POST: China's Subs: Six Patrols in 2007, By Noah Shachtman, Danger Room, January 09, 2008

Some useful skepticism.

Truth on subs is that they're only good at three things: go after shipping, go after each other, hold nukes.

The last one is still marginally useful in small numbers.

The shipping bit works only in long sustained major war. That one gets pretty creaky with time.

Going after each other still makes sense so long as rogues maintain some marginal capacity. But the numbers game that we and Japan enable vis-a-vis China is a complete waste of resources. Bad for us and bad for China and bad for Japan.

There are simply more useful fish to fry, but great power theorists love their theories and so we must "hedge" against each other, playing such useless games.

When was the last torpedo fired in anger? How many sub battles since WWII? Not Tom Clancy novels and not pinging, but actual sub-on-sub combat?

It's not a pretty picture--this historical reality, so better to stick with the academic theorists.

(Thanks: Terence Dodge)