Nuclear subs collide in Atlantic
A Royal Navy nuclear submarine was involved in a collision with a French nuclear sub in the middle of the Atlantic, the MoD has confirmed.
France has a navy? And it moves? For that matter, the British sub had the budget to leave harbor?
I can only conclude that half-blind little old ladies were driving each sub. Euro politicians have often been described as old women when it comes to use of military force, so putting old women in the military is the logical next step.
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Well, navy is a relative term in regards to France and the UK.
France has never had a navy worth a pox ridden Marseilles whore. End of story. The French Navy is the vanity project of second rate power blessed, through the United States romantic notions of France, with nuclear weapons.
Great Britain, on the other hand, cannot hide behind that convenient excuse. Shamefully, the Royal Navy has reflected the downfall of the United Kingdom from Empire to second class power to emerging third world country with a bent for Islamofascist tolerance and sympathy.
Keep that in mind. These two countries have nukes in every which way you can imagine. And look where they’re headed.
A couple of boomers colliding in the middle of the Atlantic sort of drives the point that these two decrepit Old World bastions are sliding towards the abyss. It’s an Islamist’s wet dream come true.
You underestimate two nations with ships charged with 16 nuke missiles….
You are blind…
Good news for the world. No much time left now…
Why, when the glossolalic whackjobs come cruising by here, can they never string together their gibberish in any way that makes even rudimentary sense?
Well, when you’re receiving
hallucinogensprophecies, it’s not always easy to tell what they mean.Oddly, that middle sentence sprang right to mind when I read the 6th paragraph of Blackfive’s account of the same event.
Bill, we’ve all long suspected that the whackjobs don’t live in the same reality we do. Their peculiar (to us) use of language supports the thesis. It makes perfect sense in the whackjob reality they inhabit.
By the way, I had to look up “glossolalic”. Happens only a few times a year, and I’m always glad when it does. Case at hand, I’d have written “speaking in dumbs”.
Actually, I don’t find the collision terribly surprising. You have two submarines whose entire purpose is to move about the oceans undetected by other submarines. They accomplished their mission too well.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if there have been collisions in the past between US and Russian boomers and we never heard about it.
naaa, the French skipper though he was on a Paris Traffic circle…and was getting out of it as French drivers always do..honk the horn and cut across
Tod, the purpose of the post was to mock the French military. Please get with the program.
Sorry, Steve.
This is not only incorrect reasoning, but absurd. It is neither the “entire purpose” nor the normal practice of submarines to simply move about undetected, in a sort of aquatic, 3-dimensional blind-man’s-bluff, as is implied by the above statement. Yes, they wish (normally) to remain concealed as much as possible - but equally, they wish to detect and track virtually everything around them, especially anything close at hand. The devices and strategies employed to detect other submarines are roughly equally effective to those used by subs to conceal themselves
Besides - if, in fact, they simply sailed about the open sea in some indifference to the presence of each other, the collision of two subs would be remarkable, indeed. The Atlantic is a very large ocean, and the two boats are miniscule in comparison.
What seems likely (given no more information than the linked article) is that the two boats were traveling at fairly close proximity (and, fortunately, low speed), and that somebody (maybe twosomebodies, one on each boat) screwed up.
My bet would be on the Frenchy to have made the (bigger) screw-up - after all, this is the navy whose primary “capital ship” is an aircraft carrier that either catches fire or tries to sink whenever they take it out.
The French need a navy for the same reason a brass band needs a monkey - so the onlookers have something to point to and laugh at.
I don’t get this. It is indeed true that the primary goal of a missile submarine (other than launching upon command) is to remain undetected by enemy attack submarines. A missile submarine commander whose boat is regularly detected by submarines of another nation will not long remain in command.
Yes, perhaps each submarine succeeded in remaining undetected.
And perhaps each submarine failed in detecting the other.
Granted. But from the article:
Recently two satellites collided in low-earth orbit. Low-earth orbit is also very large and satellites are also minuscule.
It may well be that the submarines were aware of each other and someone screwed up. This may even be the most likely scenario. But I fail to see how the scenario I put forward is either incorrect reasoning or absurd.
I am not entirely convinced this was the accident it was purported to be.
All the major players in space are interested in technologies that permit them to take out an enemy’s spaceborne capabilities at need. The only way you can be sure your methods are workable is to test them.
Both of the boats involved are boomers (i.e., missile-launch-platform subs); yes, obviously they want to avoid detection if at all possible, particularly as a means to avoid being followed/surveilled by other subs (which might attack them, or give their location to others who might do so, if the political situation changed). There’s also an ego thing (”I can find him, but he can’t find me“), which helps to augment the practical effect of being as stealthy as possible.
However, practically speaking, as noted previously, a sub’s ability to remain concealed is roughly equalled by other submarines’ (and some surface ships’) abilities to detect them - the balance shifts back and forth a bit, due to a number of factors. Generally, though, subs are aware when another boat is in the immediate area - it’s a big part of their mission to know what is around them, at least as big as remaining as hidden as possible.
Virtually all subs are detectible - there is simply no such thing as a totally undetected one.
