China's nuclear-armed submarine patrols add complexity for U.S., allies

Things are getting scary. I've read about something called "Thucydides Trap", and it seems at some point conflict is likely to happen. Nuts.

So China is using it's nuclear subs exactly the in the way they are designed and exactly how every other country with them uses theirs.

Are we going to read that France and the UK have at least one of their nuc. subs at sea tomorrow? Why not?

Don't worry about the big Elephants going to war, as we're all now living the AGE OF THE PROXY WARS.

One does wonder given massive known weapons proliferation conducted by Russia for quid pro quo support, exactly how 'contained' are some of these proxies like NK and Iran and THEIR proxies?

Bonafide terrorists could potentially now more than EVER before, given current global war chaos, access scariest of weapons/WMDs.

Afterall, they have relatively VERY little to lose, unlike China, as heaven awaits remember?!

Well on that pleasant note, enjoy your beautiful spring day, as clearly US Govt. has EVERYTHING well under control!

Only time will tell if Xi follows Putin down the path of insanity.

Besides, he'll simply blockade Taiwan, more economic than anything, lots of stages before kinetics it seems.

Any attempt to blockade Taiwan would immediately become a very kinetic naval war. I'm sure you know that.

So China is using it's nuclear subs exactly the in the way they are designed and exactly how every other country with them uses theirs.

Are we going to read that France and the UK have at least one of their nuc. subs at sea tomorrow? Why not?

For UK and France the entirety of their nuclear deterrent force are their SSBNs. Neither nation has a triad of land based ICBMs, nuclear capable long range bombers (France's are short range tactical bombers) and SSBNs like the US and Russia have, and China aspires to acquire. For Russia and the US those SSBNs are a second strike reserve force. Even if Russia managed to cripple America's land based ICBMs (not possible if the US were to launch on detection rather than wait for warheads to impact US soil before launching what might survive) and shot down most of the bombers (not a possibility to be discounted before the arrival of the B-2) those subs guarantee the US would have some sort of nuclear response to a nuclear attack. Now China is following that path.

Depending on how quiet their subs are and how the Chinese operate them they may or may not be such an invincible force. If all they have at sea at any time is one it is not mission impossible to track it. During the Cold War US SSNs routinely tailed Soviet SSBNs. Even for our surface forces and the P-3 squadrons sinking their SSBNs were their first priority in a NATO / Warsaw Pact war. The Soviets were never able to track our subs but consider where Lockheed produced over 700 P-3Cs and Kawasaki produced another 100 for the JMSDF, the Soviets only built a grand total of 58 equivalent Il-38 May maritime patrol planes. I would imagine today the US, Japanese and other allied subs keep similarly close tabs on these Chinese boomers.

"If I was the planner, I would want to keep my strategic deterrence assets as close to me as possible, and the South China Sea is perfect for that," Koh said.

When your subs are as noisy as the Chinese subs you feel a need to keep them close to your land based air power for protection much as the Soviets tended to concentrate many of their boomers in the Barents Sea. While that might offer protection from enemy surface forces it offers their subs little protection from quieter western subs that might be looking to sink them.