Does a U.S. sub (plan) sale to...

Heck yes!  If the rumors are true, the yet-to-be-announced Taiwan deal puts the U.S. back in the conventional sub business.  I?ve seen this coming for awhile.  Back in July 2008..., I wrote that Fincantieri?s... purchase of the Manitowoc Shipyard looked, ultimately, like a move to support the U.S. promise of subs for Taiwan. In August 2008... I followed up with some additional signals and indications, and now, it looks like my guess might be right.

At any rate, as details of the U.S.-Taiwan arms deal leaks out, the chances the Manitowoc shipyard?a legacy building site for U.S. subs?will return to the sub businesses look like they?ve gotten a substantive boost.

Appreciate the nuance, here. The best reporting to date is coming from Reuters..., and they?ve offered an interesting tidbit on the Taiwan arms sale?the aid package may likely include design work for advanced subs and not the subs themselves?yet:

?The design work, estimated at $360 million, would require a U.S. company to show it had the ability to build them or had found a foreign partner that would do so, said Ed Ross, director of operations at the Pentagon?s Defense Security Cooperation Agency from 1994 to 2007. The cost of building eight diesel-electric submarines had been estimated at $10.2 billion and would take 10 to 15 years, he added in a telephone interview.?

So what, exactly, are some implications of granting Taiwan permission to pursue sub ?design? work?

1. It won?t totally infuriate the Chinese or Taiwan. (It?ll just make ?em angry.)
2. It will give the U.S. an opportunity to fund design of non-nuke subs without totally infuriating nuke-loving U.S. Submariners. (It?ll just make ?em angry.)
3. It may give the Navy a means to somewhat painlessly cancel the Manitowoc-built LCS-1 platform, throwing sub design work and potential contract work to a spurned Manitowoc yard might find some Congressional friends. (It?ll just make the locals angry?for awhile.)
4. Though I?m looking to see the big boys (Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics) get bought off by an acceleration of the SSBN(X), any contest for non-nuclear subs may give established U.S. sub fabricators a means to weather the slow-down of the Virginia Class buy (It?ll just?well, they?re angry already, anyway.)

Keep in mind, the submarine deal is something Taiwan has long wanted, long asked for, and that the Bush Administration kinda heedlessly granted three months into his first term (and subsequently didn?t proceed upon).

So now, nine years later, Obama is trying to put this ?un-backed? obligation to rest?as best he can?in a way that might benefit the U.S. a tad. At any rate, this bit of defense politics seems to be one of those interesting deals that includes everyone?and yet irks everybody, as well. We?ll see?But this ?everybody gets a tiny piece holiday pie? strategy is fascinating to watch.

Remember, it might be worth reading Undersecretary of the Navy Rob... Navy-oriented portion of the CSBA?s Strategy for the Long H..., particularly this passage:

?The tactical submarine fleet must develop a whole new generation of undersea
weapons and capabilities including smaller multipurpose submarines (both manned and unmanned), vehicles and weapons

"The West" refers to Western Hemisphere, countries not affiliated with communism.

that terminology died in the early 90's.  get with the program.

The West refers to a dying concept called Euro-centric civilization.

Japanese invented it with Yamato. If you cannot match American navy in quantity, then you might as well exceed Americans in quality by putting on the biggest guns, Japanese strategists reasoned.

No the Japanese didn't invent it.  It?s a soviet concept articulated in the '20's.  at a platform level they did it with their big iron, at the doctrine level they did it with mass and maneuver.  The Soviets were a generation ahead of everyone in that sense.

The Russians and the Japanese did not use the same doctrines at all. The Russian initial doctrine was to mass as many expendable units as possible and swarm the enemy (Czarist). Enough would survive to exploit the numbers advantage at any break through point.   Japanese naval doctrine was to use high quality light naval units with superior technology and training to whittle down their referent enemy to equal numbers in a staged retreat into a prepared battle-space and then to destroy that referent enemy in one big battle.

Ever hear of Tukachevsky? He took the Russian army out of the hinterlands of strategic thought and laid the groundwork for the modern doctrine of mobile warfare. That doctrine was nothing like Fuller or Hart, or Guderian, because unlike them, he went beyond just machines and mechanization with vague notions of combined arms, He emphasized MASS EFFECTS and maneuver for the entire Russian army, including its air support in offense, no matter what its state of mechanization or state of supply. Russian commanders, who over-committed or failed to understand the ?defensive phase? opf the offensive battle, (Stalin) either allowed themselves to be positional pinned or wiped out in place. Tukachevsky was all about violence and movement across a front to create a local offensive advantage condition that he would exploit with all forces and kinetics to achieve ?breakthroughs?. The commensurate Russian naval strategy was coastal defense with the same kind of swarm tactics. Russian method to achieve such local advantage was to use firepower (massed fires.) to blast a hole in the defense. Sheer weight of numbers and sheer volume of fore at the point of contact means that the attrition unit that carried the weapon or that was the launch platform had to be as cheap as possible and numerous as possible. Tanks, planes, ships only were built good enough. The Russians skimped on quality to get numbers all across the board. This was especially true with their overburdened warships as they turned from the gun to the missile. The Russians with their fleet, then, didn?t have the doctrine or the expensive open ocean logistics or communication systems to make such open ocean combat possible for them. The Japanese did. Hence the Yamato, was built to kill a Tillman, and in the end was GATO or AVENGER bait.                    

No, this is the term used at 2ch.net to describe why Korean strategy of building the most heavily armed warship to overcome numerical deficiency is flawed. Yamato strategy didn't work for Japanese, it would not work for Koreans in the Grand Naval Showdown scenario. Koreans are well-aware of this problem and this is why the second batch of six SPY-1F equipped Aegis destroyers specialized in anti-ship missile countermeasure on the horizon.

And it?s a false premise because they didn't get the historical links correct.  That grand naval showdown is a killer; you'd make Tom Clancy proud.  Let us all know where we can reference it from actual espoused South Korean military doctrine.  I'd love to get our SK liaison officer to explain how it all works.  It must be a hell of a secret if your own military people don't know about it and you're blabbing on the Internet about it.  As he's SK Navy I'm sure he must up to date.  They only send their best and brightest on these 3 year tours.

I?m not privy to what the RoKN think<