You’re still talking about several hundred cubic miles of water, containing (at most) a dozen or two relatively small boats -
There are literally thousands of satellites, all sizes, shapes and speeds - and LEO isn’t as big an area as you might expect, due to a number of factors…besides:
Nor am I - there is a school of thought that holds that, to the extent that otherwise defunct or obsoleted satellites may be somewhat “maneuverable,” some experimentation may have taken place in using such satellites as “blunt objects” to attack others. With a relative closing speed of hundreds to thousands of miles per hour, even a fairly small satellite has destructive potential. The temptation to exploit this would seem to be obvious…
The absurdity mentioned is, admittedly, subjective, lying with the phrasing of your original statement, which did not fully state the “entire purpose” of the boats by basically ignoring the “see the other guy before he can see me” aspect, which (for my money) is equal in importance with staying as hidden as possible. The incorrect reasoning arises simply from the fact that your scenario sees this as the result of both boats doing their job too well; it’s far more likely, I would submit, that one (or both) didn’t do the job well enough.
Both navies’ higher officers will doubtless be reviewing every aspect of this - with particular reference to what “command failure” may have contributed to the collision. It seems unlikely that “we did the job too well” will be acceptable as causation - particularly in the case of the U.K. boat.
I apologize, JS. If I had realized that my first comment was being pedantically nitpicked, I would have left it at that.
Thanks for the altogether limp-left-handed admission of culpability -
Although in other cases I might agree to being characterized as “pedantic” - particularly in instances of genuine importance - I do not concede here -
If you wish to avoid “nitpicking” of statements that may be seen as overbroad or (as here) rather ingenuous, I can only suggest that you phrase such statements with greater precision…
Actually, it was snark (which I have come to believe is a time-honored tradition on DailyPundit). I will admit that “entire purpose” would better have been phrased as “primary and overriding purpose”. Obviously, a missile sub wants to know what is in the water around it. But consider the following situation: a British boomer and a unknown French sub (boomer or attack) are operating in the same general area unknown to each other. There are four possibilities from the British commander’s point of view.
1) French detects British, British does not detect French.
FAIL (Britain loses its invisible nuclear deterrent)
2) British detects French, French does not detect British.
SUCCESS (Britain maintains it invisible nuclear deterrent)
3) British detects French, French detects British.
TIE or FAIL (if both missile subs they will run from each other to maintain their nuclear deterrence. One boomer will not track another except in unusual circumstances — it is against their mission. If the French is an attack sub, then Britain loses its invisible nuclear deterrence)
4) French does not detect British, British does not detect French
SUCCESS (Britain maintains its invisible nuclear deterrent)
Thus I maintain (given equal detection and avoidance abilities for each nationality, quite likely for the British and the French), that undetectability and the ability to detect other subs are not equally important. In the cases given it is 4.5 to 3.5. It is more important for a boomer to be undetectable than for it to detect other submarines. And from everything I have read, boomers are much quieter and harder to detect than attack subs. And unlike attack subs, they rarely use active sonar.
Imagine asking the USN admiral in charge of missile submarines which he would prefer — one, a scenario in which his boomers are detectable by enemy attack subs and the boomers know they are there; or two, a scenario in which his boomers are not detected and the boomers don’t see the attack subs. He will take scenario two every time.
This is not to say that I think that the boomers ran into each other totally unobserved. From what I have been able to glean from various reports, they may have been able to detect each other at a distance of a mile or so. And from that distance, heading at each other, evasion could become problematical, given the forward momentum of the boats, their enormous size, and the consequently very large turning radius. And if they evaded towards each other they could collide.
So I stand by my original comment, even though it was intended somewhat ironically. The boomers succeeded in their primary mission (too well) — they remained undetected by each other until collision avoidance became problematical. I agree that they failed to see each other, and that will rightly be judged a failure on someone’s part.
It was not intended that the commanders would be absolved from blame; that never happens in a peacetime collision whether avoidable or not. Nor that naval brass would not be studying this for a long time to prevent a re occurrence.
As for “pedantic nitpicking”, I’ll stand by that as well. You took an offhand blog comment and wrote a condescending dissertation.
‘Kay, one more round, and then I’m off this - it’s already gone completely away form the original topic, anyway (Partly my fault, I suppose, for choosing to defend my remarks)…
Ah, I see…maybe in future you could label such remarks of yours, so they are recognized within the “time-honored tradition”? (Or maybe my “snark-detector” was set a bit too fine - I’ll coarsen the adjustment a bit…)*
Subjective, of course, as to proportion - but a considerable improvement from your original statement, which clearly valued remaining undetected as their “entire purpose.”
Sorry - I guess I failed to see how the “somewhat ironic” part overcame the “somewhat inaccurate” part (Note: Reduce “accuracy” setting, to allow for greater “irony” detection[?]).*
I still can’t quite agree that success in their primary mission can properly include “hitting/being hit by another ship” - just seems like a screw-up to me; YMMV.
Mmm…smarted a bit, did it? Apologies - if, in future, I remark upon entries you have authored, I’ll try to avoid any further violation of your tender sensibilities as to “condescension.”* Perhaps, in turn, you might, as I previously suggested, “…phrase such statements with greater precision…”
*These are, of course, the bits that might be considered to be “snark.”
Another DP tradition. To avoid it, as JSB says, write with greater clarity and precision.
And note that “condescending” is pretty mild for these-here parts. If you’d really annoyed someone, you’d have been char-broiled before you could blink. You may take that as evidence that we don’t collectively view you as hopelessly addled.