The most dangerous event on a ship is always a fire. Firefighting skills are core to the safety and resilience of naval ships and submarines. When the Russian Cruiser Moscow was hit with missiles in the Black Sea in April of 2022, it wasn’t the explosions of the missiles or a gaping hole in the hull of the ship, it was the Russian crew’s inability to get the fires under control.
After a mysterious episode of a possible Chinese Nuclear Submarine being lost in August, now a dramatic video shows a 25,000 ton Amphibious Warfare vessel possibly on fire. The ship was reported in the Twitter postings as the Type 071 Longhushan Amphibious Transport Dock (LPD), a clone of the American San Antonio series. Some reports say this is a smoke screen exercise. Smokescreens are old school and frankly this is not enough smoke to be effective.
Not clear what’s going on and if this is real, but high operational tempo military exercises do produce accidents. The Chinese totalitarian system is not good at transparency and accountability, so there will likely be multiple information warfare smokescreens that will be produced to cover up truth - which further degrades the Chinese military readiness and operational art. In the pre-woke U.S. Military system, there was far more transparency and accountability which led to continuous improvements in the American Military culture.
