly being monitored."

That has nothing to do with what he thinks a sonar array is. And has everything to do with Chinese guidance/detection systems being bad.

Edited, Jun 12th 2009 11:46pm by TirithRR

I never said I liked my father. Actually, can't say I liked my mother either.

*shrug* But I've been on the submarine before on "Take your Family down into the Submarine for Dinner while we take a 6 hour Cruise Under the Ocean and Yay you get to Look at Whales on the Sonar" nights. Trust me, the walls in that place are thin, and the beds are so stupid small it isn't even funny. Even the captain's bed is smaller than my couch. The captains bed, which was huge by comparison to the other beds, was probably 14 square feet at the most. With the crew beds having about two feet of space between a bunk and the one above it. There is no way in hell that people are having sex on that submarine.

Though, the food the officers eat is obscene. Seriously. They have like, gourmet meals.

EDIT: He's a huge homophobe anyway. I was disowned because I'm in a lifetime relationship with another woman. So yeah.

Edited, Jun 12th 2009 11:59pm by Karelyn

RACK the turtle. That response just made me guffaw. Nicely done, sir.

Totem

More than likely neither the submarine nor the destroyer were using active sonar. Passive sonars, which only listen, will only detect things that make noise; in this case the other vessel. It would give no indication of where the destroyer's towed array was. The towed array as mentioned already is very, very long, and if the destroyer were to pass over the sub's position, or the sub were to approach from the rear, or cross the destroyer's wake, it could have resulted in the collision.

Although this type of collision is relatively rare, naval forces of every major nation constantly stalk and harass each other. Its good practice.