Subotai, thanks for your very interesting posts!
As for this bump between the Chinese sub and McCain’s array, I’d go with Exhelo’s judgement call, he’s been closer to it than most of us, I’d bet. But even sub-to-sub collisions are not unheard of, for example: The paper analyses the plausible reasons, which lead to a Russian (of “Sierra” class) and a U.S. (“Baton Rouge”) submarines collision incident in February, 1992. The author comes to the conclusion, that most likely, the reason was very short detection range of submarines, because of that both submarines operated covertly and did not use other means of detection except passive acoustics. There are no reliable means available to submarines that would allow them to operate both covertly and safely in such a complex environment as shallow waters.
