Military Surveillance By the Bad Guys

Wizbang has an interesting blog entry on observations of the USN by an Iranian drone and a Chinese sub.

Two recent stories have me a smidgen troubled. First off, Iran announced that it had successfully flown at least one spy drone over a United States Navy Aircraft Carrier Battle Group -- and released the video to prove it. I'm a bit of a Navy buff, so I studied the extremely fuzzy photo and concluded that it is, indeed, a Nimitz-class carrier, sailing at a fairly decent clip and with an E-2C Hawkeye airborne radar plane on the catapult. Other aircraft appear to be F/A 18 Hornets and perhaps some S-3 Vikings -- but I'm guessing on the last one. That information conforms to where the Navy says their ships are -- the USS Eisenhower, CVN-69, is currently in the Arabian Sea. To my very amateur eyes, the photo could indeed be the Ike.

Next up, we have a report from the Washington Times that a Chinese submarine stalked the USS Kitty Hawk off the coast of Okinawa recently. (There was no word if the battle group was scouting for new bases for the troops currently in Iraq, as per Congressman Jack Murtha's plan to move them just around the corner and a fifth of the world away.) That is nothing new -- during the Cold War, Soviet subs, spy trawlers, and other warships routinely followed our ships around to the point where they would sometimes be given notice of course changes as a matter of courtesy (and a subtle insult on the pursuer's navigational and observational abilities). In the absence of open hostilities, it's something we must accept -- and use to our own advantage, as it gives us just as close a look at their vessels as they get of ours.

One commenter points out:

Just what does the media think the USN should do during peace when a foreign SS is detected well before it reaches 5 miles from a USN ship? Do the media expect the USN to rebut publicly just how long the SS had been tracked and by what? Just how much noise do you think a sub makes at any real speed underwater, such as would usually be necessary to approach or pace a surface ship?

Which is a really good point. You can't exactly start shooting subs that get near you just because, well, they got near you. Personally I find it suspicious that they surfaced when they got within the five mile cordon. It sounds suspiciously like they were discovered and new it. It could very well be embarrassing to have it look like the USN was clueless, but you don't usually play those types of games with a carrier group.

My wild guess is that they snuck up on the carrier group and when they got to 5 miles they had active sonar pings coming from their prop wash. Best way to say "I'm not dangerous" is to surface. I'm not saying that's what happened, but it does make me feel better to think so. (And it fits the results better than any other explanation.)

As for the drone, who knows. The thing could have been plane size, so shooting it down isn't necessarily a smart idea. Though someone could have had a look see. If it was unmanned, I doubt there would have been any reason to allow it to remain intact.

Personally, I'm going to assume that the military isn't saying anything to make the enemy any smarter about the USN's abilities. The technology they use isn't cutting edge, but it is at least several steps more advanced than that used by the reported adversaries.