Out of Pod Experience

This guy is always good for some comic relief. Their submarine fleet doesn't sound very practical. Noisy diesel engines and torpedoes with 4-mile range. Versus silent modern subs with 21-mile range torpedoes. Seems about like trying to use a stealth bomber fit with autocannons and no cloak.

Gratuitous comments:
-Couldn't they have scraped the rust and repainted before Dear Leader visited? Is the North Korean navy lazy?
-I like the fourth photo down. It looks like the admirals are trying to take his order for breakfast.

Kim Jong-Un Mans A Soviet Submarine That's Been Obsolete Since 1961

Gotta love that lil kim is teaching the captain how to navigate. lol @ clumsy propaganda :D Like to know what that captain was really thinking.

They already have, Mar 2010 - NK sub torpedoes Cheonan warship, 46 sailors killed. They're just expanding their fleet. As long as you have good intel (likely has modern electronics), you just set up an ambush point in the lane ahead. It should still be relatively quiet to ride through the thermals to the staging location, then hold dead in the water until the target approaches. Blow ballast up and splash some fish. Pretty much any surface target is game, won't know what hit them until forensics, the Cheonan didn't see it coming. The only limitation would be facing a modern attack sub, or even a boomer. But you don't need to maneuver to get a shot off on a surface ship, just know where to be.

Well the article doesn't bother to mention that little fact it's more funny, confusing, even propagandic in a way. Reading it now, at least they mentioned that it would have a difficult time vs a modern sub, though I think the range of a harpoon is irrelevant here in that matter, since you still need to detect it first. Yeah we have sonar nets to detect them, but they are still limited.

"Western experts stubbornly point out its inability to sink enemy vessels" (who? inability?) - "with its noisy and easily detectable diesel engine" (wat?). See, I don't understand that... They don't do anything really different than a modern nuclear-reactor sub, both are capable of running silent under the surface. Diesel-electric runs on batteries, and probably better batteries than originally produced for this model. The article doesn't even mention that this is a diesel-electric boat, not just a diesel boat. The only drawback is operational range, were nuclear subs don't need to surface and charge. But for small regional operations they don't show much difference as far as keeping their stealth it would seem, at least regarding the power-plant.

However, the biggest factor is probably hull design and propeller design. You get a clunky designed sub out of the thermal layers, it'll be more easily detected if in motion from the cavitation etc. More the case when facing a modern attack sub, the old hull and prop of the boat would be screaming out to be easily targeted... well less than screaming but far more easily targeted if moving just considering it's older design and nothing to do with being diesel-'electric'. But yeah, absolutely, they are a threat, no doubt about that, and considering that they have already done this against a military surface ship using a diesel-electric (though that incident was most likely the Yono-class but probably due to it having a longer submerged range ~50nm).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo-class_submarine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_North_Korean_ships

Probably the same thing people thought when another Great Leader declared "Mission accomplished"......

I guess that's what's happening to people after a while when nobody dares to tell them when they're being stupid.

Highly relevant.

Well, if one of those is sitting on the bottom, running silent in a perfect impersonation of a derelict, and something gets closer than 4 miles...

the really intelligent people know to keep their mouths shut
a closed mouth doesn't make you dissapear