Nuclear Subs 'Collide In Ocean'

Jantastic noted a BBC report saying "A Royal Navy nuclear submarine was involved in a collision with a French nuclear sub in the middle of the Atlantic. It is understood HMS Vanguard and Le Triomphant were badly damaged in the crash earlier this month. Despite being equipped with sonar, it seems neither vessel spotted the other, the BBC's Caroline Wyatt said."

Whoops

[Spazztastic]

You'd think we would... you know... communicate with our allies? Maybe? At least they didn't almost collide with a lighthouse, though.

Euphemism?

[FrostDust]

Is there a reason "collide in ocean" is in quotes? Could we also say they were "bumping their ballasts", "raising their periscopes", and so on?

collision crisis

[Caue]

forget the credit crunch. it's the collision crisis that will doom us all. I can already predict people bumping one another on the streets, cows going to waste on the fields, large buildings tripping the little ones... it's the apocalypse.

Re:Whoops

[wisty]

They drive on the opposite sides of the street. Maybe they give way differently was well?

Or maybe they were both in stealth mode.

Stealth Technology is Too Dangerous

[psyopper]

Maybe if they weren't in super stealth mode they would have seen each other and the accident could have been avoided. This technology is too dangerous and needs to be outlawed through international treaty. The up side is that we know that stealth works!!

in the immortal words from Star trek....

[pig-power]

Chekov "where are your nukleer wessels??"

Thank god for BBC

[Goffee71]

Otherwise we would not know that submarines have been equipped with Sonar (well, ASDIC at least) since the 1940s. Of course, they might have mentioned that boomers try to sneak around quietly without having Sonar disco parties. Still, no dolphins were murdered in the making of this accident!

bound to happen

[gEvil (beta)]

Well, this was bound to happen. I hear things are getting pretty cramped down there in the ocean.

Re:Euphemism?

[Hal_Porter]

It is in so called 'quote marks' because it is a quotation.

Re:Whoops

[ryanvm]

Do you know what you're talking about or did you just watch The Hunt for Red October?

Using Windows..?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't the French and British navy both using MS Windows now..? Just noticing some recent trouble with the French Air-force related to this... Perhaps they mistook the "sonar screensaver" for the real thing..?

Re:Whoops

[Sponge Bath]

...or did you just watch The Hunt for Red October?

Actually it was Crimson Tide.

Re:Whoops

[drinkypoo]

They drive on the opposite sides of the street. Maybe they give way differently was well?

Actually, they were taking a page from NASA's book. Someone accidentally gave a measurement in SAE units, which didn't go over well on a metric boat. I told you using furlongs per fortnight was a bad idea...

Oh James...

[denzacar]

Nuclear submarines colliding, satellites colliding, 200 million Chinese [cnn.com] suddenly move inland leaving cities, US government giving away billions of dollars to banks...

Don't know about you, but lately I feel more and more like I am living in a James Bond movie.
Only I am not the one with cool gadgets, drinking problem and a girl with a sexual innuendo for a name under each arm.

This is easy to explain

[XSpud]

Clearly these subs were tracking the 2 satellites that collided last week http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/11/2318226 [slashdot.org]. The six day delay can be explained by the difference in speed of a nuclear sub compared to a satellite.

Re:Like where else were they going to collide?

[drinkypoo]

The dessert?

I find it hard to find an ice-cream dish with sufficient room for one nuclear missile submarine, let alone two.

Re:Whoops

[Hatta]

the fact that nobody outside the hull knows exactly where it is is their number one means of survivability.

Does the fact that nobody inside the hull knows exactly where it is help too?

For two SSBNs to involved in such a bump, either one or the other had to be involved in SSN-like games, or pretty astronomical odds were just surmounted in a random collision

Considering that 2 satellites just collided, astronomical odds don't seem that great.

Passed like ships in the night

[LoudMusic]

Looks like we'll have to alter the age-old saying "passed like ships in the night" to include "... except French and British nuclear submarines".

Re:Subs don't always use SONAR

[Arancaytar]

And to misquote Order of the Stick:

*bump*

"Sorry for knocking you over, I didn't see you there."

"Don't worry. Happens all the time. 'Cause, you know. Ninja."

Re:Whoops

[k_187]

MY subs get 40 rods to the hogshead and that's how I likes it.

Re:Euphemism?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

To differentiate it from nuclear subs that 'collide in mid-air'.

The French response:

[hampton]

"Now go away or I shall bump you a second time!"

Re:Despite each being equipped with sonar?

[morgan_greywolf]

Paranoia is no way to deal with nuclear risks, but neither is being glib.

How about being imlib or gobject instead? Would that be better?

Keep up with politics

[Kupfernigk]

Many people in the UK believe that Trident is an expensively useless deterrent. Sarkozy said Brown had no idea how to fix the economic crisis. Soon after, there is a submarine collision. Brown was trying to upset Sarkozy while pandering to the right-wing UK tabloids and justifying the cost by using Trident to take on the French. Unfortunately, budget cuts mean that Trident subs are now crewed by mothers of private school kids whose only driving experience is using their Range-Rovers and Grand Cherokees to push poor people off the pavement. There could only be one outcome.

Re:Whoops

[Dishevel]

Wait, didn't it read that one was French? I didn't know that anyone there could do more than cower under a table?

Its the french. Of course they have small boats that can stay hidden under the water, undetectable during times of war.

