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Google Maps Shows Chinese Nuclear Sub Prototype
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Jul 09, 2007 11:00 AM
from the pants-meet-ankles dept.
from the pants-meet-ankles dept.
mytrip writes "An image of what could be one of China's new nuclear ballistic missile submarines is available on the Google Maps and Google Earth satellite-image site, a defense blogger claimed Tuesday. The satellite picture was discovered by Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project for the Federation of American Scientists, and announced Tuesday on his blog. Kristensen believes the picture, taken by the Quickbird satellite late last year, reveals China's new Jin-class, or Type 094, nuclear ballistic missile sub. The new sub class is approximately 35 feet longer than its predecessor, the Xia-class, also known as Type 092, according to two images Kristensen compares on the blog. The Jin-class sub has an extended midsection that houses 12 missile tubes and part of the reactor compartment, Kristensen explains."
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IT: Virtual Earth Exposes Nuclear Sub's Secret 355 comments
NewsCloud alerts us to a story a few months old that has been getting a lot of play recently. A Seattle blogger, Dan Twohig, was browsing in Microsoft's Virtual Earth when he accidentally came across a photo of a nuclear sub in dry-dock. Its propeller is clearly visible — this was a major no-no on the part of someone at the Bangor Sub Base. The designs of such stealth propellers have been secret for decades. Twohig blogged about the find and linked to the Virtual Earth photo on July 2. The debate about security vs. Net-accessible aerial photography has been building ever since. The story was picked up on military.china.com on Aug. 17 — poetic justice for the Chinese sub photo that had embarrassed them a month before. On Aug. 20 the Navy Times published the article that most mainstream media have picked up in their more recent coverage. Twohig's blog is the best source to follow the ongoing debate. No one has asked Microsoft, Google, or anyone else to blur the photo in question. Kind of late now.
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Well... (Score:5, Funny)
In totally unrelated news... (Score:5, Insightful)
...China is testing anti-satellite laser weapons [slashdot.org].
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Re:Incorrect (Score:5, Funny)
Then I suggest you check again, because over here, 0.3<0.33<1
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Wrong again (Score:4, Informative)
The speed of sound in water is ~3,355mph.
What was that you were saying? Something about blathering about things you don't know about?
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Re:Wrong again (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really special, just that the joke only works for people who understand mandarin.
Basically XiaJin is a (somewhat valid) homonym for penis in mandarin, tho more commonly known as XiaYin or YinJin.
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Re:Well... (Score:5, Funny)
It's a cartoon named "Dragonball Z", which has an alien race of superheroes named "Saiyans." I'm not a fan of the show, but when the Saiyans get angry, they start glowing or something and become Super-Saiyans. Thus the pun.
The cartoon was super-popular among people who like really boring, poorly-animated cartoons for a decade. Per usual, since it's a pointless useless topic, there's an extensive Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z [wikipedia.org]
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How much do you want to bet... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How much do you want to bet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Having a deterrent is pretty pointless unless everyone knows that you have it. I'm sure they wouldn't have left this boat out in the open unless it was their intention for people to see it.
Jolyon
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Re:How much do you want to bet... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:How much do you want to bet... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup. Leave them out in the open for all to see, until they put to sea. Then they disappear, nobody knows where they are, and everybody gets nervous. The British did this during the Falklands War: they made lots of noise about subs heading for the South Atlantic, then shut up. The mere fact that subs might be in the vicinity made the Argentine Navy a lot less effective. Knowing that you might get hit by a torpedo at any time, with no warning, would rattle anybody...
If you look in other places you will find lots of subs tied up at docks in plain view. Try the Russian naval bases north of Murmansk, for example.
...laura
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Re:How much do you want to bet... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:How much do you want to bet... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:How much do you want to bet... (Score:5, Interesting)
The British captain choose not to use his reportedly trouble prone wire guided homing torpedoes (Mark 24 Tigerfish), and preferred to get close and use the old dependable design instead.
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Re:How much do you want to bet... (Score:4, Insightful)
US policy an invasion of Taiwan by China is "strategic non denial" (minus one obligatory Bush gaff). Basically, the world knows what the US would do but there's no need to rub it in China's face. It was never really a threat that China would invade due to the state of their navy -- one nickname for a potential invasion was "the million man swim." Well, China has been beefing up their military at a high speed and now it seems they are raising the stakes.
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Re:How much do you want to bet... (Score:4, Insightful)
A boomer is helpful for ensuring world stability, but it's useless for amphibious assault or even for deterring a US counterattack. You'll know China is getting ready to invade Taiwan when they start investing in their military's sealift capabilities.
Speaking of which -- I wonder if they could use their many many container ships for that? Container ships probably need a port to unload... but ports can be captured.
