Nuclear Subs 'Collide In Ocean' 622
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."
Re:Whoops (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
More information but still speculative (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Crazy Ivans? (Score:4, Informative)
Both were ballistic missile submarines. For those, following other submarines at distances where crashes are a significant risk is not SOP.
Re:Odds ? (Score:3, Informative)
What are the odds that two advanced SSBN submarines would collide in a vast ocean accidentally ?
FTFA:
"Both navies want quiet areas, deep areas, roughly the same distance from their home ports. So you find these station grounds have got quite a few submarines, not only French and Royal Navy but also from Russia and the United States."
So probably not quite as unlikely as one would have been more comfortable thinking :-)
A bit of factness. (Score:3, Informative)
Ya need to read your Tom Clancy. The article is wrong to talk about using SONAR. The thing in submarines is to NOT use your SONAR because it gives away your position. In World War II, the allies had no problem pinging for u-boats while submerged, but, for a submarine to ping something else is entirely a different matter. As soon as you ping, the enemy knows where you are.
So, just about all submarine driving these days is done through passive listening. You listen to the ocean to hear stuff that might be in your way. To navigate under the water, there are extensive charts of the ocean bottom coupled with inertial navigation. There's actually one US sub that rammed something underwater and was quite severely damaged, and a sailor was killed - it was going at least 30knots.
To evade detection then, submarines then must be very quiet and its that quiet that jacks up their enormous cost, even more. They have special materials in their hulls, special machinery that either runs more quietly or deadens sound, and even the propeller is shaped just so to avoid making noise as it propels the sub through the water. Remember, a few years ago, when Google's satellite view showed a US Submarine in drydock with its propeller fully visible? That was a huge, huge deal. Some say that the noise level of a Seawolf submarine is actually lower than the ambient noise of the ocean - rendering it essentially undetectable by passive listening. It's pretty reasonable to think that although older, the French and British submarines can run pretty quiet.
So, the situation is this, you have two submarines moving through the water, running quiet, and are almost indetectable, but not using any means other than listening and inertial navigation to move, and they hit each other, perhaps while engaged in some friendly war games. It's bound to happen. No two ways about it. The thing is, because they were running quiet, by definition, they weren't moving very fast, lessening the damage from collision.
Re:Stealth Technology is Too Dangerous (Score:1, Informative)
Fucking moron.
You can not (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Odds ? (Score:4, Informative)
Russians used to do what were called "Crazy Ivans."
Yes, we all saw The Hunt for Red October [imdb.com].
Re:Whoops (Score:1, Informative)
Conversely, only the British and their more recent ex-colonies drive on the left.
Re:Despite each being equipped with sonar? (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, so I'm wrong, but that makes me a troll?
Christ, all moderators are total idiots.
^- that's a troll.
Re:Whoops (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Whoops (Score:3, Informative)
The Register has a decent analysis of this making similar points:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/16/subs_crash/ [theregister.co.uk]
Lewis Page consistently seems to write insightfully about nuclear submarines - I look forward to seeing how well he can rant about Wikipedia.
Re:Whoops (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah cause then we'd have to read that shitty story that somebody is bound to post.
Here you go: http://www.snopes.com/military/lighthouse.asp [snopes.com]
And for completeness' sake, here's the (amusing) video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-dwDhvHE_I [youtube.com]
Re:A bit of factness. (Score:3, Informative)
Ya need to read your Tom Clancy. The article is wrong to talk about using SONAR ... just about all submarine driving these days is done through passive listening.
Which Tom Clancy, and everybody else, calls passive sonar [wikipedia.org].
Re:Stealth is good, detection is poor (Score:3, Informative)
US Subs at least, (can't speak to UK and French sub technology) are supposed to already have a pretty advanced array of non-emitting sensors, including very sensitive gravimeters capable of detecting and mapping gravitational fields around the ship (as I understand it, primarily for detecting and navigating around earthen features, but probably capable of detecting other vessels at shorter ranges), and a number of electromagnetic sensors for detecting things like mines, which probably work just fine for detecting other large metal objects (like other subs), and probably a few things which aren't supposed to exist...
