The U.S. Navy learned a Chinese submarine had been shadowing the carrier USS Kitty Hawk only when it surfaced about five miles away, inside torpedo range, near Okinawa in 2006.
Story Highlights
- Defense officials said the Chinese Song-class submarine shadowed the Kitty Hawk battle group undetected before coming to the surface.
- A routine U.S. surveillance flight spotted it only after it was already up.
- The sub was reported to carry Russian-made wake-homing torpedoes and anti-ship cruise missiles.
- The news broke as the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet made his first visit to China.
- Two years earlier, a Chinese nuclear submarine had surfaced in Japanese waters, and Beijing apologized.
It happened on Thursday, Oct. 26, 2006, while Kitty Hawk was on a routine fall deployment near Okinawa, Japan. Beijing never said publicly why its submarine came up so close, and the Pentagon and U.S. Pacific Command declined to comment, saying the details were classified.
On October 26, 2006, a Chinese Song-class diesel-electric submarine surfaced undetected within five miles of the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk deep inside the defensive perimeter of the CBG in the East China Sea near Okinawa. pic.twitter.com/Ajs2uaBrIv
— Zephyrus(SendNukes)™ (@The_SharkSlayer) October 5, 2026
Inside Torpedo Range
The Song class is a diesel-electric submarine. It runs on batteries while submerged, which makes it very quiet and hard to hear. A carrier never sails alone. Kitty Hawk’s battle group included other warships, a U.S. attack submarine and helicopters built to hunt submarines. None of them picked up the Chinese boat.
Five miles put the carrier within reach of the sub’s weapons. Wake-homing torpedoes are built to find the churning trail of water behind a ship and follow it to the target. Defense officials noted that Chinese submarines had rarely operated in deep water so far from China’s shores.
An Awkward Moment for U.S.-China Military Ties
The report came out on Monday, Nov. 13, 2006, and the timing was uncomfortable. Adm. William J. Fallon, then the top U.S. military commander in the Pacific, had been pushing a program of military exchanges with China, meant to build trust between the two armed forces. Critics said China had not returned the favor and still kept U.S. officers away from key military sites.
The disclosure also landed during the first trip to China by Adm. Gary Roughead, then commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Officials did not say whether Washington lodged a formal protest with Beijing.
An Early Warning Sign
Richard Fisher, a Chinese military specialist with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, a research group, called the incident alarming. “This is a harbinger of a stronger Chinese reaction to America’s military presence in East Asia,” he said. A harbinger is an early sign of something coming.
China had been building up its undersea fleet fast. According to the report, it added 14 new submarines between 2002 and 2005.
Not the First Surprise From Below
In late 2004, China sent a nuclear-powered Han-class submarine on a voyage near Guam, Taiwan and Japan. Japan’s military went on emergency alert after the submarine was found in Japanese waters, and Beijing later apologized for sending it there.
The 2006 surfacing went further. This time the sub came up within striking distance of an American carrier, and no one aboard the battle group knew it was there until it surfaced. For a Navy that counts on spotting threats long before they get close, it was a lesson in how quietly a small diesel submarine can slip through.
Sources:
washingtontimes.com, ground.news