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Re:Stop using word "invade" (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:How much do you want to bet... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no point in having them if other people don't know you have them. If they really gave a damn about secrecy they'd never leave it docked out in the open. It'd be under cover.
This is interesting in the same way that a lot of google maps stuff is interesting, but it's not any great intelligence coup.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
* Example: Saddam's ambiguity eventually bit him on the rear (or neck), but he was quite willing to let his neighbors assume he could produce all sorts of nasty things.
Re:How much do you want to bet... (Score:4, Funny)
You are completely ignorant if you believe that. The Chinese don't do that at all. They use 7.92mm.
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Re:How much do you want to bet... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:How much do you want to bet... (Score:5, Funny)
*ducks* *runs*
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Re:How much do you want to bet... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, because they didn't seem heartless regarding Tianemen, or during the Tibet take over, or in killing Falun Gong members, or...
Heartless is as heartless does.
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Advocatus diaboli (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because they didn't seem heartless regarding Tianemen,
If a host of minority political movements flooded Washington D.C., shut down its legislative branch, and demanded that, not only the administration, but the form of government be changed, I'd expect some heads to get busted. And, I'd also expect a considerable number of dead, even though we, unlike the troops involved in Tiananmen, are properly equipped for riot control. In fact, I'd venture to guess that a large part of the country would support it enthusiatically. Though, whether "a large part" has good judgment in such matters is doubtful (and fairly irrelevant in a democratic republic).
Political individuals certainly don't have the same avenues for communication to their fellow citizens in China, but that doesn't make the problem any different. Or the solution.
or during the Tibet take over,
Alternately, "the liberation of a people under the heal of a backwards, feudal theocracy which used slavery and serfdom into the mid-Twentieth Century." Tibet's suffering through the Cultural Revolution was in many ways no worse than what fell Han China. The big difference is to whom the flotsam and jetsam of these countries appealed. The Nationalists could appeal to our foreign policy and our pocketbook, but, for the average person, they are just the losers in some far away conflict.
Tibet, on the other hand, has managed to reinvent itself into some kind of New Age Sugarcandy Mountain to the Western Left and as a victim par excellence in the eyes of the Western anti-Communist. According to them, they didn't just annex what had been part of the Chinese sphere of influence since before there was a Dalai Lama, they destroyed a harmonious mountaintop kingdom which had no greater desire than its own and the World's spiritual well-being. Tibet is no longer a physical place; it's an idea. An idea which was created in the image of Victorian pulp literature. The Tibet in exile we now have has turned into a circus which is fully prepared to lie to its strongest supporters about the annexation and the Cultural Revolution's impact on the region--not in a frantic effort to retake the country in which they once lived, but to keep the circus moving.
Tell me, as a theocrat, would you rather jet-set around the world to be venerated by wealthy Westerns who can be made to believe anything out of their naïve spiritualism, or resume the day-to-day rule of a mountain theocracy which governs the lives of people who've spent the last thirty years in comparative economic, if not political, liberalism.
or in killing Falun Gong members, or...
These people follow a man who claims to be "the god of gods," fly, and become invisible at will, yet he doesn't dare return to the Mainland. Can you imagine what kind of person it takes to believe in a religion like that without it being deeply rooted in their culture and daily lives? I don't think we're losing any the great minds of our time with this action, regardless of its heartlessness.
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Re:Advocatus diaboli (Score:4, Insightful)
Last I saw those arguments supporting Mao's military invasion and the half a century of genocidal occupation was when I read Chinese Communist Party's propaganda leaflets extolling the loving wonderfulness of PPC's military occupation in Tibet.
Tibet was indeed backwards in many social and technological ways thanks to the country's near-total geographical and self-imposed isolation, no Tibetan has ever claimed otherwise, but they had began reforms already at the beginning of the 20th century and in any case no level of backwardness is an excuse for the destruction and murder in a massive scale that the Chinese immediately embarked upon. The real and total feudalism began with the invasion of Mao's communist troops in 1949. I strongly recommend that you familiarize yourself with the level of brutality and murder of the Chinese occupiers against almost excusively peaceful Tibetan civilians and nuns and monks. Out of Tibet's some 6000 monasteries, which in Tibet functioned both as "churches" and universities, less than ten survived without major damage. Some 6000 were totally destroyed and looted by the Chinese of all their invaluable artifacts and history. Refugees are "flotsam and jetsam" to you?
Some of my recent posts here (as well as my homepage URL above) have detailed the absolute injustice of CCP's imperial claims over the totally non-chinese people of Tibet, but to understand the devastating effects on ordinary Tibetan humans you need to look up some documentary films or better yet talk to the people who managed to escape from their homeland. Talk to a nun who's suffered enending torture while hung from the ceiling and who's been raped by camp guards and with electric cattle prods. Who can't sleep because of constant headaches and nightmares. Or walk or resume normal life because of life-long pain and physical problems. Look in her (or their) eyes and repeat your rant how you couldn't care less because their homeland in the Tibetan high plateau used be so backward!
