China has been building up its armed forces at a rapid pace over the past few years. We've seen a lot of Chinese Coast Guard vessels harassing the Philippines in the South China Sea. And the PLA Air Force has sent hundreds of fighters and bombers toward Taiwan over the past four years. So given China's habit of bullying its neighbors it's a real shame to learn that the PLA Navy's newest nuclear attack submarine sank in port a few months ago.

China’s newest nuclear-powered submarine sank pierside in the spring and the Chinese Navy tried to conceal the loss, according to two US defense officials.

The attack submarine was the first of its new Zhou-class line of vessels, the official said, under construction at a shipyard near the city of Wuhan. The Zhou-class submarines have a distinctive X-shaped stern, designed to improve maneuverability underwater...

“It’s not surprising that the PLA Navy would try to conceal the fact that their new first-in-class nuclear-powered attack submarine sank pierside,” said the senior US defense official.

Satellite photos from March show the new sub docked and being worked on but images of the same site from June show a large group of floating cranes at the site. Tom Shugart who was first to notice the change told CNN, "Usually, those submarines, after they get launched, they’re there at the shipyard for several months in outfitting. And it wasn’t there anymore."

The sub was apparently salvaged but it will likely be many months before it can be readied to set sail again. This is a big setback for this sub but also for the shipyard in Wuhan which built it. No doubt there is going to be a major review of what exactly went wrong here.

“The sinking of a new nuclear sub that was produced at a new yard will slow China’s plans to grow its nuclear submarine fleet," said Brent Sadler, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank, and a retired U.S. Navy nuclear submarine officer. “This is significant."...

While the submarine was salvaged, it will likely take many months before it can be put to sea.

“The whole boat would be full of water," Shugart said. “You’d have to clean out all the electronics. The electric motors may need to be replaced. It would be a lot of work."

It's not known if the sub's reactor was operating at the time it sank or whether it posed a radiation threat. There's no evidence China has done any radiation testing in the river nearby. Also unknown is whether there was anyone killed in the accident. If the reactor was running then there would have been someone aboard. Did they get out? We may never know.

China is so sensitive to negative reports that having this major embarrassment reported around the globe today must be driving them crazy. Of course, no word of this will appear inside China, not if their army of censors can help it. But lots of Chinese people have VPN accounts to allow them to get past the great firewall. Word will get around eventually.

It just hasn't been a good week for strongman dictators. This story comes the same week as another military embarrassment in Russia. Their latest nuclear-capable ICBM, dubbed the Satan II, blew up inside its silo, turning the testing ground into a large crater and setting part of a nearby forest on fire. This same missile, which Russia has used to threaten other nations, has failed in four out of five tests over the past two years.