Gary one aspect that disturbs me is the tendencies to embrace superiorities based on technology and dismiss PLAN capabilities measured on technology. As a naval centric community we have certain expectations based on what we believe are the limitations of PLAN of capabilities, but at every turn we are given further evidence that their capabilities are greater than expected. That is a product of a number of things, including the lack of transparency of the PLAN, but should also include the lack of specifics released or discussed by our own governments on what they are seeing in China.
SSBNs discovered by open source IMINT observers is one example, but we tend to forget what we learn in other examples. The Japanese were not happy in 2004 when they discovered a Chinese submarine in their territorial waters, and when that Ming class caught fire in 2005, people were too busy laughing at the Chinese for having 2 Ming class submarines with problems in a span of two years to take note where the problems were occurring, which turned out to be much further out to sea than anyone would normally expect to see the PLAN conventional subs.
To me the tendency to discount the PLAN submarine force lends itself to disinformation and misguided expectations that play right into the deception aspect of Chinese strategy. The Ming example above is a perfect example, most people were too busy staring at the fire to realize that where there was smoke was a much bigger concern.