What are you on about??
Tibet has been specifically and against the most basic Human Rights (as declared by the United Nations) seen all its rights of "reinvention" or self-determination ripped away by the occupying Chinese. If spiritualism, as an integral part of Tibetan culture, was practically the only thing the escaping Tibetans could bring along to exile, you're happy to tar it with your Western-style and Western-created "New Age" ridiculism? Western
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Chinese submarines (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Chinese submarines (Score:5, Funny)
Of course not. I invested the better part of my childhood in intensive study of Chinese products, and so I have it on good authority that the submarine's doors are injection-molded plastic, bright red, mounted on long thin metal hinge-pins. The plastic will break after fifty operations, or the hinge-pin will rust out. The damage will not be field repairable and so the sub will sink. However, the entire sub only costs $23.99 ($12.40 wholesale in lots of 10000), so they'll just pick up a replacement on their way home.
Man, can you imagine getting that thing out of the blister package?
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the cold war.... (Score:5, Funny)
"dude....call JFK...I think I see a launcher!"
*goes back to playing pong*
Re:the cold war.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:bored? Google Earth the Korean DMZ! (Score:5, Interesting)
Check out this one [google.com] which is about a mile or so from the South side check point of the coastal DMZ.
Thats a building, but its been painted to match the terrain. I suspect they are afraid of DPRK flying around their border. If you scroll through to the north, you can see the trench fences (the last parking lot) and then opposing that the North Korean side. If you keep scrolling west you can follow the trench fence system to the west coast. There are a lot of interesting things such as trenches and border forts and hidden nooks and cranies you can only see from the air.
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It's a cardboard diversion (Score:3, Interesting)
It's just there to draw our attention from the real threat. Flooding the world with these
http://www.leftlanenews.com/chinese-sedan-flunks-g erman-crash-test-with-video.html/ [leftlanenews.com]
Karma whoring (Score:5, Informative)
A little late, isn't it? (Score:3, Informative)
This was on Drudge Report last week... Slashdot's new moniker:
"all the news that was fit to print yesterday"
-rt
The real question is... (Score:5, Informative)
That said, I'd love to be on the first boat to track one...
i love this (Score:4, Interesting)
the standard mythology is that cameras everywhere is all about the government controlling you. but with google maps, with cell phone cameras, etc., we are actually seeing the rodney king effect: that governments suddenly have to get used to a new democratic form of transparency that they never had to deal with before
george orwell is bullshit. the future of cameras everywhere is that they can be used AGAINST big government
Re:i love this (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be so hasty in your optimism. The only reason We The People can see google maps is because the government is allowing it; all the govt has to do is make it illegal for the public to access it, and poof the alleged hedge against tyranny evaporates.
Consider the extensive network of cameras in England. Can anyone see their contents? Nope. Just the government. Wanna bet who'll be able to access the views of the extensive camera network planned for Manhattan?
And pay attention: police in this country are increasingly trying their hand at suppressing/confiscating/outlawing citizen camera operation. Note the numerous stories about permits being required for operating cameras, about "illegal wiretap" laws being used to incarcerate people using cameras, and on and on.
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There's nothing to worry about.... (Score:3, Funny)
Ad Space! (Score:3, Funny)
The 220 foot banners, visible from space and deployed in the world's oceans, will read "Come to Beijing for having best memorable Olympics."
If you look really close... (Score:5, Funny)
Hardly a big deal. (Score:5, Interesting)
China is already in possession of an outdated ballistic missile sub, they are simply building a replacement class. Yet news sites and the 'omg China' crowd seem to be thinking it's a sign of aggression, and similar nonsense. Here in the UK the govenment has recnetly raised a bill for ~£20 Billion for a replacement SSBN system.
As to it's secrecy, I've seen models and diagrams of it for years on various blogs and military tech sites, the fact they were building a new submarine was not secret. It was also know that it would look (unsurprisingly) just like the current russian boats. All China has managed to do is keep it's construction somewhat secret. China can track satellites, and it's not hard to hide a sub (most facilities have hangers for them) - this is not an intelligence coup, it's simply China showing the West their new toy. We do it via public launches and bottle smashing, China simply parks theirs outside and waits for someone to notice.
Re:This just in... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:This just in... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Oh snap! (Score:5, Funny)
PAY UP
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Re:Oh snap! (Score:4, Funny)
You mean, someones going to go ballistic?
