From mid-September to the end of October this year, Taiwan’s southwest sea airspace has become the latest hotspot.
Unlike before mid-September when Taiwan, the United States, and China’s fighter jets and electric reconnaissance aircraft flew around against each other, from early October to the end of October, there have been more than 20 days when the PLA’s Y-8Q anti-submarine aircraft (GX-6/KQ-2000), a new anti-submarine aircraft with long-range submarine search capabilities, almost appeared every day in the air over the southwest Taiwan waters, constantly hovering in the same area, conducting tactical reconnaissance, and occasionally operating together with Y-9 communications countermeasures aircraft and Y-8 electro-surveillance aircraft. Such intensive patrolling tactical movements are very puzzling to the outside world, according to military analyst Chen Zongyi.
Sensitive military observers believe that there has been active submarine activity in the waters southwest of Taiwan, including the Bashi Channel and around Hainan Island in the South China Sea, and that Chinese, U.S. and Japanese submarines of high caliber must be engaged in “undersea secret warfare” of varying degrees in this region.
Throughout October, the Y-8Q long-range anti-submarine aircraft, which appeared in Taiwan’s southwest airspace, has the same performance as the U.S.-made P-3C anti-submarine aircraft, according to public information. This type of aircraft can carry more than 10 crew members, including piloting, radar, sonar arrangement, technical analysis, sonar crane and weapons manipulation, and other professional personnel, the formation of a collection of reconnaissance, analysis, attack in a modern anti-submarine aircraft system.
Its feature – a long pointed pod in the tail, is said to be a performance secret, developed by the Chinese mainland self-developed “Magnetic Anomaly Detector” (MAD). This detector has been widely used since World War II, but only China has the ability to develop an advanced MAD system that detects the silence of modern nuclear submarines, such as the performance of superconducting full tensor magnetic gradient measurement instrument for aviation, in addition to the United States.
In particular, for modern submarines, in addition to silence, degaussing is a rather important technology. The submarine’s steel plates are magnetic, and no amount of degaussing can eliminate the mutual interference between them and the geomagnetic field. The most advanced submarine demagnetization technology is only mastered by the U.S., Japan, Russia, China, Germany, and other major submarine manufacturing countries, and only the United States and China possess anti-submarine aircraft capable of anti-demagnetization and advanced magnetic detection technology.
And from the Y-8Q anti-submarine aircraft constantly wandering in the airspace between the southwest of Taiwan throughout the month, to analyze, monitor, and even simulate the tactical action of the attack, it is conceivable that the PLA should have detected fairly active submarine activities in the sea. Advanced submarines, including those of the United States and Japan, gathering intelligence, analyzing tactics, and even taking up positions and sinking for tactical spying in the vicinity, are nothing very new. It is quite reasonable to infer that the activities of U.S. and Japanese submarines in the region have caused the Y-8Q long-range anti-submarine aircraft to be uncharacteristically publicly exposed to the Taiwan military’s surveillance system, especially when war clouds are rampant in the Taiwan Sea and the Taiwan Navy’s submarine force is almost nil. In particular, the Y-8Q is quite mysterious, being a relatively new model that has only entered service in recent years, and should not be easily exposed when there is no immediate tactical need for it.
From this, it is clear that there are active “undersea warfare” disturbances in the region from both air and surface activity, and that the confrontation below the surface must be quite exciting as well.