Re:Video Cameras

[canajin56]

Visibility under the water is poor. Subs turn slowly. Most you'd get out of that is "Mind the sub." "What sub?" *splat*

Final transmission:

[Gothmolly]

"This is a lighthouse. Your call."

Re:collision crisis

[ideonode]

Apparently, the UK submarine was carrying red paint, and the French sub was carrying blue paint.

All the sailors are marooned.

Re:collision crisis

[iamhigh]

I don't know if I should suggest up or down mod for that one. But it did get me to actually reply, so it couldn't have been all bad.

Re:Whoops

[RulerOf]

Sorry, we Americas drive on the right side of the road. There is no driving on the left side, only the WRONG side.

The ambiguity is killing me.

Americans drive on the correct side of the road... Along with everyone Napoleon had the opportunity to walk on.

Re:Whoops

[QuantumRiff]

Would you trust the French sub? I know I wouldn't? One of two things would happen.

-The french sub realizes its being followed, at which point is surfaces, and raises a white flag of surrender, causing some embarrassment for capturing an ally. The French just used their natural instinct.

-Somebody mentions they are thinking of invading France, at which point the nation surrenders, and turns over all their information about where their forces and their allies forces are.

Neither is going to do England well. Might as well just stay in the shadows.

Re:Oh James...

[dunkelfalke]

could be worse - imagine that you are in a tom clancy novel

Re:Whoops

[Xeth]

Is it a nuclear sub? Because (based on a linear extrapolation from Ivy Mike; sorry, not a Nuclear Engineer) a hogshead of plutonium would generate around 40 gigatons of explosive force if detonated.

Perhaps your sub works by moving the Earth around it?

Re:Same side

[R2.0]

"A head on collision was bound to happen even if they knew the other sub was there. The French drive on the right, the British on the left."

What retard modded this Insightful? Funny, sure. Even Redundant. But FFS, Insightful?

Re:Whoops

[stranger_to_himself]

Considering that 2 satellites just collided, astronomical odds don't seem that great.

What's more, a million to one chance is pretty certain to happen at least nine times out of ten.

Re:Whoops

[Spatial]

Ah. So it works the same way as an American car does.

Re:Oh James...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only I am not the one with cool gadgets, drinking problem and a girl with a sexual innuendo for a name under each arm.

It was a collision between two big long hard things full of seamen.

Re:Whoops

[Enleth]

OK, now, tell me, which one of you was such a wag to steal all the entropy and think it's funny, eh? Put it back at once, before it turns out that we all have "1234" for a root password just by coincidence!

Re:Whoops

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me one ping and one ping only...

Re:Whoops

[Captain Spam]

*** CaptainSpam quietly logs into his server and adds a 5

Re:All Alone

[Lars T.]

Run silent - Run deep.

- Run into each other.

Badly damaged?

[teridon]

I heard the front fell off!

Re:Oh James...

[Chris Burke]

It would explain the terrible characterization of people around me!

Re:Same side

[xant]

It's just like that one place in the chunnel where all the English have to suddenly veer over to the right to keep from hitting the French, and vice-versa. Lots of accidents there.

Re:Whoops

[WCguru42]

I hear that the ex-colonies just drive on the road, no side in particular, just whichever one isn't completely stopped due to congestion.

Or in a /. reference..

[RingDev]

Someone should have spent more time Naval Gazing.

-Rick

Re:Stealth Technology is Too Dangerous

[Hogwash McFly]

They were pulling your leg. In actual fact they dry-docked it and spent two weeks in the pub.

Re:Whoops

[Walkingshark]

If two submarines crash in the ocean, and neither is running sonar, does it make a sound?

Re:Whoops

[Walkingshark]

I'm not a submarine warfare specialist, but I did burn down a Holiday Inn Express last night!

Oops, did I say that out loud?

Re:Whoops

[virtual_mps]

If two submarines crash in the ocean, and neither is running sonar, does it make a sound?

yes. it sounds like "crunch" followed by "oh, shit".

Re:Supercavitation

[2names]

Just a heads up...

If you are going to search for Supercavitation images on the web, make sure "safe search" is on...

Re:Whoops

[Dahamma]

That's 4.7 metric tons, not 12 kilograms - in other words, you're off by a factor of 400.

Which means if the rest of his math is in fact correct, that's a sub traveling at 400 times the speed of sound, ie. over 10x escape velocity.

The Air Force has monopolized space exploration long enough, now it's the Navy's turn to go to the moon!

Re:Euphemism?

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

"There are more airplanes in the ocean than submarines in the sky."
--old Navy reply to cocky Air Force pilots

Re:Whoops

[laddiebuck]

Perhaps Sir Humphrey Appleby spoke the truth about the true purpose behind Britain's independent deterrent?...

Haha, excellent! One of the very few Yes, Minister references on Slashdot, and so fitting, too. For those who haven't watched the programme (it ran in the 80s), an inexperienced Cabinet minister (later prime minister) is being "educated" by his Department's top civil servant, Sir Humphrey. Sir Humphrey tells the astonished minister that Britain's nuclear deterrent isn't intended against the Russians, but the French.

Re:Whoops

[riperrin]

If two submarines crash in the ocean, and neither is running sonar, does it make a sound?

yes. it sounds like "crunch" followed by "oh, shit".

and "Oh, Merde!".