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Re:Classified? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Classified? (Score:5, Funny)
You, good sir, need to buy a clue! I know better, I've seen CSI!!! Don't you know that they're able to zoom-in, enhance, zoom-in, enhance, and zoom-in, enhance anything? They're able to zoom in (and enhance) on the inverted reflection on the concave of a spoon, which is on a reflection of someone's sunglasses, who is in near-total darkness, and underwater. I've heard they're almost able to do facial biometrics and genetic tests from that same picture!
Surely if they can do that, they can zoom-in enough to recognize people from a high-tech satellite!
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Something I've always wondered about (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the line I've been giving people too. The Hubble Space Telescope with a 2.4 meter mirror was designed to maximize the mirror size for the Shuttle's cargo bay, and this is the same Shuttle which has launched a KH-12 [wikipedia.org] for the NRO [wikipedia.org]. So the KH-12 probably has a mirror about the same diameter as the HST.
But then it occurred to me. You only need a big mirror if you're looking at dim objects in space. Stuff on Earth is pretty well-lit, so the only real problem is resolution. If you want resolution, you don't need all that surface area. All you need are two or more smaller scopes separated by a large distance to create an interferometer [wikipedia.org]. The design is tricky since the individual mirrors have to be aligned to within a wavelength of light. But it's been done many times here on Earth. When done successfully, you get a scope with the light-gathering power of just the sum of the mirrors, but the resolving power is that of a mirror whose diameter is the distance between the individual mirrors.
The Webb Space Telescope [wikipedia.org] will have a 6.5 meter mirror by designing it in separate cells which will fold and stack for launch. Again, since astronomy is primarily concerned with light-gathering ability, and a circle represents the most surface area for a given perimeter, astronomical scopes tend to have roundish mirrors. But a spy satellite wouldn't need light-gathering ability. They could arrange the cells differently, creating a mirror which is wide but narrow. Like the interferometer, resolution along the wide axis would be much higher.
I am not the conspiracy theory type, but the publicity over HST / JWST strikes me as similar to Asimov's short story, The Dead Past [wikipedia.org]. In that story, [spoiler] the government is covering up a chronoscope, a machine which can view the past, by publicizing it as studying ancient history - ancient Greeks, ancient Egyptians building the pyramids, etc. The deader the better. It turns out that the machine can't view more than several decades into the past. But what the public doesn't realize is that while the chronoscope is useless for studying ancient history, it is the perfect spying machine, able to remotely view events which happened just a few hours or even a few seconds ago.[/spoiler]
I suspect this is part of the reason for the success (and problems) of Hubble. How the mirror wasn't tested before launch resulting in a near-fatal flaw. (How many KH-11 and KH-12 mirrors were manufactured before Hubble? Surely someone who had overseen construction of those mirrors was given some sort of advisory role in Hubble's manufacture.) How the pictures from HST are released to the public, spruced up in color and saturation so they're beautiful. How we let the gyros die until it was one failure away from uselessness. All this drama and publicity keeps Hubble in the eye of the public, and solidifies the stereotype in everyone's mind that a space telescope has got a big round mirror. Even the final maintenance mission for the HST being canceled, then restored, then funding being lost, and then restored again, serves to put the JWST in the public's mind. It too is a roundish mirror design (hexagonal cells). They even have technically knowledgeable people like us ridiculing movies which show spy satellites with extraordinary zooming capability.
My hunch is the NRO probably has at
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Re:Classified? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3)
Just to show that everything can also have some good sides.
Re:This exemplifies a distubring trend (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine a world where everything that happens in public space is recorded. We are close to that now with cell phone and security cameras, but as some point it will be even more true as people mount cameras on their bodies and run them non-stop. It is easy to imagine such a world as a nightmare where the most petty of laws are enforced with near perfection and anyone deviating from social norms is ostracized. There is an alternative though.
Imagine if we could catch every single person who has violated the law. What would happen? Every single one of us would be up to our necks in fines and well over half of the population would be in jail. Faced with such a threat, one would hope that a democracy would respond by rethinking laws. In such a world would you really want marijuana laws that we demand tossing half of the nation in jail? Would a $250,000 fine for downloading copywrite material really make sense if it sent the major of people in the nation into bankruptcy? Would a no drinking before 21 law really make sense if it meant drumming the vast majority of college students out of college?
There are a lot of dumb laws out there that are tolerated because we fail to catch even a small fraction of the violators. If you could catch everyone who violated the law, many laws would have to be abolished or we would need set up prison states to dump all the guilty.
So yeah, I can imagine the evil horrible dystopia where everyone follows the massive piles of inane laws that exist to the letter and people get thrown in jail at random for violating obscure laws... but I can also envision a utopia where worthless laws have been tossed, corruption is close to non-existent, hippies don't get their heads busted in for smoking weed in the park, copyright is seriously reworked, and police find something more productive to do with their time then busting under aged parties.
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