The satellite image of the American imaging company Planet Labs, first posted on the social media accounts of Radio Free Asia, shows what appears to be a nuclear propulsion subotype Type 093 entering a tunnel to an underground key at Yulin Naval Base.
It immediately made comparisons to what could be seen in a spy movie, with one Twitter user simply placing the words “Bond, James Bond” in response to the photo. Others refer to the fictional Nautilus, from Jules Verne’s novel “20,000 Lies Under the Sea”.
Drew Thompson, a former United States Secretary of Defense now at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, says the submarine shot is a rare occurrence.
“It’s unusual for a commercial satellite to be overhead at just the right moment,” he said on a cloudless day.
What is not unusual is the Chinese underground base. That’s how Beijing hides a lot of its military hardware, from submarines to missile systems based far inland, Thompson said.
“The Chinese have great experience in building underground facilities,” Thompson said. “It’s in line with their strategic culture.”
But the Chinese coastlines are getting special attention. “They have an ingrained sense of the acute vulnerability of their coastline to attack,” Thompson said.
CNN has reached out to Chinese authorities for comment on the images.
The Yulin base, located at the southern end of Hainan Island nearly 300 miles (470 kilometers) southwest of Hong Kong, is one of China’s most important facilities for protecting its marine assets.
As for the submarine, Thompson said her presence at the base does not send a single signal about the Marine of the Liberation Liberation Army.
“The bottom line is that they have a large and growing submarine fleet that is improving in quality,” he said.
“They can protect it with underground facilities.”
And keep the submarines out of sight.
At least once this year, on May 15, the U.S. Navy sent one of its P-8A Poseidon intelligence and reconnaissance jets on a flight at the Yulin base, spokeswoman Reann Mommsen confirmed to CNN.
“That’s the job of naval intelligence,” Thompson said. “Seeing an opponent is a daily effort.”
And tunnels can make that frustrating for U.S. military planners, said Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the U.S. Pacific Joint Intelligence Center.
“You have no evidence of (submarine combat readiness, operational response times and availability,” he said. “Tunnels blind potential opponents to the submarine’s business status and patterns, denying them the ability to enter China’s military state to determine preparations, knowledge that is critical to assessing China’s intentions and plans. “
As for the submarine itself, if it were a Type 093, it would be one of as many as six in the Chinese fleet, according to the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative.
The Type 093 comes in three versions and can be armed with torpedoes and cruise missiles, it said.
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