- China is developing sensors to track enemy submarines from aircraft.
- Recent patents show an emphasis on magnetic detection and improved sonobuoys.
- The two experts said the new capabilities are essential for China to defend its aircraft carriers.
China is developing a new system to track US nuclear submarines that could pose a threat to invade Taiwan, according to a new report.
The Chinese navy considers anti-submarine warfare (ASW) essential to the success of any amphibious operation and intends to use aircraft to defend its fleet from U.S. and Japanese submarine attacks.
“plan [People’s Liberation Army Navy] Eli Tilke and Daniel Salisbury write that the U.S. clearly recognizes that anti-submarine warfare capabilities, both from fixed-wing and vertical take-off and landing aircraft, are an essential component of any amphibious operation, whether that be the occupation of islands or reefs, or a successful joint island landing against Taiwan. study “Anti-submarine warfare capabilities will be crucial to protecting high-value surface assets such as aircraft carriers and amphibious landing forces, protecting embarked forces in port, clearing operating areas of enemy submarines, and escorting these assets to assembly points and operating areas,” said a researcher at the Naval War College’s China Institute of Marine Studies.
Also significant is that China’s airborne anti-submarine patrol aircraft are tasked with escorting Chinese ballistic missile submarines as they travel to patrol and launch sites. “The PLAN clearly views fixed-wing anti-submarine vessels as an important enabler of its maritime nuclear deterrent,” the report states.
The Chinese Navy’s current fixed-wing anti-submarine aircraft are KQ-200The KQ-200 is a four-engine turboprop aircraft that is China’s equivalent of the U.S. Navy’s P-8 Poseidon. The People’s Liberation Army Navy has about 20 KQ-200s with a range of about 3,000 miles.
Like the U.S. Navy, China’s submarine force tends to be secretive, but by examining publicly available literature, Tilke and Salisbury were able to get a sense of China’s work in anti-submarine warfare, including patents filed by Chinese researchers.
For example, state-run China Electronics Technology Corporation filed a patent in 2020 for improved magnetic anomaly detection (MAD), a technology first used in World War II to detect submarines by exploiting the effect of these large metal objects on the Earth’s magnetic field. It’s a useful but limited system, typically detected by aircraft. Less than 1 mile It cannot determine the target’s location, only the presence of a submarine, not its course, which means that after a sure hit, a web of other sensors must be deployed to target the submarine while it is still hidden.
Chinese scientists have found highly sensitive Atomic magnetometerThe CETC uses a laser to detect changes in the energy levels between atoms caused by fluctuations in a magnetic field. Patents Turk and Salisbury noted that the patent is for technology that “enables atomic magnetometers to sense not only the presence but also the direction of a target.” According to the filing, “previous work on high-sensitivity atomic magnetometers has focused on scalar results (i.e., only the strength of a target’s magnetic field) and has not been able to provide vector (i.e., strength and direction). MAD is already a short-range capability typically used to provide more precise location after other sensors have provided a rough search range, but the additional information could give operators an advantage during search operations.”
A patent granted by the Aviation Industry Corporation of China in 2022 calls for a new system for operating sonobuoys, floating vessels dropped from planes or ships that detect submarines by emitting active sonar signals or through passive sensors that pick up on the noise made by the submarine. Current Chinese-made sonobuoys require “a complex and tedious series of manual button presses to set sonobuoy parameters such as radio operating frequency, operating depth, operating time, and pulse shape to suit maritime conditions before deployment.”
These parameters are not visible to the sonobuoy control system. “That is, the display and control system does not know which sonobuoys are racked or launched, the type of sonobuoy launched, or the parameters of the sonobuoys launched,” Tirk and Salisbury write. “Instead, the operator must manually enter these data into the display and control system.”
Other patents Lightweight sonobuoyand improved communication between sonobuoys and aircraft. In 2022, China will Beyond The United States ranks first in terms of the number of patent applications.
China is also improving the quality of its anti-submarine training. “Recognizing limitations, the PLA Navy has begun to take steps to improve the quality of its anti-submarine training in both simulator and live training environments,” the report states. “The PLA Navy’s anti-submarine forces are training under more realistic conditions, breaking down administrative barriers that had prevented them from increasing training opportunities in different operational environments.”
For example, since 2015, training materials have emphasized the need for antisubmarine and ship-to-ship coordination, standard practice in U.S. and Western navies. The People’s Liberation Army Navy also uses simulators to train sensor and weapons operators.
In one exercise, a patrol aircraft transmitted targeting data to a command ship, “which integrated it with information from other sources and checked it against a targeting database to determine whether the target was an enemy submarine,” the CMSI report noted. “This demonstrated a potential command relationship from the command ship to the ASW aircraft and confirmed that the PLA Navy, despite its small (but growing) maritime surveillance and intelligence fleet and nascent underwater surveillance capabilities, is training to compare potential targets against a database.”
Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy and other publications. He holds a Master’s in Political Science from Rutgers University. twitter and LinkedIn.
