Video Catches Rare Glimpse of China's Silent Killer Submarine

Fishermen in eastern China were offered a rare glimpse of one of the country's newly upgraded submarines, which was captured on camera on Wednesday while heading out to sea for a suspected training exercise.

The Type 039C, the latest redesign of what the Pentagon calls the Yuan class of Chinese navy boats, was seen steaming ahead on the surface of the water in a video shared to the Chinese social media website Weibo by a user based in China's coastal province of Zhejiang.

Beijing now has the world's largest navy in terms of hull count, and China continues to launch more naval and commercial ships than does any other country in the world. Its growing surface and submarine fleet is part of Chinese President Xi Jinping's desire to create a modern fighting force that can dominate the country's immediate region by the end of the decade.

The People's Liberation Army Navy has 17 Yuan-class submarines in active service in its various fleets. The diesel-electric boats are thought to be one of the quietest classes of silent killers.

The Type 039C, a variant upgraded with a stealth sail to reduce detectability, was first spotted by satellite imagery analysts in May 2021. It was not until July the following year that the Chinese navy officially acknowledged the new boat in an unveiling ceremony covered by state media.

While the overall design of the Type 039C is not new, the new detail on its sail has already generated tremendous interest among military experts.

Open-source intelligence analyst H.I. Sutton, writing for Naval News last month, concluded that the attack submarine was engineered to be more survivable against active sonar. Its new stealth sail, angled in shape, could counter medium-frequency sonar by complicating enemy classification and delaying response times.

"It is now almost certain that the distinctive shape of the sail on the latest Type-039C Yuan class submarines is to increase survivability," Sutton said of the boat that promises to be even harder to track and find.

Sweden has also developed a submarine with an angle sail, but China's Type 039C is currently the only design of its kind operational in the water, Sutton noted.

Defense commentators on Weibo said the Type 039C was likely to carry torpedoes and the YJ-18 supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles, which has an operational range of up to 340 miles.

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Newsweek couldn't independently verify the exact location of this week's footage.

But on Thursday, a day after the video circulated on Weibo, the PLA published images of a Type 039C undergoing training at sea. The Chinese military did not disclose the boat's location.