Groundhog Day For Submarine "Breaking" News

Remember the story from last year about the Chinese Song-class submarine surfacing in the vicinity of USS Kitty Hawk? Well, it turns out a reporter from the Daily Mail in the UK did as well (he was probably looking up "what happened this week in history in 2006" in hopes of finding a story he could write quickly), and by the simple technique of saying the event was "recent" he started a blogswarm of fair-to-middlin' proportions. Even UPI picked up the story without adding any embellishing information. While various commenters in the forums -- as well as Vigilis and Galrahn at their own blogs -- have pointed out that the incident came to light in November 2006, the posts at Hot Air and Slashdot are generating lots of discussion (almost 400 comments so far at the last link).

While we're talking about it again, it's worth reiterating the main lessons learned from the whole incident: 1) Any submarine of even modest capabilities can get close to a carrier in peacetime, 2) Any submarine that surfaces near said carrier almost certainly isn't doing it because he wanted to, 3) It's important to give the U.S. Submarine Force more money to help it guard against the Chinese submarine threat, and 4) Submariners are really cool, and you should buy them a beer whenever you see one.