Chinese Supersonic Submarine Could go 3,600 MPH, in Theory

In a submarine, seeing or sensing your surroundings is absolutely vital. This is done almost entirely by listening for acoustical energy in the water. Active (think sonar ping) or passive (listening with hydrophones) becomes absolutely vital. The problems with supercavitation is that all forms of acoustical monitoring or sensing of your surroundings becomes impossible. The forward (nose) sonar array on the famous Russian supercavitating torpedo was all but useless for finding and tracking a target during supercavitation making the torpedo useful only as a point and pray device. Supercavitating torpedo's must operate blind and are useless at distance. Supercavitating devices also generate a huge amount of noise in an environment where stealth is vital. You can hear them coming from very, very far away.

Well they certainly could spend their R&D and lives attempting to build such a vessel, but I wouldn't recommend it. Such high speed to hope the "cavitation bubble" can be maintained and it the bubble degrades at this speed it's gonna be like when the Space Shuttle broke-up during re-entry. The oceans don't just sit still. At any depth the oceans have much greater inertia in their currents than that of air turbulence in the sky. And also here too there's people at risk inside this submarine vessel?
Better to R&D this same theory & concept to develop a high speed torpedo

I don't know about a supersonic sub but they already know how to make a train hypersonic by putting it in a giant vacuum tube.A sealed tube with forced air means there's no friction so there's nothing in the way to slow it down and you could make it from New York to London in well under an hour.It's an awesome idea but highly impractical and for what it would cost to span an entire ocean it'll never be built.

3600 MPH? There are only two manned craft that have ever reached those speeds. The space shuttle (only in space) and the X-15 (for a very short time).

The stuff that the Air Force is testing now have been called "successes" in spite of none of them surviving the flight.

The SR-71 was the only true airplane that even approached that speed (actually about 2200 MPH), and is the fastest plane in the world.

The X-15 was mostly rocket, so it can't truly be considered an airplane (considering that everyone that piloted it was called "astronaut")

So, considering this is powered by rocket motors, can it rightfully be called a "submarine"?

Anything is possible but I'm concerned of the tech issue in which our government practically are given them the means with all the outsourcing of our industry to them thanks to Wall Street greed to make it be an issue to contemplate. I think this is a concern that can't be ignored even if its the Chinese boasting of something that hasn't occurred for them as of yet to be proven real. All the more reason not to do business with China an start thinking of our national interest first.

I hate to point this out but this is an absolute preposterous idea. The supercavitation is strongly affected by the speed of sound in the water. The speed mentioned is approximately twice that of sound in brine. But that speed is GREATLY effected by the hydrostatic pressure which would vary across the surface of any vehicle (or torpedo) and the SLIGHTEST change in pressure would cause very dramatic effects of pressure and sounds waves across the surface which would cause anything even at merely fast speeds to fly apart or be crushed. Aircraft under even much milder conditions are extremely vulnerable to pressure waves.

The density of salt water is approximately a thousand times that of air. A Tomcat requires about 28,000 lbs of thrust to fly at a couple of times the speed of sound at sea level.

"Supercavitation occurs when tiny air bubbles formed by the movement of a solid object through water mold together to become one large gas bubble that encompasses most of the object itself. Drag between the water and object thus drops off immensely and allows the object to move through water at much higher speeds."

Yes. But the air surrounding the water needs to move at high speed too isn't it? So the cavitator ejecter still has to push air out against a mass of water which is practically impossible.

sorry to say but I craft moving at the speed will nee around 10 meters of air in front just to buffer it from the shock wave of around 3.2 lbs on the sq and by doing the math it cannot be done best speed can be done is around 55knt so if it does not fly it is what it is , only way it can be done is 2 buffer it only 2 ways to do this is by bubbles and lost buoyance or force field and this will need a vast amount of energy and a orray of discharge points id say some where around 100kv at min just a very rough estimate , but best speeds at 100knts

Lets talk about something plausible like the ChiComm aircraft carrier which even the U.S. newest is being obsoleted by precision guided missiles and prepositioned orbital launch pads and laser air defense systems already perfected to negate even them. Missiles with precise guidance that can strike anyplace on the globe in 15 minutes are obsoleting all of this. Plus any sub traveling at this speed could not hide from a child in a hot air balloon. This is the kind of nonsense that used to come out of the Kremlin to keep the Defense Agency up at night. Well, maybe its the first sign of Politburo delusion after 50 years they are in the zone for unraveling as did their Russian counterparts. Brand new1 Million plus habitat cities with no one living in them is a sure sign of economic imbalance which is inherent in Communism and has been proven. Dream on brother Xinping while sipping your capitalist produced Jack Daniels enschonced in Beijing hi rise luxury.

This is a pure hoax. Nothing more. Here is why:

With a simple high school physics calculation, I can show you that to sustain a cavitation to clear a 50m long sub, you need a minimum thrust of 250 million Newtons! This equates to 7 Saturn V, the most powerful rocket ever built. And guess what, even the entire "sub" contains nothing but fuel, it would burn out in about 1 minute. That won't happen though because the hall would have buckled under the pressure.

Pure pipe dream.