That said, I expect neither the French or UK submarine fleet is quite as matured as the US fleet, just because of the sheer amount of moola the US has dumped into submarines.
Re:good job watching Hunt for The Red October (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Whoops (Score:2, Informative)
Comming to an intersection, it is difficult to tell if they are asking to turn right or just telling you to go ahead. (specially from "back seat drivers")
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Whoops (Score:2, Informative)
Similar in French too - "droit" means right and "tout droit" (literally translated as all right) means straight on. However, it probably only appears strange to people like me who don't really speak the language.
Re:Whoops (Score:5, Informative)
It's obvious you know nothing about nautical subjects. The nautical mile was defined as 1,852 meters in 1929, and every navy in the world uses this definition. It is approximately one arc minute of length along any meridian. All international treaties dealing with distances on water use the same nautical mile definition.
Re:Whoops - Mod parent up (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Stealth is good, detection is poor (Score:3, Informative)
What I mean by passive detection systems is anything like an optical camera which does not need to emit anything to see something. I am not sure what technologies could be used, but while hiding is a good thing, being able to 'see' is just as important.
An optical camera relies on light coming from or reflect off an object to see it. Light only travels a matter of a few metres underwater, and to hear another vessel (i.e. SONAR) that vessel needs to be emitting some sound; which these submarines are designed to minimise.
Re:Subs don't always use SONAR (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Whoops (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Whoops (Score:3, Informative)
Some one will now rip my math into shreds of sobbing uselessness, probably around the newtons to meters/second part.
Actually, I might do it a little earlier.
238500 grams/hoghshead
238500/19.86=12009 grams of plutonium(call it 12 kilos)
First off, it should be 238500 cm^3/hogshead. Which happens to be 238500 grams of water, but that's fairly minor. The real killer is that you should then have multiplied by the density of plutonium, not divided by it. Simple sanity check - do you expect plutonium to float? If not then it shouldn't be lighter than water.
So it ends up with 238,500*19.86 = 4,736,610 grams of plutonium.
Thus you have ~95,000,000 tons of TNT per hogshead of plutonium.
Which comes around ~391,000,000Gj.
Which makes for a bit under 2,000,000,000,000kN when used to over 40 rods.
I'd work out the speed the sub would get up to, but I'm running late for work...
Re:Whoops (Score:3, Informative)
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".
Then followed by "merde!"
Re:Stealth is good, detection is poor (Score:3, Informative)
I am a (US) Submariner and although I can't speak to what sensor technology we have I can say that at least US SSBNs would never be fitted with "mine avoidance" sensors unless they expected to be transiting through mine fields. Which is stupid. At least in the US fleet, SSNs get the cool technology, SSBNs then get the castoffs.
Re:Subs don't always use SONAR (Score:3, Informative)
Get 4 hours of sleep, wake up, prewatch tour, eat, stand 6 hours of watch, try to fit all of your divisional and collateral responsibilities into 4-5 hours (and fail), attend training, work on qualifications, etc. for another couple of hours, and repeat the 18-hour cycle.
As an added bonus, the senior chain of command works on a 24-hour a day schedule instead of the normal 18-hour a day schedule, which means that the frequent morning and/or afternoon all-hands drills may occur during the time you're supposed to be sleeping. Oh well. :P
Basically we stand watch and train continuously, catching breaks when we can. I'm an officer, the routine is a bit different for enlisted crew (more cleaning and other assorted BS but then they don't have to attend EVERY SINGLE TRAINING SESSION known to man ;).
Re:Whoops (Score:3, Informative)
It's the limeys and the frogs trying to play "let's sneak up on 'em" the way the yanks and the russkies used to do.
There, has that got enough pejorative in it for ya?