Saturday, April 01, 2006

How to Sink a Carrier

Thanks to a US Naval officer's indiscretion, the Chinese now know how. From the Washington Times:


In one case several years ago, a Chinese officer asked a U.S. Navy officer during a visit to identify the key weakness of a U.S. aircraft carrier, a major Chinese target in any U.S.-Chinese conflict over Taiwan. The officer was naively told that the weakest point is under the hull, and that it also happens to be closest to where its ammunition is stored. Within two years of the disclosure, U.S. intelligence agencies detected Chinese military purchases of Russian wake-homing torpedoes that target ships from the rear and explode underneath the hull.