12-19-13 If the People's Liberation Army went to war tomorrow, it would field an arsenal bristling with hardware from some of America's closest allies: Germany, France and Britain.
Most of China's advanced surface warships are powered by German and French-designed diesel engines. Chinese destroyers have French sonar, anti-submarine-warfare helicopters and surface-to-air missiles.Above the battlefield, British jet engines drive PLA fighter bombers and anti-ship strike aircraft. The latest Chinese surveillance aircraft are fitted with British airborne early warning radars. Some of China's best attack and transport helicopters rely on designs from Eurocopter, a subsidiary of pan-European aerospace and defense giant EADS.
But perhaps the most strategic item obtained by China on its European shopping spree is below the waterline: the German-engineered diesels inside its submarines. https://www.voanews.com/a/chinese-military-secret-to-success-european-engineering/1814104.html
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5-6-16
NRP Tridente, a HDW Type 214 submarine, at the Lisbon Naval Base in 2010.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Pedro Vilela Germany is in talks with India over a possible government-to-government deal for the procurement of six 2,000-ton (submerged) diesel-electric Type 214 submarines build by Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (HDW) in Kiel, Gemany, The Economic Times reports.
A formal proposal has been shared with the Indian Ministry of Defense and is currently under review, according to defense officials. “The offer has certain assurances that the product will meet Indian requirements,” one official said.
The HDW Type 214 is an export variant of the HDW Type 212 equipped with an air-independent propulsion system using Siemens polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) hydrogen fuel cells. The Type 214 export variant lacks some of the Type 212′s classified technologies, such as its non-magnetic steel hull, which makes the sub particularly difficult to detect. https://thediplomat.com/2016/05/germany-offers-india-new-stealth-submarines/
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1-23-16 In the competitive bidding process for a $50 billion ($38.8 billion) contract to build Australia’s new submarine fleet in partnership with Australian industry, Germany appears to be losing over technical concerns, according to industry sources interviewed by Reuters.
“The German proposal is an enlarged version of a smaller existing submarine, and that technically is risky,” one source told Reuters. German defense contractor Thyssen Krupp Marine Systems (TKMS) is offering Australia a scaled-up version of its 2,000-ton diesel-electric Type 214 submarine, equipped with an air-independent propulsion system. As Ireported previously, TKMS is offering the 4,000-ton HDW Type 216, specifically designed to meet Australia’s needs. https://thediplomat.com/2016/01/has-germany-lost-the-bid-to-build-australias-new-subs/
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On 26th of October 2006, a Chinese Song-Class submarine surfaced within five miles of the USS Kitty Hawk airplane carrier in the Pacific Ocean. Several weeks before the US delegation met with their Chinese counterparts, ships from the Pacific fleet were stationed in international waters between Taiwan and South Japan.
The carrier was surrounded by a dozen of ships in a protective formation, but nevertheless, the Chinese sub managed to slip through unnoticed. It came as a surprise that the Americans were unable to detect the lone submarine earlier, for their extensive defense screen included a submarine and anti-submarine helicopters, all responsible for protecting the battle group from an underwater attack....
The Song-Class submarine is diesel-electric powered. It is the first submarine class developed entirely by China and also the first Chinese submarine to use the modern teardrop hull shape. It uses a German state-of-the-art 396 SE84 diesel engine. Its armament includes Russian-made wake-homing torpedoes and anti-ship cruise missiles. https://www.warhistoryonline.com/history/chinese-submarine-appeared-in-the-middle-of-a-carrier-battle-group.html
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6-6-17 The German sub Type 212’s fuel cells, with hydrogen fuel stored in between the outer and inner pressure hulls, allow it to sail underwater for three weeks before surfacing. Reportedly, a Type 212A set an underwater endurance record for conventionally powered submarines in 2013 by transiting eighteen days submerged without use of its snorkel. While the Type 212 can achieve underwater speeds of up to twenty-three miles per hour, its sustainable cruising speed is closer to nine miles per hour while using just the AIP system.
The Type 212A is intended as a stealthy reconnaissance boat and ship hunter, which is why its armament was initially confined to torpedoes. Its six tubes can fire off up to thirteen 533 millimeter DM2A4 Seahake torpedoes connected to the submarine by a fiber optic cable, allowing the crew to guide the weapon to a target up to fifty kilometers away. The torpedo’s wide-aspect conformal sonar also allows it to send sensor data back to the launch vessel. A Norwegian combat management system is intended to integrate data from the Type 212’s various sensors, which include both a towed passive sonar array deployed from the sail and a hull-mounted flank array.
Recently, the German Navy has started installing the capability to fire IDAS fiber-optic missiles while submerged from four-cell magazines in the torpedo tubes. Based on the IRIS-T air-to-air missile, IDAS would be used primarily to shoot down hostile aircraft, but can also attack ground targets and medium-sized or small surface ships up to twenty kilometers away. http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/why-germanys-new-super-stealth-submarines-could-take-any-21021
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Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin posing for a photo with his delegates upon arriving in Pyongyang, in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) Oct 24, 2016. PHOTO: REUTERS
Vice-Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin (at right) met Singapore’s Permanent Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Chee Wee Kiong, 1-18-17
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Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin during their meeting as part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, June 8, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]
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7-27-17
Mr Xi and Mr Putin take comfort in each other’s authoritarian bent. China has copied Russia’s harsh laws on NGOs; the Kremlin has been trying to learn how China censors the internet....Russia has recently supplied China with advanced S-400 surface-to-air missile systems, and state-of-the-art Sukhoi SU-35 fighter jets. The Kremlin used to worry about China’s efforts to reverse-engineer them. But Alexander Gabuev of the Carnegie Moscow Centre says that Russia now recognises that China’s technological advance is unstoppable. Russia might as well make money from selling arms to China while China still has an interest in buying them from abroad rather than making them itself. Russia’s interests are mercenary rather than strategic: it also sells arms to China’s rivals, India and Vietnam. https://www.economist.com/news/china/21725611-suspicion-between-russia-and-china-runs-deep-xi-jinping-and-vladimir-putin-behave-best
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