By EFE
27 Sep 2024, 02:29 AM EDT
China’s newest nuclear submarine sank this spring at the Wuchang Naval Shipyard despite China’s efforts to conceal it, two U.S. defense officials said.
According to the US media The Wall Street Journal and CNN, the event came to light thanks to satellite images and it was the first Zhou-class submarine of its new line of ships.
A satellite image from March 10 shows the submarine docked in port, while additional images dated June show the submarine did not return to the dock.
“No wonder they tried to hide it.”
This represents a strong setback for one of China’s weapons programs, a country that the Pentagon has described as its “main challenge” in the long term.
“It is not surprising that the People’s Liberation Army Navy is trying to hide the fact that its new nuclear-powered attack submarine, the first of its kind, sank in dock,” a senior US defense official told The Wall Street Journal.
According to CNN, the event was identified by Tom Shugart, an associate researcher at the Center for a New American Security, which studies satellite images of Chinese shipyards.
They do not know if it had fuel at the time it sank.
Shugart noticed “a bunch” of cranes grouped in the same place, something unusual in the shipyard, which would be the ones that came to rescue the submarine.
It is not known whether the submarine was carrying nuclear fuel at the time it sank, but experts outside the US government told The Wall Street Journal that it was likely.
China has been working to diversify production of nuclear-powered submarines and modernize its navy with the intention of building a global military on par with the United States.
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