Keeping an Eye on the Long Game: Part I

N2, call your office. N2, call your office.

I don’t know about you, but now and then I get a kick out of watching those old back & white movies you only see at 0300 about a bunch of guys on safari in Africa where everything goes wrong.

One of my favorite scenes, copied by hundreds of movies, is where the “Great White Hunter” is stalking a Kudu or something and suddenly he hears a rustling of leaves behind him. He stops, listens for a minute, shrugs his shoulders, and then continues hunting. Everyone watching the movie is thinking “Watch out! There is a lion behind you!!!!” Well, I won’t spoil what happens later on in the scene, but I am sure you can figure it out.

Anyway, lions, tigers, dragons, whatever.

Here is the seque.

Looks like the PLAN, Peoples Liberation Army Navy (now if there was ever an organization that needed to restructure itself just to get a new name), continues their long-march towards the next large war if we want them to or not. Go to the bottom of the page to see our new friend, Yuan.


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I know we have our “WMD in 45 minutes” experienced intel types focused on, quite rightly, Bin Laden and the Funky Bunch, but a new construction submarine, even a evolutionary development from Song and Kilo, should not be a surprise to anyone.

Enough of the babble about the shortage of Arab linguist preventing proper intel on Muslim extremist. You cannot swing a dead cat (prepared in the Cantonese Style of course), in a major university’s engineering department without hitting both native born, 1st-3rd generation American, Taiwanese or Red Chinese (I love that Cold War term). AND WE DON’T HAVE A METRIC BUTT-TON OF INTEL ON MARITIME CONSTRUCTION!?!?!?!?! Sigh. We must be focused on more important things involving the Western Pacific region.

As they continue to build their submarine fleet, we are focused elsewhere. Say what you want about the Chinese, they are very focused on their long term strategic needs. They will continue to study the way we do business at sea, and they will make sure they are ready when the call comes. Are we?

A lot of folks hear rustling in the woods behind us.